Wang, DavidNan, Mei2026-06-0920262026-06-052026Nan, Mei. 2026. Media Mix, Nuclear Power, and Reconfiguring Literature in Cold War and Post–Cold War East Asia. Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.32698741https://p2p8-sa-zuvru-a9vusux.re-cotta.com/handle/1/42740297This dissertation argues that modern life is shaped by the entanglement of media systems and nuclear infrastructures. I call this formation the media–nuclear complex: a structural fusion in which nuclear technologies (weapons, energy, waste) and media technologies (broadcast, digital networks, circulation platforms) co-produce transformations in perception, temporality, and everyday experience. Rather than treating nuclear power as a discrete technological problem and media as a sphere of representation, the project shows how each materially conditions the expansion of the other. Nuclear infrastructures require mediation to render radiation measurable and narratable; media infrastructures depend on continuous, large-scale energy systems historically aligned with nuclear power. Together, they reorganize social life across scales—from real-time immediacy to geological duration. Focusing on East Asia from the Cold War to the present, the dissertation develops the concept of the media mix as a technopolitical system that integrates infrastructure, aesthetics, and ideology. Through case studies in China, Japan, and Taiwan, it traces four configurations: a socialist media mix that synchronized atomic power and ideological mobilization; a capitalist media mix shaped by Cold War technopolitics and energy density; a post-Fukushima critical media mix that retools circulation for civic speculation; and a decolonial media mix in Indigenous Tao resistance to nuclear waste on Pongso no Tao. Across these formations, literature emerges as a mode of thought capable of confronting infrastructural power. By reconceiving the media mix beyond industrial marketing, this project reframes it as a site of governance, contestation, and world-making within nuclear modernity.application/pdfenEast AsiaInfrastructureMedia mixMedia–nuclear complexNuclear modernityTechnopoliticsComparative literatureEast Asian studiesFilm, television, and media studiesThesis or Dissertation2026-06-090000-0001-9789-2268