By Daisy Yan Du

We have been running the Inaugural Conference of the Association for Chinese Animation Studies for almost 3 months and it’s time for us to conclude now. On March 1, Professors Yingjin Zhang and Thomas Lamarre’s keynote speeches about the histories and places of Chinese animation set the stage for this conference perfectly. Over the past few months, we have looked backward, exploring the archives and multi-directional histories; we also looked sideways, examining animation in relation to live-action film, cartoons, lianhuanhua, paintings, and other artforms. We also looked sideways by discussing the multiple places of Chinese animation, calling attention to the Sino-Japanese interactions, the Sinophone and diasporic world.

Today, we conclude this conference by looking into the future of Chinese animation studies, our graduate students, who are emerging as excellent scholars in the field. They are the hopes of Chinese animation studies, representing the new trends of the field. Let’s extend our warmest congratulations and thank them for their hard work and contribution!  

I’d like to thank all conference speakers for sharing your wonderful research. I also thank the attendees from the public for your participation and generous support.

I need to thank the two sponsors of the conference again: Professor Kelle Tsai, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science and Professor Andrew Cohen, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

I especially need to thank our technicians and staff members working around the clock for this conference. Linus, TC, and Eric provided professional and technical support and saved us for many times. Vincent and Veronica assisted with the administrative issues. Zhuang Muyang helped with the translation. Thank you all for backing me up!   

We have video-recorded the conference and will rescreen the panels, except panel 2, in the summer at different time zones. You can watch the video-recordings if you have missed some panels.

There will be publication opportunities after the conference. We will get back to you in the summer about this.

We plan to host the ACAS academic conference every 2 or 3 years. Our next ACAS academic conference is tentatively scheduled in 2024 due to the pandemic. We may host some small-scale workshops before that.  

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