Shasha Liu

“Dunhuang as Method: Media, Knowledge, and the Making of Modern Heritage” examines how Dunhuang became modern cultural heritage through visual mediation rather than preservation. Across photography, mural copying, animation, film, and exhibition, the project shows that images made Dunhuang visible and knowable to twentieth-century publics, transforming it into a modern epistemic formation. Tracing Dunhuang’s circulation across China, Taiwan, Japan, and Eastern Europe, the book argues that reproduction generates new forms of authenticity and cultural authority. By treating Dunhuang as a method for understanding how media shape knowledge, the project reframes heritage as a dynamic process—one continually produced through acts of mediation that construct ways of seeing, knowing, and belonging.