East Asian Media and Creative Industries Webinar Series II

East Asian Media & Creative Industries Webinar Series II

Fall & Spring 2023/24

Check the dates now

About the Series

The East Asian Media and Creative Industries Webinar Series II is a collaborative effort among four different centers and departments from prestigious universities: the Centre for Film and Creative Industries (CFCI) at Lingnan University, the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Visual Culture Research Center at National Central University, Taiwan. It features a diverse range of topics related to the media and creative industries in East Asia. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from leading scholars in the field, engage in thought-provoking discussions, and network with fellow researchers from around the world.

Speakers

Katherine Hui-ling Chou

Distinguished Professor of English Department, National Central University, and Project Director of the Center for Theatre and Performance Studies, National Central University.

Stephen Yiu-Wai Chu

Stephen Yiu-Wai CHU is Professor of Hong Kong Studies, The University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on postcolonialism, globalization and Hong Kong culture.

Peichi Chung

Peichi Chung is an associate professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is interested in various impacts of digital technology on Asian popular culture.

Dongjoon Lee

Dongjoon Lee (PhD., JD., BBA.) is a Korea Foundation Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.

Joshua Neves

Joshua Neves is Associate Professor of Film Studies and Director of the Global Emergent Media Lab at Concordia University (Montréal, Canada). His research focuses on global and digital media, cultural and political theory, and questions of development and legitimacy.

Jinhee Park

Jinhee Park is a media scholar who specializes in Korean cinema and visual culture. She received her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California.

Organizing Committee

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh

Centre for Film and Creative Industries

Lingnan University

Sangjoon Lee

Centre for Film and Creative Industries

Lingnan University

Jinhee Park

Centre for Film and Creative Industries

Lingnan University

Wesley Jacks

Centre for Film and Creative Industries

Lingnan University

Michael Berry

Center for Chinese Studies

The University of California, Los Angeles

Peichi Chung

Department of Cultural and Religious Studies

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Wenchi Lin

Visual Culture Research Center

National Central University, Taiwan

Schedule

...

22 September 2023, 2:30 - 3:20 PM

Reimagining Koreanness in the Age of Netflix: Cultural Nationalism, Neoliberalism, and Hallyu in the Contemporary Korean Society

Dongjoon Lee

While the role of the nation-state is often either ignored or celebrated, both perspectives underestimate the centrality of local dynamics of the global phenomenon. It is important to recognise that global neoliberalism is shaped by local contexts, influenced by social, cultural and historical factors. Abstract

  • Moderator: Jinhee Park
...

17 November 2023, 2:30 - 3:20 PM

Data Society, Digital Labor and the Data Analytics Industry in Hong Kong

Peichi Chung

This paper examines the changing industry network in the emerging new media field of data analytics. The paper looks into the dimension of human-machine integration to examine new data-driven working environments in the global esports entertainment industry. Focusing on the idea of “player-led innovation”, the paper characterizes new developments in automated media to present today’s digital labor conditions. Abstract

  • Moderator: Wesley Jacks
...

26 January 2024, 2:30 - 3:20 PM

Main Melody Films: Hong Kong Directors in Mainland China

Stephen Yiu-Wai Chu

While the need for Chinese culture to acquire soft power was escalated in the new millennium, main melody films, which were largely propaganda works that pay tribute to the nation, the party and the army, were "blockbusterized" and became the main genre of Chinese cinema. Its rapid growth is arguably one of the most important phenomena of Chinese film industry in the 2010s. As an increasing number of Hong Kong directors are commissioned to direct these main melody blockbusters, this webinar examines their contributions to this genre, which may also shed light on the development of cross-border cooperation between the mainland and Hong Kong film industries. Abstract

  • Moderator: Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh
...

22 March 2024, 2:30 - 3:20 PM

Digital Media by North Korean Defectors in South Korea

Jinhee Park

This presentation examines South Korean Webtoon created by a North Korean defector in South Korea. The Webtoon coined in South Korea has been discussed as “snack culture,” which refers to the new cultural consumption on mobile screens with a quick habit and shortened attention span in the post-industrial and creative economy. The North Korean defectors have been the subjects of these media as creators or performers. The defectors have practiced what I called “post-Cold War remediation.” They remediate the neoliberal culture by comparing the Capitalist South to the Communist North, thereby defamiliarizing neoliberal culture itself in the media content. At the same time, the North Korean defectors remediate the neoliberal forms of culture to affectively instruct the viewers about North Korea and the defectors’ subjectivities in South Korea, thereby familiarizing North Korea. It further explores the implicit cultural policies of the Cold War in the webtoon commissioned by the private corporate sector. The snack culture indicates cultural implicit polices of the Cold War appeared as Branded Entertainment where the defectors construct and deconstruct neoliberal subjectivity. Abstract

...

12 April 2024, 11:00 - 11:50 AM

The Data Pharmacy: Notes on Smartness, Mood Conditioning, and Contemporary Self-Making

Joshua Neves

Tracking new (and old) relationships between media and medicine, among similar entanglements, this talk explores the contemporary pharmacopeia (bencao, etc.) – now expanded to include a wide range of ordinary drugs and devices. This research grows out of my current projects/collaborations examining the imbrication of digital and pharmaceutical industries and imaginaries (such as: Technopharmacology (2022); “The Data Pharmacy”), including cultures of wellness and optimization. Wellness is a 5 trillion-dollar global industry, with East Asian medications and platforms playing an increasingly large role (in terms of revenue, local consumption, global distribution, etc.). From traditional substances and synthetic supplements to health apps, wearables, and internet pharmacies, this fusion of the algorithmic and pharmacological underscores important shifts related to individual and public health, including new fears and fascinations about the programmability of the body and the self. Abstract

...

3 May 2024, 2:30 - 3:20 PM

Liveness Redefined: The Digital Turn of the Post Pandemic Theatre Practice & Theory

Katherine Hui-ling Chou

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 in the spring of 2020, the global development of digital performance arts entered an unprecedented phase of intensive experimentation and exploration on digital performance. International arts festivals that traditionally took place in theater venues began to launch a large number of online performance programs, indicating a seemingly reconciliation between the conventional performance venue and the online theatre. With the gradual easing of the pandemic situation in the second half of 2022 and the lifting of public health social distancing measures in 2023, world theaters reopened and performing arts practitioners, who were anxious about how to bring audiences back to the theater, have little time to consider the digitalization shift in the theater industry intensified by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Was the online theatre and digital performance just a fleeting phenomenon during the crisis? Or does it indicate that the performing arts industry, with theater venue as its primary production domain, is embarking on a new operational model? Abstract

@ Centre for Film and Creative Industries, Lingnan University 2023

Back to top