People’s Park
If you are willing to find panel partners by being a member of “People’s Park”, please email the organizers (CROSSROADS2018@outlook.com) with the subject line “People’s Park” before Dec. 10, 2017. A Microsoft Word attachment file (doc, docx) including the topic and introduction of the potential panel, and personal information such as an email address and research interests will be also needed. We earnestly hope for intellectual exchange, communication, and chemistry among scholars worldwide.
Personal Information |
Research Interests |
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Osakue Stevenson OMOERA,
Ph.D, is of the Department of Theatre and Media Arts of Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Nigeria. The foci of his research are on three main planks: Nollywood Studies, with emphasis on the Benin video-film, an ethno-national film culture; Media Sociology, with emphasis on the social impacts of the media in developing areas of the world, particularly Nigeria; and Cultural Dynamics, with emphasis on theatre and African performance studies. Emails: osakueomoera@gmail.com; omoera@yahoo.com; osakue.omoera@aauekpoma.edu.ng |
The Title of my Individual Paper is:
Reclaiming the Memory of the Benin in Lancelot Imasuen’s Invasion 1897 An Introduction of the Proposed Panel: Re-centering Memories in National and Ethno-national Cinemas Discussions in this panel will focus on national and ethno-national films, and their explication of meaning, through symbols and visual tropes, in the context of re-centering the historical traumas of different peoples in different epochs and how visual texts have helped them to reclaim their battered memories and national/ethno-national identities. |
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Yifeng CAI Brown University
(PhD Program in Sociocultural/Medical Anthropology) Email: yifeng_cai@brown.edu
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My research focuses on the intersection of sexuality & gender, culture, political economy, and health, through the lens of man-to-man sex work in contemporary urban China. Adopting ethnographic methodologies, I study how men who sell sex to men (M$M) experience pleasure, desire, intimacy, and love within moments of sexual transaction. Challenging a idealistic understanding of pleasure, desire, intimacy, and love being universal and unchanging (e.g., sexual pleasure only exists when you choose your sexual partner, love is pure, sex workers don't feel sexual pleasure when they are just "working" for their clients, etc.), my research situates these essences in contemporary China's specific sociocultural and political-economic conditions. Some of the questions I explore include, but not limited to: How do contemporary Chinese individuals' cultural beliefs and practices about pleasure, desire, intimacy, and love change, and what are the relationships between these changes and the reconfigurations in the broader cultural, political, and economic conditions? How can the lived realities of M$M improve our understanding about some basic yet fundamental concepts such as love or intimacy? |
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Cristina Baptista University of Lisbon PhD, Journalist, writer, content producer and researcher at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES), and a participant in the projects “The British Empire. Ideology, perspectives and perceptions”, “Victorians Like Us”, “Digital Humanities. Libraries, Schools, Social Commitment” and “Creativity, Culture, Trends: Dialogues in the city”. Main research interests: the colonial encounter, the arguments of colonialism, Victorian Studies, Women Studies and photography. Email address: crisfbc@gmail.com |
The Title of my individual paper is:
The return, the belonging and listening to the voice of Rui in Dulce Maria Cardoso’s O Retorno |
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Carwyn Morris
PhD Candidate London School of Economics Department of Geography and Environment Urbanisation, Planning and Development Cluster Twitter: @carwyn Weibo: @二郎神Carwyn Email: c.j.morris@lse.ac.uk |
Migration, social media, social practices, mobilities paradigm, digital place and space, urbanization in contemporary China, life in the megacity I’m a post-field PhD candidate at the LSE, my research is on translocal migration and urban digital life in China Panel Idea: Urban life within physical and digital space and place Building on work within the mobilities paradigm (Cresswell, 2011; Schiller and Salazar, 2013; Sheller and Urry, 2006), digital anthropology (Boellstorff, 2015, 2016; Madianou and Miller, 2012; Miller et al., 2016)and digital geography (Ash et al., 2016; Kitchin and Dodge, 2011), this panel looks to examine how contemporary urban life is lived within (and between) a variety of physical and digital spaces and places (Massey, 1994, 2005), and what social practices (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2001; Shove et al., 2012)emerge around such mobility. This panel hopes to consider: · How does a life lived within a variety of digital and physical spaces and places make urban existence more manageable? Including both translocal and transnational life. · How is space produced using a mixture of both physical and digital means, including space that bridges the two realms? · Alternatively, how is space found and exploited through a variety of digital and physical means? · How are physical spaces extending digitally, and vice versa? · What social practices are emerging around lives lived within and between a variety of physical and digital spaces? · What mobilities – both human and non-human – occur within such lifestyles? To organize a panel with me, or for any further information, please contact me as soon as possible! Thanks. |
PhD candidate of Graduate School |
My individual paper is entitled: “Crisis, Contradiction and Fusion: A Study of the Idea of Conjuncture and Conjunctural Analysis of Birmingham School”.
At present, I am interested in the theories of British Cultural Studies, especially the ideas and practices of Stuart Hall as an organic intellectual in the public sphere. I want to join a panel of Cultural Studies theory, and preferably the study of Stuart Hall, ideology, hegemony, or cultural politics. Thank you very much. |
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Hongwei BAO
Email: hongwei.bao@nottingham.ac.uk |
Research interests: queer film, community media, and social activism in contemporary China Paper Title：A ‘Cool Child’: Translating Queer Theory in China Paper Abstract: From the 1990s, a group of Chinese scholars, filmmakers and artists have actively and strategically used the term ‘queer’ (ku’er 酷儿) to refer to sexual minorities, and to name a particular type of scholarship, film and artworks. What is ‘queer’ and how is it different from other terms such as ‘homosexual’ (tongxinglian, 同性恋), gay, or even ‘comrade’ (tongzhi 同志)? What is ‘queer theory’ (ku’er lilun 酷儿理论)? How has queer theory travelled to China from its Euro-American origins? What’s ‘Chinese’ about the queer theory produced in China? In this talk, I will trace the genealogy of ‘queer’ from the Euro-American West to Mainland China. In doing so, I unravel the politics of translation by leading queer scholars, filmmakers and artists, and offer a critical overview of how ‘queer’ and queer theory have shaped LGBT identities and history in China today. Introduction of the potential panel: Unknown. I am happy to join any panel on queer studies or translation studies. |
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Ng Ni Na Camellia I am a PhD graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong this year. My research project focuses on the cultural and artistic exchange between China and Japan in the late 19th century. My research interests include Asian Studies, Chinese and Japanese Arts, Southeast Arts, Material Cultures, and Museum Studies. My contact is ninacamelliang@gmail.com |
Paper Description
The Title of My Individual Paper： A Study on Paintings of Shanghai Painters in Meiji Japan An Introduction of the Proposed Panel: The focus of the proposed panel will focus on the artistic and cultural exchanges between China and other countries from late 19th Century to early 20th Century. By the end of late 19th Century, China suffered from external defeats. The opening of China facilitates the artistic and cultural interaction between China and other countries. |
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Jisoo Lee PhD Student
Department of History, University of Michigan Email: jisoolee@umich.edu |
Research interests: Modern East Asia, Third World anti-imperialism and internationalism, socialist cultural production, gender history, Asia as method, cultural cold war Potential panel: I envision forming a panel on one of the following topics: memories of US imperialism in Asia (e.g. the Vietnam War) and elsewhere; Third World struggles against imperialism in film and literature; the social and cultural history of the Cold War in postcolonial nations; the cultural cold war; or some combination of the above. I am also open to other suggestions based on my paper description. My paper compares representations of the Korean War in films produced in the 1950s and 1960s in North and South Korea, China, and the United States. The Korean War was a pivotal event in the solidification of the Cold War, and the division of the peninsula remains an enduring reality today. A return to earlier representations of the war may help us apprehend present day predicaments arising from continuing Cold War legacies and structures. I examine how these films reflected and produced the locally specific realities of the Cold War, which was a global conflict that was not experienced monolithically but in diverse ways across the world. I engage in scholarship that moves away from framing the Cold War as an ideological struggle between two powers, instead framing it as a structure of domination in which postcolonial nations had a radically different experience from former colonizing nations. |
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Dr Naomi Merritt Dr Naomi Merritt is a lecturer and researcher in the School of Art, Architecture and Design at the University of South Australia. Naomi's research investigates the ideologies and socio-technological dynamics that inform cultural production, with a particular focus on visual culture, art, and systems of representation. She is interested in the ways in which our sense of identity and our ways of interpreting and representing the world are culturally constructed, and the ways that artists critique these processes. Naomi's work is interdisciplinary and her research is at the intersection of visual arts, visual culture, cinema studies, and cultural studies.
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Introduction to proposed panel: ‘Gender, Sexuality, Culture, and the Creative Arts’ This panel focuses on the exploration and critique of gender and sexuality in culture and the creative arts. Potential papers in this panel could explore how artists and creatives critique the cultural construction of gender or sexuality, how creative practices open up spaces for the exploration of fluid or queer identities, how artists engage with theories of gender and sexuality, how artists explore intersectional identities, the cultural contexts in which gender identities are creatively constructed, how the formal qualities of media relate to expressions of gender or sexuality, how power dynamics play out in the creative representation or expression of gender and sexuality, how art ‘queers’ gender and sexuality, or other related topics. Case studies could include (but are not limited to) visual art, dance, performance, photography, cinema, fashion, design, burlesque, visual culture, etc. This panel could also include presentations by artists or other creatives about how their practice engages with these themes and theories. The title of my proposed paper for this panel: ‘Queering the Pole: The Disruption of Heteronormative Visual Pleasure in Male Exotic Pole Dancing’ I am also pleased to join an existing panel on similar topics. I look forward to hearing from anyone who is interested in presenting a paper in this proposed panel or have me join their panel! I can provide an abstract of my paper on request. |
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Martina Tissberger
Martina Tissberger is a professor in the master’s program of social work at the University of Applied Sciences, Upper Austria. She holds a PhD in psychology and has done scholarly work at the Free University as well as the Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of California at Berkeley and Legon University of Accra. Her research interests are cultural studies in the applied social sciences, critical whiteness, postcolonial theory as well as gender and queer theory. Her latest book is “Critical Whiteness. On the Psychology of Hegemonial Self-Reflection at the Intersection of Racism and Gender” (2017). |
The Cultural Unconscious and Subjectivation in European Migration Societies
Islamophobia and racism have been central and decisive issues in many European election campaigns in the past few years, thus moving the political landscape in various countries critically to the right. The ‘welcome-culture’ of 2015 has reverted quickly into a ‘hate-culture’ as part of the so-called refugee crisis, reminding us once again of the power of representation. The media have outdone each other with spectacular images of ‘dark floods’ of refugees ‘invading’ Europe. Traumatized people escaping war and persecution somehow appear naturally linked with terrorism—the current spectre of Europe. The stoking of fears of the migrant, the refugee and particularly the Muslim as the Other has created a cultural symbolic which is centred around ‘Islam’ as the constitutive outside of Europe and, coupled with the headscarf, as the signifier of dangerous ‘Other-ness’. This paper will investigate the unconscious dimensions of these dynamics and their impact on subjectivation processes. What does it mean to be a Muslim European? What does it mean to grow up under conditions of anti-Muslim racism? What does it do to those who identify with the autochthonous Christian-secular culture, that is normative in many European countries? Last, but not least, this paper will deal with the question of what the (applied) social sciences can and should do to prevent such demonization of ‘the Other’ and how they can help nurture a culture of diversity, recognition and appreciation. The author will approach these questions from the theoretical perspectives of critical whiteness, critical Occidentalism and postcolonial critique—all critical approaches within cultural studies. |
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SHI Yajuan From College of Language and Culture, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, associate professor, MA student adviser. PhD of literature from Beijing Normal University; MA degree from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Email: galqsyj@126.com |
The Title of my Individual Paper is: On the Inter-construction of Fashion and Subject Research Interests: fashion culture, fashion theory, fashion communication, cultural studies, art theory In the past years, I mainly focus on my study on the study of fashion culture and fashion theory and published some articles related with culture memory, culture imagination and identity in fashion, linguistic study of movie costume and the inspirational source of movie costume designer, women’s fashion and the female subject formation, a special study on Susan B. Kaiser’s clothing psychology and her fashion and culture research thoughts, the modernity, postmodernity and hyper-modern meaning in fashion design, the study of fashion show from the point view of visual culture and so on. An Introduction of the Proposed Panel: fashion and culture studies art and creative culture studies; fashion, art and visual culture studies; fashion, art, and culture media; art, culture and media; gender and cultural studies; It seems that my proposed panel is a little general, but I am really trying including more friends related with culture, fashion, art, media or some other social studies, such as gender, identity and so on. Welcome any invitation coming from the above research fields! |
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ZHANG Jie
PhD from Beijing Foreign Studies University;
lecturer in College of Chinese Language and Literature, Hainan Normal University; main research focusing on critical theories, comparative literature and cultural studies, especially on the cultural politics of mobilities, noise, etc. Email: zhangjie800503@163.com |
The title of my individual paper is:
Noise in the Modern Home Space in China Abstract：The issue of urban noise is quite closely related with many factors such as the time background, political situation, economic conditions, etc. Compared with previous researches, which paid more attention to the influences of industrial noise and traffic noise on public space, however, as the economical and political status of home space has risen in contemporary society, investigations on the soundscapes of modern home are becoming extremely important. Considering that noise is hooked onto various material stuff like houses, domestic appliances, traffic transportations, this paper is going to take the research methods of cultural politics and discuss the impact of noise on home space respectively from three aspects, including neighborhood noise, household appliances noise and traffic noise. Noise is killer of life, trying to control, cut and even eradicate the subjectivity of human being. However, people never give in to noise and are always striving to develop an ability to be against noise by noise. It is an inevitable paradox in modern society. Introduction of the potential panel: I am happy to join any panel on Chinese/western urbanism, noise and sound studies, relationships between the urban and the rural, etc. |
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Research interest: the youth in contemporary society; female fate;the impact of artificial intelligencen to young people; Paper Title:the body and consciousness of feminine youth in the age of consumption .
My paper made up of four parts:reproductive body,fashionable body ,truly body and female discourse right.The thesis is about the fate of the feminine youth in the context of consumption .
An Introduction of the Proposed Panel:
I want to find anyone that focus on the youth fate.Hoping to hear from you soon.
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Carman Ka-man Fung
PhD student (Screen and Cultural Studies), University of Melbourne Email: fungk1@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Research Interest: Asian gender and sexual identities, queer theory, queer media and audience Paper title and abstract Cultural Imaginations of the Tomboy in Greater Chinese Lesbian Subcultures Since the mid-2000s, tomboy characters emerging from across East and Southeast Asia have enjoyed increasing popularity among lesbian communities in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan. Drawing from Foucault’s genealogical approach to the historical emergence of the homosexual subject, this paper seeks to trace the production of this tomboy personage among queer and lesbian women in Greater China. Who and what is the tomboy according to these screen texts that are circulating among Chinese lesbian networks? What uses does the idea of the tomboy have for queer women in these societies? By using both textual analysis and ethnography, this paper addresses how queer women have used the texts to facilitate their own understandings of sexual identities, intimate relationships, families, and everyday (gendered) practices; and in doing so, I wish to explore how their readings may complicate notions of queerness, subversive-ness and “subversive texts”, and to consider if this can help us ground these ideas in specific sociocultural contexts. Potential Panel: I would be happy to join any panel related to queer theory, gender and sexuality, media studies, globalisation and intra-Asian cultural flows. |
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Zhun Gu Zhun Gu is a third year PhD student majoring in film and television studies at The University of Nottingham. His email is aaxzg@nottingham.ac.uk. |
My PhD topic is nostalgia, seen as cultural memory, on Chinese screen since the 1990s. I am researching this project from commercial and political perspectives and understanding this cultural memory as negotiated and constructed structure of feeling in the context of Chinese changing economic and political circumstance. Individual Paper and Potential Panel： The title of my paper: Nostalgia of the Youth in Chinese Film So Young (2013) and Internet Drama With You (2016). This paper examines Chinese youth media So Young and With you in the context of consumer culture since 2010. Paul Grainge’s definition of nostalgia mood (memorial yearning) and nostalgia mode (emotional consumption) will be adopted to investigate what kinds of cultural memories are represented in these media. Through the discussion about the nostalgia mood and mode, this paper argues that nostalgia is a cultural style in Chinese youth media since 2010. It not only engages with the cultural anxiety, but it is also perceived as a commercial strategy to attract the Chinese film market. It especially is used by young people to construct their alternative identities. The potential panel will focus on cultural memory studies, generational memory studies, national memory studies, youth culture studies, mass/popular culture studies and other topics related to cultural memory studies inside and outside of China. I am also happy to join other panels that focus on cultural studies. |
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Gyung Jin SHIN
Artist, researcher, and PhD candidate of the School of Creative Media in City University of Hong Kong.
Research interest: social activism and artistic creation (socially engaged art, participatory art, tactical media, etc.), politics and aesthetics, contemporary art and new media art, art and technology, post-media discourse, post-internet art, media archaeology, Critical Theory. Email: gjinshin@gmail.com |
An Introduction of the proposed panel: My recent research focuses on the intersection of new media technology, artistic creation, and political engagement of citizens. I’d like to join a panel of online culture, new media and politics, social engagement and activism, socially engaged art, etc. Thank you. Title of Individual Paper: "Flower Wall Project: Socially Engaged Art Practice Utilizing Online Platforms during Candlelight Protest” Since the advent and rise of the Internet, socially engaged art practices have changed and varied in online and offline spaces. Artists and citizens have created artistic projects as part of their social engagement by means of online networking in recent worldwide political protests, including the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. In South Korea’s “Candlelight Protest,” a nonviolent political protest held from October 2016 to April 2017, citizens’ collective communication and discussion in online platforms through South Korea’s high-speed internet infrastructure played a key role in building a variety of cultural activities in the festival-like protest. This paper will examine the socially engaged art practice utilizing online platforms through an example of “Flower Wall Project” covering barricades of riot police buses with flower printed stickers, which was completed with both online and offline citizen participation. The main questions of this paper are “how do citizens end up with collective action by sharing their thought and opinion through the Internet and social networking?”, “how do artists utilize online platforms for their execution of socially engaged practices?”, and “how can we assess these kinds of cultural phenomena both politically and aesthetically?” |
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Yi-Chen Liu PhD candidate of department of sociology at UC Santa Cruz student of Guitar Craft Academy at Musicians Institute Email: yliu141@ucsc.edu |
The Title of My Research: Rocking to Labor: How Guitar Players Become Guitar Makers Research Interests: political economy, globalization, sociology of work, cultural economy Introduction of Potential Penal My research paper could match these following topics of penal: labor condition of young people, neoliberalism, flexible employment, precarious employment and precarious class, the making of working class, cultural economy. Abstract Despite a variety of sociological researches explaining why craft-oriented mode of production, different from Marx’s prediction, is not yet replaced by machinery-made production, the rise of craft-oriented guitar production since the 1980s in the US is poorly understood. In this paper, through analyzing the case of craft-made guitar industry in the US, I argue that the rise of craft guitar industry in the US can be seen as a transformation of labor regime that turns guitar players to builders. This transformation can also reflect the changing meanings in these three following aspects: vocational education, labor market, and class mobilization. First, different from Paul Willie’s famous research finding that working class kids got working class jobs through fighting against schooling curriculum; young guitar players, in order to be hired as an apprentice in a craft guitar shop, are willing to learn guitar-making skills in a guitar craft school. Second, the labor market of craft-made guitar industry is composed of both time workers and piece workers. The more dexterous skill a worker has, the more possibly he will receive an independent contract, rather than a formal employee contract. The flexible employment in this labor market is beneficial for craft-oriented guitar shop owners to hire indispensable labor forces. Finally, the rise of craft industry only creates a fantastic ladder for class mobilization from an apprentice to a master in this industry. It’s not optimistic for those young apprentices to compete with their masters due to the lack of commercial partners, insufficient fixed capitals, and the challenge of advanced technology, such as CNC. |
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My research is about the representation of “leftover” women in Chinese media. I focus on three types of media product, films, film reviews on “Douban Movie” website and news on “Xinhua.net”. I’m analysing the project from both sociological and media approaches to argue socio-cultural factors behind Chinese “leftover” women and media’s influence in “leftover” women phenomena. Individual Paper The word ‘sheng nü’, translated into English as ‘leftover women’, was officially recognized in the Chinese lexicon in 2007. Nowadays, in the official definition, ‘leftover’ woman or ‘3S’ woman is the term used to describe a well-educated, high income, independent woman who is single and never married around 30 years. According to the sixth national census (2010), there are more than 1.2 million unmarried women (25 to 34 years old) in China. The ‘leftover’ women phenomenon is the topic of much discussion in China since it was first created, accompanied by extensive media representation in news reportage, television drama and documentaries, films etc. With the naming of this demographic of ‘leftover’ women, their marriage and personal lives attract public concern. Massive media representations of ‘leftover’ women occur daily; then analysing them provides the inspiration for my research. My research triangulates three arenas of media representation of ‘leftover’ women: films, audience reviews and news coverage. Drawing on traditional media studies, I choose Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis combined with multimodal techniques as my methodology through which to analyse the representations of ‘leftover’ women and their implications for gender relations and relationship culture in China, in conjunction with a feminist perspective. Potential Panel I’m happy to join any panel related to media studies, women and gender studies, family studies and Asian culture studies. |
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SUN Mengtian PhD student in English and Theatre Studies at The University of Melbourne Research interests: fantasy and science fiction, modernity, globalization, the other, gender and sexuality Email: mengtians@student.unimelb.edu.au; suedemontaigne@gmail.com |
Individual paper: Title: The “waste land” and “waste people” in Chen Qiufan’s The Waste Tide Introduction: From its very inception, modernity has been built on the construction and assimilation/elimination of various kinds of “others,” from the “barbarians” and “savages”, to the orientals, and to the underdeveloped. As the newest stage of modernity, globalization, also called “high modernity” (Giddens) or “liquid modernity” (Bauman), continues to manifest this obsession with the construction of the “other”. These newly constructed “others” not only include new identities, but also new places. My paper analyzes this phenomenon which I call otherization in the globalization era by looking at a Chinese science fiction novel The Waste Tide (2013). I try to look at the changes of otherization in the present era compared to those in the proceeding stages of modernity and develop a somewhat more systematic theory surrounding the concept of otherization. Proposed panel: The potential panel will focus on literary imaginations of globalization, preferably on globalization’s construction of new kinds of identities, subjectivities, places, and so on. I’m also happy to join other panels which focus on science fiction studies, globalization, imagining the other, or other themes that are related to my paper. |
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Tuğba Şabanoğlu, Freie Universität Berlin,
MA in English Studies Tuğba Şabanoğlu is a graduate student in the English Studies MA program at Berlin’s Free University. Her research interests include Nationalism, Postcolonial Literatures and British Cultural Studies. Email: tsabanoglu@fu-berlin.de |
Culture, Capital, Nation and Identity: GREAT and Rebranding Britain
Keywords: cultural capital, national identity, public diplomacy, marketing, Britishness. This paper offers a scrutiny of the legacy of the 2012 London Olympics that culminated in an ambitious government initiative called GREAT Britain. Launched immediately after the London 2012 Olympics, GREAT is a visual campaign run jointly by the UK Foreign Office and Visit Britain to attract business, investment, and tourism opportunities from the UK’s strategic trading partners including but not limited to the USA, India, Brazil, Hong Kong/China. Blending public diplomacy, cultural policy and marketing, GREAT follows an introspective gaze at the country in its reliance on British cultural/popular iconography to convey a renewed sense of national confidence. While this inward-looking urge has been central to Britain’s previous attempts to revitalize Britishness, still GREAT distinguishes itself from preceding projects like the New Labour’s Cool Britannia with the national self-image it promotes now fully redirected to the overseas market. I argue that with its adoption of the late-capitalist vocabulary of “innovation” and “creativity”, GREAT goes beyond mere nostalgic and melancholic constructions of nationhood, whereby heritage, history, literature and culture dissolve into a marketable category that supplements the UK economic and trade policies. I will offer a close reading of select visual material the campaign generates and situate GREAT as a cite where Britishness gets performed in global contexts, and the links between culture and capital are laid bare in the process. |
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Ashley Deng-Yu Chen 20 something Taiwanese. Formerly Rotary Exchange Outbound at Spisska Nova Ves, Slovakia, student of language & literature at NCKU, Tainan and study abroad grantee at SOAS, London. Currently reside in Taipei, Taiwan as an intern, TEDx volunteer, free walking tour guide, co-host of The Fifty Fifty Show podcast and hopeful applicant aiming for regional studies and sociocultural anthropology in grad school. Things that interest me: identity studies, construction of ethnicity and gender, Feminism of Color, East Asian studies, socio-cultural change & analysis, LGBTQ rights, MAG-Nijigen works and cat photos. Religious view: agnostic. Email: acoco2233@gmail.com |
Title:
The reigion of the Feminist swine: the imagined struggle of Taiwanese male between online sexist comments and distress in social reality Abstract In this panel presentation, I attempt to address the blatant anti-Women and anti-Feminism trend known as “母豬教” observed in the cyberspace of Taiwan and its association to the implied sexism, albeit often subtly, existing in reality. Firstly, I strive to approach numerous reasonings behind the online phenomenon ranging from the everlasting Patriarchal influence to the anonymous feature of cyberspace that permits the survival of internet trolls. Furthermore, I seek to analyze other social implications related to the deteriorating male privilege in modern Taiwan, to the distress of many young “traditionalist” men. Additionally, I will examine the roles that Western impacts such as conceptualized Political Correctness and Freedom of Speech play in the driving force behind these Sexist trends. At last, I hope to rationalize the trend as a demonstration of the local society’s struggling adaptation of Western modernity, and thus aim to exploit such display to the advantage of Taiwanese feminist development in the future. |
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Yanrong Chen Chongqing University MA in Journalism and Communication Email: cyr006870@hotmail.com 1369382095@qq.com |
Research interests: I show more passions on Cultural memory, Collective memory, Youth memory writing, National memory, Youth subculture, Gender studies and Sociology of transgressions. Individual Paper and Potential Panel： The title of my paper: “Informed Patriotism”: A Research on the Production and Bias of Commemorative Discourse in Beijing Olympic Games Abstract： In recent years, the public commemorate the Beijing Olympic Games by reviewing the opening ceremony video，sending barrages，making Q&A to rewrite the evaluation spontaneously in social media，which has become a cultural phenomenon. This paper regards it as discourse practice and uses Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the production process and result of it. The text materials are from barrages of bilibili(https://www.bilibili.com) and answers from Zhihu(www.zhihu.com). It concludes that the state-nation discourse accomplishes the meaning of unity and occupies a dominant position in this discursive field, which make good use of reviewing the Olympic Games, recalling the youthful memories and construct the Other image. Therefore, as a selective structure, the part of “universalism” has been oblivion. The research also finds that most of the participants of the discourse production are the witnesses of Beijing Olympic Games in their young ages. Although people hold disagreement in politics, they finally reach a consensus in “patriotism”. However, this spontaneous, informed patriotic narrative is not divorced from the framework of official ideology. On the other hand, Beijing Olympic Games achieve the “domestication” of official ideology successfully as a media event. In the past ten years after, this effect slowly emerged. An Introduction of the Proposed Panel: The potential panel will focus on cultural memory studies, national memory studies，youth memory writing , subculture studies. I am also happy to join other panels that focus on cultural studies. |
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Research interests: cultural trauma in contemporary China, cultural geography in contemporary China, and contemporary Chinese literature Paper Title： Suburban Island as Urban Neverland: A Case Study of Dongzhou Island in Hengyang, Hunan, China Paper Abstract: One of the salient spatial reconfigurations involved in China’s centrifugal urbanizing process is the renewal of suburban space. Also, in continental cultures, small islands often make easy objects for convenient developmental plan and practices due to their smallness, insularity, boundedness and littorality. Against the abovementioned backgrounds, we attempt to conduct a case study of a small suburban island in Hengyang, a relatively backward inland city in the hinterland of central south China, in the context of eco-cultural island tourism. Drawing on theoretical resources from island studies and substantiated by participatory observation, we attempt to critically examine how the suburban Dongzhou Island is projected, planned and practiced as a fetishist Neverland for the urban mainland, with all the cultural complexities involved. It is also reflected whether the tourist experience of the suburban island could be incorporated within the global urbanization discourse or is better regarded as one separate local instance. Key words: renewal of suburban areas, small islands, eco-cultural island tourism, Dongzhou Island, island studies, urbanization Introduction of the potential panel: I am happy to join any panel on the studies of the production of space, urban/rural relationship or cultural geography in either Chinese or global contexts. |
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Peter Stanković (1970), professor at Department of Cultural Studies, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. E-mail: peter.stankovic@fdv.uni-lj.si |
Research interests:
humour, popular music, film studies. Paper’s topic: The Dissapearance of Political Humour in Postcommunist Slovenia Abstract: As in all Eastern European countries, political humour was very popular in Slovenia during the communist era. In the decades after the fall of communism, however, political jokes seem to have lost their previous significance. In order to understand what has happened to the political humour in Slovenia, an analysis of 200 jokes shared on the five most popular Slovenian Facebook groups has been conducted. The analysis has proven that the targets of recent Slovenian jokes are highly diverse, and that political humour has largely disappeared from the Slovenian public sphere. More specifically, the analysis suggests that the most frequent targets of jokes are men and women (usually in the role of bored married couples). This is rather surprising given that Slovenians are to a significant extent disappointed with the state of affairs in the country, and also tend to blame politicians for the ills that have recently begotten them. The authors argue, accordingly, that the virtual disappearance of political humour in Slovenia does not indicate that people are less critical of the current politicians or political system. Rather, it appears that anxieties and frustrations produced by the market economy are simply not expressed in jokes, or are expressed in a different kind of humour. Among the reasons for such transference are the less explicit mechanisms of ideological legitimisation in capitalism. Keywords: political humour, jokes, Slovenia, post-communism, capitalism, targets |
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Personal Information
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Research Interests
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Ouissal Harize
A PhD student at Durham University, School of Modern Languages and Cultures. Email: ouissal.harize@durham.ac.uk harizeouissal92@gmail.com |
Research Projects: Currently doing a PhD on Contemporary Algerian and Palestinian Fiction and Film. Also, part of the The Athena SWAN Self-Assessment team for Equality as a Postgraduate representative.
Research Interests: Terrorism Studies, Postcolonial studies, Media and Globalization, World Literature, Comparative Literature, Arab Literature, Arab Film Studies, Cultural Studies. Paper Title: Arab Palestinian/Israeli narratives of socio-political and cultural violence Keywords: Postcolonial Studies, Palestinian Literature, Identity, Political Violence. Title of specific panel: I would be happy to join a panel that discusses Postcolonial Literature, Postcolonial Studies, trauma studies, the quest for identity or World literature. Paper Abstract: The systematic pursuit of the erasure of indigenous cultures demarcates all forms of colonization. Postcolonial literature, combative by nature, aims to “re-appropriate” history, culture, and identity. This paper, probes into how Arab postcolonial literature narrates socio-political and cultural violence, with particular emphasis on the development of identity. Focusing principally on the Palestinian context, described by Lindsey Moore as a country in the “colonial present,” (Narrating Postcolonial Arab Nations) I shall investigate the question of whether identity suffers from an inevitable loss or does it thrive on the existence of different cultures jostling against each other. The Postcolonial literary discourse has often been criticized because of the “lamentable absence” of studies on Palestinian literature (Williams and Ball, 2014). With Anna Ball, Anna Bernard, Bashir Abu manneh, Jospeh A. Massad and Moore recently investigating how Palestinian literature fits within the remit of postcolonial studies in spite of the unwavering debate over its status within the scope of post-colonialism; it is starting to gain momentum in spite of this relative tardiness. In this proposed paper, I will closely focus on the two novels Third Person Singular by Sayed Keshua and Mornings in Jenin by Susanne Abulhawa. Through a comparative analysis drawing on Postcolonial cultural studies, I shall attempt to trace how the unconscious honed by trauma affects the development of identity. |
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Ran Feng
MA in advertising Xiamen University Email: evelyn1285@qq.com |
Research Interest: Gender issues in advertising have always been a research hotspot in western academia. However, comparable research focus does not exist in China. As a young researcher, I firmly believe that gender issue in advertising is of great importance. What we think males and females should look like, behave and become has been influenced by gender image in advertisement to a large extent. The influence may differ in different period of time. Therefore, studying how advertising shapes our recognition of genders remains to be a heated theme worldwide. Chinese scholars have accomplished similar research by using content analysis and survey, but they hardly use any other quantitative or qualitative methods. I would like to explore this field by applying research methods that previous researchers paid less attention to. Introduction of Potential Panel: I am willing to join studies concerning gender issues in advertising (or in media), and cross-cultural studies. I hope I can accumulate valuable cooperating experience for my graduation paper. |
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