In a geopolitical context where expertise on China is largely dominated by political scientists providing media commentary on “China’s rise”, “China threat”, and an emerging new political order, what is the value of Chinese cultural studies? What insights can a cultural studies approach provide that is accessible and considered relevant where relevance is defined as having an impact on wider debates in society, influencing policy, and hence being considered worth funding? What analytical, pedagogical, and even political possibilities and interventions does cultural studies bring to the study of China? Who is willing to engage with it? Who can afford to engage with it? And what can we do to change the perception, held by many, of cultural studies as something elitist, niche, and possibly irrelevant?
The second panel of the Contemporary China Centre Conference, Deconstructed, our new format for 2021/22, brings together leading international experts to discuss some of these questions from the perspective of their own work. Panellists will discuss the social, institutional, theoretical, and methodological values that inform their engagement with cultural studies and will consider the place, significance and implications of this approach for the broader field of Chinese studies.
The event is free to attend and open to all. A Zoom link will be provided to all those who register via Eventbrite by 15 December.
Chair: Gerda Wielander (University of Westminster)
Speakers
Sarah Dauncey (University of Nottingham)
Sarah Dauncey is Professor of Chinese Society and Disability at the University of Nottingham. She has published widely on the ways in which disability and impairment have been understood in Chinese culture and society since 1949. Her recent book – Disability in Contemporary China: Citizenship, Identity and Culture – presents a new theory of para-citizenship which uses China as a case study to argue that ways of belonging for disabled people are dynamic processes that change across cultures and across time.
Michel Hockx (University of Notre Dame)
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.” His current book project focuses on cultural policy and literary censorship in modern China from the early twentieth century to the present. Hockx studied Chinese language and literature at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he earned his Ph.D., and at Liaoning and Peking universities in China. From 1996-2016 he taught at SOAS, University of London. In addition to his scholarly work he has also been active as a translator of modern Chinese literature into his native Dutch.
Gregory Lee (University of St Andrews)
Gregory Lee is Founding Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of St Andrews. An academic, writer and broadcaster, he has lived and worked in France, the USA, mainland China, and Hong Kong. In addition, to modern Chinese cultural studies, he has written widely on the representation of Chineseness, the Chinese diaspora, the transcultural, and intellectual decolonization. His most recent book is China Imagined: From European Fantasy to Spectacular Power (Hurst, 2018).
Ka-ming Wu (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Ka-ming Wu is Associate Professor, and Director of the Master Program in Intercultural Studies, in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She was a visiting fellow and is now a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, she has taken up extensive ethnographic research to examine the cultural politics of state and society, waste, and most recently, gender and nationalism in contemporary China. She is also author of Reinventing Chinese Tradition: The Cultural Politics of Late Socialism (UIP 2015) and Living with Waste: Economies, Communities and Spaces of Waste Collectors in China (CUHK 2016). Her academic papers have been published in journals such as Journal of Asian Studies, Modern China, Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Studies, The China Journal, Cities, Urban Geography, Ethnology, and China Perspectives.
Other upcoming events in CCC Conference, Deconstructed include:
- Panel 3: Connecting Chinese Digital and Analogue Spaces (Feb TBC)
- Panel 4: Changing Discourses of Reproduction (Mar TBC)
- Panel 5: The Everyday Politics of Life in Xinjiang (May TBC)
Follow the Contemporary China Centre on Twitter for the latest updates: @cccbloguow
