Time:

June 29-30 (Thursday & Friday, Hong Kong time), 2023

Location:

IAS 5007, Lee Shau Kee Campus, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 

Zoom:

ID: 986 4286 2563

Password: ACASSHSS

Organizers:

Daisy Yan Du, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

John Crespi, Colgate University, USA

Yiman Wang, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

Sponsors:

Global China Center, School of Humanities and Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

 

No solicitation of the papers below, because their authors have made the commitment for the edited volume Chinese Animation: Multiplicities in Motion (under review by a major university press in the US.)

 

June 29 (Thursday)

Panel 1, Introduction, chaired by Daisy Yan Du: 9:00-10:00am

Kellee Tsai, Dean of School of Humanities and Social Science (HKUST), “Welcome Speech”

David Wang, “Modern Chinese Literature, Film, and Animation”

John Crespi, “Chinese Animation: A Statement of the Field”

Yiman Wang (on behalf of Yingjin Zhang), “Playful Dispositif and Remediation: Chinese Animation from the Perspective of Film History as Media Archaeology”

 

Coffee/Tea Break: 10:00-10:20am

 

Panel 2, Junctures, chaired by John Crespi, 10:20am-12:20pm  

Panpan Yang, “Enchanted Space: The Animation of Inanimate Objects in Chinese Silent Cinema”

Jinying Li, “From Animation to Martial Arts: Toward the Transcendence of False Movements”

Linda C. Zhang, “Toy Country”: Playful Innovation in Socialist Chinese Puppet Animation”

Shasha Liu, “Adapting Dunhuang in a Transitional Period: Negotiated Intermediality in The Deer of Nine Colors and Jiazi Saves the Deer”

 

Lunch at Conference Lodge: 12:20pm-2:00pm  

 

Panel 3, Gender, chaired by Yiman Wang, 2:00-3:30pm  

Tim Shao-Hung Teng, “Psychic Grannies: Animation and Animism in Turn-of-the-Century Taiwan”

Daisy Yan Du, “Suspended Authorship: Women Animation Directors in Socialist China, 1940s-1980s”

Paola Voci, “When Animation is Accented and Gendered: The Feminist Gestures of Women Animateurs”  

 

Coffee/Tea Break: 3:30-3:50pm

 

Panel 4, Digitality, chaired by Jinying Li: 3:50-5:00pm  

Wendy Larson, “Animation as Agency in the Glistening City-Orb: The World and Jia Zhangke’s Surrealism”

Yiman Wang, “When a Cat Flies: Futures of 3D Animation through Cats and Peachtopia”

 

Group Photo at IAS Lobby: 5:00pm

Board a Coach at Conference Lodge Entrance: 5:20pm

Dinner at G/F Restaurant (close to Library): 5:30pm

Board a Coach at the Red Bird Piazza to Conference Lodge:  7:30pm 

 

June 30 (Friday)

Panel 5, Identities, chaired by Wendy Larson: 9:30am-11:30am

Shannon Brownlee, “What’s in a Line? Borders and Diffusion in Ink-Painting Animation”

Teri Silvio, “The Voice in Taiwan’s Digital Video Swordsman Puppetry: From Solo Voice Actors to Multiple Voice Actors”

Jasmine Chen, “Homemaking Allegory: Animating Taiwanese Local Memory in The Little Sun”

Jessica K. Chan, “Animation as Action: The Old Master Q Animation Trilogy in Hong Kong”

 

Board a Coach at Conference Lodge Entrance: 11:45am

Dim Sum Lunch at G/F Restaurant: 12:00pm-2:00pm

Board a Coach at the Red Bird Piazza to Conference Lodge: 2:00pm 

 

Panel 6, Practices, chaired by Paola Voci: 3pm-4:30pm

Jake Junjie Zhang, “The Path to Cinematic Immersion: Creating VR Animation in China”

Isabel Galwey, “The Digital Turn in Hong Kong Independent Animation”

Hannes Rall and Emma Harper, “Expanding Notions of Diasporic Chineseness: Towards a Singaporean Approach to VR”

 

Panel 7, Afterword, 4:30-5:00pm

Alexander Zahlten, “Lessons from Anime: On the Future Directions of Chinese Animation Studies”

 

Board a Coach at Conference Lodge Entrance: 5:00pm

Dinner at Sai Kung Seafood: 5:30pm-8:00pm

Board a Coach at the Sai Kung Bus Stop to HKUST Conference Lodge: 8:00pm 

 

About the Editors:

Daisy Yan Du (lead editor) is an Associate Professor in the Division of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She is the author of Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation, 1940s-1970s (University of Hawaii Press, 2019). Her refereed journal articles appeared in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Discourse, Positions, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Gender & History, among others. She is the editor of Chinese Animation and Socialism: From Animators’ Perspectives (Brill, 2021), and is currently working on two monographs and editing a few volumes about animation and new media. She is the founder of the Association for Chinese Animation Studies (https://acas.world/), which is dedicated to introducing and promoting Chinese animation to the English-speaking world.

John A. Crespi is a Professor of Chinese at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY. He is the author of Voices in Revolution: Poetry and the Auditory Imagination in Modern China published by the University of Hawai’i Press (2010) and Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn, published by the University of California Press (2020). His articles on modern Chinese poetry and China’s manhua (cartoons) have appeared in a range of edited volumes and scholarly journals. His online publications include the pathbreaking three-part illustrated essay “China’s Modern Sketch: The Golden Era of Cartoon Art, 1934-1937,” written for MIT’s Visualizing Cultures project. He is the recipient of two Fulbright awards, (2005-2006 and 2017).

Yiman Wang is a Professor of Film & Digital Media and Kenneth R. Corday Family Presidential Chair in Writing for Television & Film (2022-2025) at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hollywood (2013). Her monograph on Anna May Wong, the pioneer Chinese American screen-stage-television performer, is forthcoming. She is co-editor of the Global East Asian Screen Cultures book series published by Bloomsbury and has published numerous articles in journals and edited volumes on topics of Chinese cinema, independent documentary, ethnic border-crossing stardom, ecocinema, film remakes, and adaptation. She is an NEH award recipient (2019-2020).

About the Authors:

Yingjin Zhang (1957-2022, Ph.D., Stanford) is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Chinese Studies, and Chair of the Department of Literature at University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film: Configurations of Space, Time, and Gender (Stanford, 1996), Screening China: Critical Interventions, Cinematic Reconfigurations, and the Transnational Imaginary in Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Center for Chinese Studies, Michigan, 2002), Chinese National Cinema (Routledge, 2004), and Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (Hawaii, 2010), among others.  

David Der-wei Wang is Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. He holds a joint appointment in Comparative Literature. He is Director of CCK Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinological Studies, and Academician, Academia Sinica. Wang took his B.A. in foreign languages and literature from National Taiwan University, and his M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1982) in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author of The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists through the 1949 Crisis (2014), among others.

Alexander Zahlten is Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in Film Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany in 2007. He conducted dissertation research at Nihon University (2003-2005) and postdoctoral research at Meiji Gakuin University (2009-2011). Zahlten was Assistant Professor in the Department of Film & Digital Media of Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea for one and a half years before joining Harvard in 2012.

Shannon Brownlee is an Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies/Gender and Women’s Studies at Dalhousie University in Mi’kma’ki, which is also known as Atlantic Canada. Her research is primarily in film adaptation and in animation; she has published articles in Film Criticism and in anthologies with Routledge and Palgrave Macmillan. She is also part of the organizing team of the Animation Festival of Halifax.

Jessica K. Chan is an Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Richmond. Her recent publications include Chinese Revolutionary Cinema: Propaganda, Aesthetics, and Internationalism, 1949–1966 (I.B.Tauris, 2019) and articles in the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, and The Opera Quarterly.

Jasmine Yu-Hsing Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Utah State University. She specializes in contemporary Chinese and Sinophone theater, film, media, visual culture, and literature. She has published peer-reviewed articles in journals including Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Comparative Media Arts Journal, Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia, Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, and Journal of Chinese Overseas. Currently, she is a member of the Board of Directors at the North American Taiwan Studies Association.

Isabel Galwey is an animator and researcher. She completed a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at Leeds Arts University, followed by a BA at University of Oxford, where she studied Chinese, and an MPhil at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where she researched the digital turn in Hong Kong animation, transmedia connections between different areas of the Hong Kong creative industries, and the significance of non-narrative elements as part of animation’s medium specificity. She has been involved in numerous short film and animation projects.

Emma Harper is a Research Assistant in the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she supports the delivery of cross-disciplinary projects relating to the use of immersive and interactive media within the fields of literature, culture, and education. She has experience of working in universities and museums in the UK, China, and Singapore, and holds BA and MSt degrees from the University of Oxford.

Jinying Li is an Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she teaches media theory, animation, and digital culture in East Asia. Her essays have been published in Film International, Mechademia, the International Journal of Communication, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Asiascape, differences, and Camera Obscura. Her first book, Geek Pleasures: Anime, Knowledge Culture, and Cybernetic Affect, is forthcoming with University of Minnesota Press. She is currently working on her second book, Walled Media and Mediating Walls.

Shasha Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada). Her research focuses on the issue of mediating Dunhuang in the 20th century through the perspectives of four visual media: photography, painting, animation, and film. She published an article, “Zooming in on the animated background: Mediated Dunhuang murals with design in the Conceited General,” in the Journal of Chinese Cinemas in 2021. One of her dissertation chapters won the Best Student Paper Award (First Place) at the Inaugural Conference of the Association for Chinese Animation Studies (Zoom Webinar, March 1-May 12, 2021).

Hannes Rall is a Professor of Animation Studies and Associate Chair Research in the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also an award-winning director of independent animated short films, with a particular focus on animated adaptations of classic literature. Conference presentations include FMX, ACM SIGGRAPH and the Annual Conferences of the Society for Animation Studies, and in 2016 he was the Chair of the 28th Annual Conference of the Society for Animation Studies. Hannes has published essays, chapters and books with publishers including Routledge, UVK Verlag Konstanz and Julius Springer.

Teri J. Silvio is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago (Anthropology) in 1998. She is the author of Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019), based on her work with the producers and fans of the Pili International Multimedia Company’s video puppetry series. Her current research project looks at the expansion of the art toy and local comic scenes throughout East and Southeast Asia.

Tim Shao-Hung Teng is a doctoral candidate in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He is currently at work writing a dissertation about the sites and practices of mineral extraction as documented in film and literature from hinterland China to archipelagic Taiwan. His writings have appeared or are forthcoming with Positions: Asia Critique, Screen, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, and Taiwan Insight.

Wendy Larson is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon. She is the author of several monographs, most recently Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture (Cambria Press, 2017) and From Ah Q to Lei Feng: Freud and Revolutionary Spirit in 20^th Century China (Stanford UP, 2008). Her present project is on comparative cultural optimism in 1950s China and the West.

Paola Voci is a Professor in Chinese and Asian Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. She specializes in Chinese cinema and visual cultures, and, in particular, documentary, animation, and other hybrid digital video practices. She is the author of China on Video, a book that analyses and theorizes “light” movies made for and viewed on computer and mobile screens, and co-editor of Screening China’s Soft Power, an investigation on the role played by film and media in shaping China’s global image. Her essays have been published in Animation, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Screening the Past, Senses of Cinema, Global Storytelling, Bianco e Nero, among others. Her current research focuses on “animateur” practices and examines their contribution to the theory and archaeology of the moving image. 

Panpan Yang is a lecturer (UK equivalent of assistant professor) in the arts and visual cultures of modern China at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She is currently completing her first book on the emergence of animated space in China. In it, she charts the history of Chinese animation from the 1920s to the present, with a focus on Chinese animation’s encounters with other art forms, including photography, painting, calligraphy, and porcelain. Her writings on different aspects of Chinese animation have received a Domitor Essay Award in 2019 and an Honorable Mention from the Association for Chinese Animation Studies in 2021.

Junjie Jake Zhang is Assistant Professor of Practice in Digital Media in Computational Media and Arts thrust area at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). He is an award-winning independent animation artist, educator and researcher living in mainland China and Hong Kong. Jake Zhang holds a BA in Digital Media from China Central Academy of Fine Arts and an MFA in Animation and Digital Arts from University of Southern California. His films have been awarded and selected in festivals all over the world, such as Gold Award at 8th Animation Support Program (2021) and Jury Award in 55th Ann Arbor Film Festival (2017), among others.

Linda C. Zhang (PhD, Berkeley, 2022) is an assistant professor of film in the Art & Media Studies program at Fulbright University Vietnam. She is currently completing a book project titled “Technological Futures: Animated Media in Socialist China,” which offers new understandings of the media history surrounding modern Chinese animation, visual culture, and popular science texts from the early Maoist era. Her work has appeared in academic and popular publications including Journal of Chinese Cinemas, the Association for Chinese Animation Studies, and RadiiChina, with more work forthcoming at Rutgers University Press.