LECTURE: Chinese Anime: The Junctive Geopolitics of Regional Media, by Professor Thomas Lamarre

Title: Chinese Anime: The Junctive Geopolitics of Regional Media
Speaker: Professor Thomas Lamarre, University of Chicago, USA
Moderator: Professor Baryon Posadas, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, HK
Format: 40-50 minutes’ lecture, followed by around 30 minutes’ Q & A
Time: 9:30-11am, May 22, 2024 (Wed, Hong Kong Time)
Location: This lecture was changed to Zoom only. Please ignore the physical building and room number in the poster.  
Zoom ID: 953 3208 9304
Password: ACASSHSS

Abstract: 

The very idea of “Chinese anime” raises a geopolitical eyebrow.  What does it mean for a putatively Chinese phenomenon to mesh with the materiality of media forms associated with contents industries that are typically characterized as “Japanese” or “global”?  What exactly is meant by “Chinese” and “anime” anyway?  The phenomenon of Chinese anime encourages a thorough reconsideration not only of forms of animation but also of the geopolitical forms that are summoned when trying to account for the national, regional, and global circulation of contemporary media forms.  Through an inquiry into the modes of production, circulation, and reception of some fairly popular Chinese anime series such as Tong Ling Fei (Psychic Princess, 2018-2019) and Quanzhi Gaoshou (King’s Avatar, 2017; 2020) as well as some decidedly less popular series such as Lixiang jingqu (Evil or Live, 2017), I wish to explore how the phenomenon of Chinese anime forces us to rethink both the materiality of anime and the materiality of its putative Chineseness in a regional and global context.  The inquiry begins with a demonstration of the “junctive” materiality of Chinese anime.  The guiding question is: to what extent does thinking Chinese anime in terms of junctive materiality offer an alternative understanding of the geopolitics of media in East Asia? Continue reading Chinese Anime lecture →

BOOK TALK: Anime’s Knowledge Cultures: From Astro Boy to China’s Zhai Generation, by Professor Jinying Li

Title: Anime’s Knowledge Cultures: From Astro Boy to China’s Zhai Generation
Speaker: Professor Jinying Li, Brown University, USA
Moderator: Professor Baryon Posadas, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, HK
Format: 40-50 minutes’ lecture, followed by around 30 minutes’ Q & A
Time: 9:00-10:30am, May 16, 2024 (Thur, Hong Kong Time)
Zoom ID: 939 9388 3522
Password: ACASSHSS

ABSTRACT:

This talk introduces the theses of my book Anime’s Knowledge Cultures that studies the historical and cultural formation of anime geekdom to illustrate the growing expansion of a transnational knowledge culture that had emerged since the 1980s with the rise of network society and information capitalism. It examines zhai culture in China as a case study to demonstrate the emergence and development of anime geekdom, along with the changing meanings and functions of knowledge, in a socially and historically specific context. It traces the emergence and development of zhai culture from the popular reception of Astro Boy as the first TV animation imported to China in the 1980s to the recent anime fandom that reshaped Chinese internet culture in the twenty-first century. The coming of age of the zhai generation amid China’s profound social and economic transformation in the past four decades provides a vivid picture of how a knowledge culture formed and evolved, along with the development of a new generation of Chinese workers and consumers, during the uneven transition from the industrial to the postindustrial economies. At the center of this cultural history is the shifting relationship between the zhai generation and the nation’s renewed interest in cultivating and soliciting skilled knowledge workers through institutional and market means. This historical study illuminates the changing meanings and significance of anime geekdom in relation to knowledge work in the context of China’s overwhelming social, cultural, and economic transformations. Continue reading Anime’s Knowledge Cultures talk →

Failed Animation, Limited Theory: Feminist Reflections in a Transnational Context, lecture by Professor Karen Redrobe, 9:30-11am, Feb 7, 2024 (Wed, HK Time), Room 3301 & Zoom

Title: Failed Animation, Limited Theory: Feminist Reflections in a Transnational Context
Speaker: Professor Karen Redrobe, Pennsylvania University, USA
Moderator: Professor Daisy Yan Du, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, HK
Format: 40-50 minutes’ lecture, followed by around 30 minutes’ Q & A
Time: 9:30-11am, Feb 7, 2024 (Wed, Hong Kong Time)
Location: Room 3301 (Lifts no. 2, 17, 18), Academic Building, HKUST
Zoom ID: 956 6919 0626
Password: ACASSHSS

Abstract: 

Film histories, theories, and textbooks have often focused on “peak” live-action moments, triumphant or movement-defining aesthetics, box office hits, award-winning auteurs, and dominant, enduring theories. As such narratives have largely prioritized white, male, heteronormative artists and thinkers, feminist historians and theorists have, not surprisingly, frequently demonstrated a more active interest in what might be designated unsuccessful, failed, marginalized, collaborative, modest, and even laughable filmmaking and theoretical efforts. This feminist preoccupation with the incomplete, the unresolved, and the non-triumphant, recently explored in Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon’s coedited collection, The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (2023), suggests what the British psychoanalytic feminist scholar Jacqueline Rose describes as an “ethics of failure” (“Why War?”). For Rose, being willing to fail and resisting the “conviction of absolute truth” is intimately linked to the avoidance of war and warlike violence. In this talk, I will reflect informally, at the intersection of animation and film theory and within the context of 21st century efforts to develop transnational scholarly methods that do not reproduce colonial forms of knowledge, on the possibilities for thought generated in spaces of incompletion, failure, and provisionality. Continue reading Failed Animation, Limited Theory →