Book Launch – Queering Chinese Media and the Sinophone Pacific

Speaker: Hongwei Bao
(https://www.routledge.com/Queer-Media-in-China/Bao/p/book/9780367279455)
Discussant: Jamie Zhao

Speaker: Howard Chiang
(https://cup.columbia.edu/book/transtopia-in-the-sinophone-pacific/9780231190978)
Discussant: Alvin K. Wong

Moderator: Grace Ting

Since the late 20th century, political liberalization and LGBT activism have shaped Sinophone Taiwan and Hong Kong. Postsocialist China has also witnessed community-driven LGBT and queer events, HIV/AIDS activism, and film and cultural festivals. In May 2019, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize gay marriage; almost simultaneously, that summer saw a wave of protests in Hong Kong. In August 2020, ShanghaiPRIDE, the biggest queer cultural festival in Mainland China, was shut down permanently. How might queer Chinese and Sinophone studies map the often uneven assemblages across LGBT and queer subjects, community, and media? How might community-based and ephemeral queer media practices reflect upon queer method and theory? Likewise, how might comparing diverse historical experiences, legal cases, and visuality of transness across the Sinophone Pacific enable transversal mode of thinking and transtopia? This joint book launch event will launch two books, Queer Media in China (Routledge, 2021) by Hongwei Bao and Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific (Columbia UP, 2021) by Howard Chiang. Together, Bao and Chiang’s books chart new directions in film and media studies, Chinese studies, queer theory, trans history, and Sinophone studies.

About the Speakers

Hongwei Bao is an associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Nottingham, UK, where he also directs the Centre for Contemporary East Asian Cultural Studies. He is the author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (Nordic Institute of Asia Studies Press, 2018), Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020), and Queer Media in China (Routledge, 2021).
Howard Chiang is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2018), which received the 2019 International Convention of Asia Scholars Humanities Book Prize and the 2020 Bullough Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific (Columbia University Press, 2021). Since 2019, he has served as the Founding Chair of the Society of Sinophone Studies.

About the Discussants and Respondents

Jamie J. Zhao is currently Assistant Professor of Communications at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. She is also Honorary Professor and External Director of the Center for Gender and Media Studies at NingboTech University. Her research explores queer TV and fan cultures in a globalist age. Her writings can be found in a number of journals and edited volumes, such as the journals Feminist Media Studies, Continuum, Celebrity Studies, and Critical Asian Studies, and her coedited anthology, Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (HKU Press, 2017).

Alvin K. Wong is Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at HKU. He is currently writing a book titled Queer Hong Kong as Method. Wong has published in journals such as Journal of Lesbian Studies, Gender, Place & Culture, Culture, Theory, and Critique, Concentric, Continuum, and Cultural Dynamics and in edited volumes such as Transgender China, Queer Sinophone Cultures, and Hong Kong Keywords. Wong is also the co-editor of Keywords in Queer Sinophone Studies (Routledge, 2020).

About the Moderator

Grace En-Yi Ting is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at HKU. As a queer and feminist studies scholar, she specializes in Japanese women writers and girls’ culture, as well as transnational feminisms and queer politics. She is currently working on a book manuscript examining femininities and female homosociality within representations of daily life by women writers in post-1980’s Japan. Her other work involves critiques of race and gender in the field of Japanese studies, as well as interrogating tensions between concepts of “queer”and “Asia” across Japanese, Sinophone, and Asian American literary discourses.

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