Museum of Chinese Australian History talk

Dear all,

The ‘Global Diasporic Chinese Museums Network Initiative Public Talk Series’ will host the 6th talk on Wednesday 8 March 2024. Our speaker is Mark Wang, CEO, Museum of Chinese Australian History. He will give a talk on Connecting Culture, History and Heritage: Museum of Chinese Australian History 连接文化,历史和遗产:澳华历史博物馆. The talk will be given in English. Simultaneous translation into Mandarin Chinese will be provided.

Date: Friday 8 March 2024
Time: 11:00 am to 12:30 pm (GMT)
Venue: Online
Zoom ID: 829 1750 5030
Password: 12345
Meeting link:

Abstract

This talk will discuss how the Museum has broadened its activities over the last five years to create a socially connected community that places all Chinese Australians and their descendants in the context of their diverse diasporic journeys over the past two centuries to the present day. Our inclusive focus strengthens our identity as individuals and as a community in a contemporary Australian multicultural society.

The talk will include:

  • Background of the Museum of Chinese Australian History
  • History of Chinese in Australia
  • Standing on 3 pillars of understanding – Culture, History and Heritage
  • The Museum’s operations, its collection, current research and public programs
  • The Museum’s future plan for growth

Continue reading

Include Me Out lecture

Online Lecture: “Include Me Out”: Mobility, Cosmopolitanism, & the Transpacific, Transmedia Encounters in Eileen Chang
By Ying Xiao, Associate Professor on Chinese Film and Media (University of Florida)
Global Asia Speaker Series
March 18, 2024  |  6 pm CT/ 7 pm ET  |  Virtual
REGISTER ON ZOOM

OVERVIEW
This talk examines and reconsiders Eileen Chang and the adaptations and derivative creativities associated with her from a transpacific, transmedia, and intercultural perspective. Revolving around “Lust/Caution,” Xiao’s study interlaces and remaps the Eileen Chang phenomenon from the original fiction by Eileen Chang (1977) to Ang Lee’s film adaptation (2007) and popular digital culture’s reincarnation and celebration of Chang as the “Goddess of Run” during the crisis of the post-COVID era. The mobility, exile, and transpacific, cosmopolitan imagination of Eileen Chang provide a vantage point to investigate and reread her in the context of transnational cultural production but also as nexus, hyperlink, and method for varied authors, film auteurs, and contemporary users to reinvent and cultivate multifaceted globalism and cross the boundaries between continents, languages, texts, images, and media.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Ying Xiao is an associate professor of global Chinese studies and film and media studies at the University of Florida. She is the author of China in the Mix: Cinema, Sound, and Popular Culture in the Age of Globalization (2017) and has published articles on neoliberalism and Chinese film industry, hip hop culture, Chinese rock ‘n’ roll film, documentary and transcultural media production, translation and film dubbing, Hong Kong cinema, and the representation of Chinese and Chinese cities in Hollywood film.

Sponsored by the KU Center for East Asian Studies

Posted by: Faye Xiao <hxiao@ku.edu>

Beijing Westerns and Indigenous Opacity talk

Online Talk: Dr. Robin Visser – Beijing Westerns and Indigenous Opacity in Ecoliterature of Southwest China
Mar 7, 2024, 6-7:30pm CST (7-8:30pm EST)
Virtual event held on Zoom.

Please register to attend.

Abstract

Indigenous knowledge of local ecosystems often challenges settler-colonial cosmologies that naturalize resource extraction and the relocation of nomadic, hunting, foraging, or fishing peoples. In this talk, I present findings from my book, Questioning Borders: Ecoliteratures of China and Taiwan (Columbia UP, 2023), which analyzes relations among humans, animals, ecosystems, and the cosmos in literary works by Han and non-Han Indigenous writers of China and Taiwan. I compare “root-seeking” novels by Beijing writers, set in China’s “exotic” southwest, with literature by Wa and Nuosu Yi Indigenes from Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. I argue that Beijing westerns appropriate “peripheral” Indigenous ecological perspectives to critique Maoist destruction of the environment and the undermining of Han neo-Confucian values to strengthen the “center” of the nation-state. Indigenous accounts, on the other hand, manifest what Edouard Glissant has called “opacity,” refusing colonial epistemes by centering the border as a place of home, heritage, and everyday humanity, though under great duress from climate change.

Speaker Bio

Robin Visser is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her book, Questioning Borders: Ecoliteratures of China and Taiwan (Columbia University Press, 2023), compares contemporary literature on the environment by Han Chinese and non-Han ethnic minority writers. Her book Cities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Postsocialist China (Duke University Press, 2010), translated into Russian (Academic Studies Press, 2022), analyzes Chinese urban planning, fiction, cinema, art, architecture, and intellectual debates at the turn of the 21st century.

Posted by: Faye Xiao hxiao@ku.edu

Fear of Seeing book talk

Book Talk: Fear of Seeing: A Politics of Chinese Science Fiction
Speaker: Mingwei Song (Wellesley College)

Special Guests: Mu Ming (Science Fiction Writer); Yan Feng (Fudan University)

Cohosts: David Der-wei Wang (Harvard University) ; Jie Li (Harvard Univeristy)

Time: February 7, 8-9:30PM (EST)

Zoom Registration:
https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5kFBIXkeQdSBPFNyJkoEAg

Sponsors:
East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation

Failed Animation, Limited Theory

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

China Unofficial Archives

Official Launch of the China Unofficial Archives 民间档案馆 www.minjian-danganguan.org
Online Event 13 December 2023 1pm GMT
Contemporary China Centre, University of Westminster

Register here, zoom link will be sent to all registered participants nearer the date.

Join us for this special edition of our Conference, Deconstructed to mark the official launch of China Unofficial Archives. We will have a panel discussion with Ian Johnson, author of Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future and Shao Jiang, author of Citizen Publications in China Before the Internet to discuss a significant and unique new online archive which will be launched at this event.

Billed as the first independent archive of unofficial citizen histories, 民间历史 in Chinese, China Unofficial Archives (CUA) spans 75 years of samizdat magazines, books, and movies. It currently features over 860 items but has plans to grow ten-fold in the coming years as it scans and makes available online material that is in the public domain (and thus not-IPR protected). The site is curated, with introductions to the items, and fully bilingual. Aimed at global audiences, its goal is to show the span and breadth of Chinese people’s efforts to write their own history, free of political control.

Following a short presentation by each speaker, they will field questions, advice and constructive criticism from the audience. The event will be chaired by Gerda Wielander.

Registration link: Official Launch of the China Unofficial Archives Tickets, Wed 13 Dec 2023 at 13:00 | Eventbrite

Posted by: Gerda Wielander <g.wielander@westminster.ac.uk>

Museum of Chinese in American and Public History

Dear all,

The ‘Global Diasporic Chinese Museums Network Initiative Public Talk Series’ will host the fourth talk on Tuesday 28 November. Our speakers are Ms. Yue Ma, Director for Collections and Research and Mr. Herb Tam, Curator and Director of Exhibition at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). They will give a talk on the Museum of Chinese in America and Public History: Reflecting Immigrant Stories from A Local and Global Perspective  美国华人博物馆与公共历史: 从本地和全球角度反映移民故事

The talk will be given in English. Simultaneous translation into Mandarin Chinese will be provided.

Date: Tuesday 28 November 2023
Time: 11:00 am to 12:30 pm (GMT)
Venue: Online
Zoom ID: 812 0303 1870
Password: 12345

Meeting link:

https://ntu-sg.zoom.us/j/81203031870?pwd=MzBjeFVLb0hVbmNpNTU4dnJ5TXZhdz09#success

Abstract

Yue Ma, Director of Collections and Research, and Herb Tam, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) will discuss the complexities of public history work within the Museum of Chinese in America. Yue Ma will present the development of MOCA’s collection and its relevance to contemporary researchers, scholars, students and artists. Herb Tam will expand on the vision and conceptualization of MOCA’s exhibitions and their relationship to the collection and audience expectations. Their talk will reveal how various dynamics – resources, visitor feedback, institutional history, local and global politics – impact the work of a medium-sized social history museum embedded in an ethnic enclave. Continue reading

China’s Online Literature talk

Online Talk: China’s Online Literature and the Problem of Preservation
Dr. Michel Hockx
Thursday, November 16, 2023
6:00-7:30p.m. CST
Virtual event held on Zoom.

Please register to attend:

https://kansas.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqfuqqrz4uH9YY5V5uoODOT6PN3sSzv6O2

Abstract

Since their introduction in the late 1990s, websites devoted to the production and discussion of literary work have been ubiquitous on the Chinese Web. Over the years, the study of online literature has become an established field of inquiry within the Chinese academy. General studies and textbooks have been produced, and especially for the first decade or so of online literary production, there appears to be consensus on what were the most important sites, authors, and works. This emerging canon of born-digital works, however, can rarely still be found online in its original location and context. This paper addresses the challenges of preserving early Chinese Internet literature, as well as the opportunities for literary analysis when preservation does take place.

About the speaker

Dr. Michel Hockx is professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has published widely, both in English and in Chinese, on topics related to modern Chinese literary culture, especially early 20th-century Chinese magazine literature and print culture and contemporary Internet literature. His monograph Internet Literature in China was listed by Choice magazine as one of the “Top 25 Outstanding Academic Titles of 2015.”

Posted by: Faye Xiao <hxiao@ku.edu>

Genre trends in Chinese-language cinema

Lecture: Post-Pandemic Era: Different Genre Trends in Chinese-Language Cinema in Mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
By Peggy Chiao
Friday, November 10, 2023, 3:00 PM- 5:00 PM
Meyerson Conference Room (WCH 4.118)
University of Texas, Austin

After the pandemic, films in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have evolved into different genres, reflecting the societal changes and collective consciousness in these three regions. My speech will focus on the development of various genres and how the diverse economic, social, and political situations behind them have resulted in these distinctions. Film markets worldwide went through a hiatus during the pandemic for several years. In Mainland China, after COVID-19, the film industry welcomed a thriving box-office boom. It developed new genres and saw innovation in creativity, aesthetics, and marketing strategies, posing a significant threat to the traditionally dominant Hollywood films. In contrast, Hong Kong and Taiwan had been targeting the Mainland Chinese market before the pandemic, leading to a divide within their domestic film industries regarding whether to ‘go north’ (literally translated as “North Drifter,” referring to those working in the Mainland). During the pandemic, the ‘going north’ trend came to a halt due to travel restrictions and regulations. Interestingly, both regions witnessed a surge in their local film industries. Hong Kong experienced a rise in small independent films, often with subversive socio-political undertones. Taiwan’s film industry, on the other hand, focused on survival and developing niche genre films with established markets. Continue reading

The ‘Rhythm’ of Revolution talk

The “Rhythm” of Revolution: Body Politics and the Voice in the Leftist Poetry Recitation

Join the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies for a lecture featuring Ling Kang, Associate Professor in Modern Chinese Literature in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Fudan University.

Wednesday, October 25th at 7 pm US Central Time via Zoom. Here is the registration link:

https://uchicagogroup.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_k9eNx_L3R76SB8xG7YcVjA

LECTURE ABSTRACT:

In 1932, a group of leftist poets in Shanghai established the China Poetry Society, aiming to produce poetry that would enlighten and mobilize the masses to be the self-conscious political subject. This talk revisits the poetic works and theories of the members of the Society, focusing in particular on the extensive discussion on the historical origin and political relevance of poetic rhythm and its relationship with labor. Tracking the transnational circulation and transformation of the new knowledge of bodily rhythm and poetic rhythm since the late 19th century, this talk shows how a new conception of poetic rhythm as a mediating and mobilizing device gave rise to a series of leftist poetic experiments that attempted to construct the collective political subject through invoking the bodily solidarity of the laboring masses.

Posted by: Connie Yip cyip@uchicago.edu

Museums as Bridges of Understanding talk

Dear all,

The ‘Global Diasporic Chinese Museums Network Initiative Public Talk Series’ will host the third talk on Friday 13 October. Our speaker is Ms. Carmelea Ang See, Director, Bahay Tsinoy, Museum of Chinese in Philippine Life. She will give a talk on Museums as Bridges of Understanding: The Bahay Tsinoy Experience 构建理解之桥:以菲华历史博物馆的经验为例.

The talk will be given in English. Simultaneous translation into Mandarin Chinese will be provided.

Date: Friday 13 October 2023
Time: 12:00 pm to 13:30 pm (BST)
Venue: Online
Zoom ID: 825 3771 6294
Password: 12345
Meeting link:
https://ntu-sg.zoom.us/j/82537716294?pwd=NmJ3dWI5Q3lSSmxqanpPL3dOYTRyZz09#success

Abstract

Considering what is happening now in our part of Southeast Asia, it is more crucial now, more than ever, to distinguish the Tsinoys (our term for the Chinese in the Philippines) from the new immigrants from mainland China. This talk revolves around the role Bahay Tsinoy plays against this backdrop. The existence of the museum itself as a repository of the historical and cultural legacy of the Chinese in the Philippines showcases the plural diversity of Philippine society. Beyond the physical museum, the myriad ways of reaching out to the public act as a bridge of understanding and acceptance between the Tsinoys (Chinese Filipinos) and mainstream Filipinos. Continue reading

Questioning Borders book launch

On Wed 9/27 (3-4:30 EDT), Professor Mark Bender of Ohio State University will have a short discussion with Robin Visser about her new book, Questioning Borders: Ecoliteratures of China and Taiwan (Columbia UP, 2023), followed by audience questions. Register here: https://carolinaasiacenter.unc.edu/event/visser-book-launch/

Posted by: Robin Visser <rvisser@email.unc.edu>

Overseas Chinese History Museum lecture

The ‘Global Diasporic Chinese Museums Network Initiative Public Talk Series’ will be hosting the next talk on Monday 18th September at 12: 00 pm to 13:30 pm (BST)

Our speaker, Mr. Ning Yi, Deputy Director of Overseas Chinese History Museum of China, will give a talk on Tracing the History of Chinese Diasporas and Narrating Stories of Cultural Exchange — Explorations and Practices at the Overseas Chinese History Museum of China. The talk will be given in Mandarin Chinese. Simultaneous translation into English is provided.

The event is jointly hosted by HOMELandS (Hub On Migration, Exile, Languages and Spaces) at University of Westminster and the Chinese Heritage Centre of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. It is organised as part of the project Global Diasporic Chinese Museums Network Initiative funded by AHRC.

This is a free event, held online via Zoom. Please register here – Eventbrite link – for access to the meeting on the day.

Best wishes,

Cangbai Wang c.wang6@westminster.ac.uk

Liang Hong and Liu Zhenyun in the UK

Liang Hong and Liu Zhenyun in the UK for the Sinoist Books Chinese author roadshow
Sinoist Author Roadshow 2023
10–18 October

This October join us in for a UK-spanning roadshow featuring two of China’s premier literary authors. Immerse yourself in the art of storytelling with the eminent Chinese authors Liang Hong (梁鸿) and Liu Zhenyun (刘震云). Explore how their books arrived in English translation through a variety of exclusive events.

More details in the weblink here
https://sinoistbooks.com/our-events/2023-sinoist-roadshow/

Schedule
(10 October) Manchester – The Manchester China Institute – Physical
(11 October) Leeds – The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing – Physical/Virtual 
(12 October) Newcastle – The Confucius Institute at Newcastle University – Physical
(13 October) Edinburgh – The Confucius Institute for Scotland
(16 October) SOAS – SOAS (NOT PUBLIC FACING) – Physical
(17 October) Oxford – Oxford International Centre for Publishing / Oxford Brookes Confucius Institute – Physical
(18 October) London – China Exchange (CHINESE ONLY) – Physical/Virtual

Posted by: Daniel Li <Daniel.li@alaincharlesasia.com>

Babel of Chinese SF Aug. event

Babel of Chinese SF August Event
Lu Hang on “Tongji Bridge:” When Tradition Meets Robotics
To join us, send an email to babelofchinesesf@gmail.com for the event link!
Beijing Time: 20:00, August 11, 2023.
UK Summer Time: 13:00, August 11, 2023.

Fiction: “Tongji Bridge” by Lu Hang
Translated by Li Yi

Chinese Version: https://freewechat.com/a/MjM5OTAxMzMwMA==/2652021465/2

English Version: In Galaxy Awards 1: Chinese Science Fiction Anthology (https://www.amazon.ca/Galaxy-Awards-Chinese-Science-Anthology-ebook/dp/B0BR5Y8Q5Z/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

Walk across Tongji, ward off worries.
[……]
I knew that the unison cheering would turn into diverse comments once I took off the Lion Head at the closing of the show. What a miserable imitator and disgrace to the national essence, some might criticize; or, what a genius innovator and ground breaker, others might applaud. However, I did not do this to get their feedback.

But, for my seventh great-uncle to watch a dragon and lion dance show once more.

Or better, if our performance attracted new interest, and new apprentices came to learn the traditional art from us. I would pass it on without reservation to anyone who would dedicate themselves to the art, no matter where that person was from, or rather, no matter that was a person or not. (From “Tongji Bridge” By Lu Hang) Continue reading