Lectures and Presentations

 

2024

• (proposed) “Holding out for a hero: The production, distribution, and reception of xianxia fiction in contemporary Chinese language media.” 25th Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS), Tallinn University, 27–30 August 2024.

• (forthcoming) “Redrawing Old Iron Arm: The Adaptation and Reception of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy in China the Early 1980s.” Comics and Technologies, 15th Annual International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference, University of East Anglia,
10–12 July 2024.

• (forthcoming) “All Mashed-up: Cartoon Crossovers in Bootleg Chinese Comic Books from the Late 1980s” for the panel Positive Impressions: copies, duplicates and adaptions in historical and modern China, chaired by Oliver Moore. British Association for Chinese Studies Annual Conference, University of Central Lancashire, 26–28 June 2024.

• (forthcoming) “Desert Solitaire: Tales of the Strange, Fantastic, and Immortal in Nie Jun’s Seekers of the Aweto.” Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations (GIFCon) 2024 at the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow, 15–17 May 2024 (hosted online).

• (forthcoming) “In Sleep What Dreams May Come: Envisioning the transformation of labor and social class from Chinese socialism to glocal postsocialism in The Long Season” for the panel Post/Socialist Labour in Chinese Media, chaired by Ocean Xu. British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Annual Conference, University of Sussex, 5 April 2024.

• “Daoism and Chinese Fantasy” and “Chinese Comics (and Animation).” Invited guest lectures for The Animation Workshop, VIA University College, Viborg, 26–27 February 2024.

2023

• “Visual ASMR for the Big City Blues: Wang XX, YesSealLife and the “cosy” aesthetics of consumptive self-care in postsocialist Shanghai.” Magical Metropolis: the Shanghai Surreal, 16th Annual Conference of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, Birmingham City University, 23 – 24 Nov 2023.

• “Provocative Prototypes: He Youzhi and the Artistic Turn in Chinese Comic Books” for the panel Making Do: Politics, Tradition, and Identity in Postsocialist Chinese Visual Cultures, chaired by Joshua Jiehong Jiang. British Association for Chinese Studies Annual Conference, King’s College London, 7-8 September 2023.

• “Demon Shadow Under the Mysterious Buddha: Spectral Hauntings and the Karmic Dialectic.” HistorioGraphics: Framing the Past in Comics symposium at the Bavarian American Academy and the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor), Munich, June 16-18, 2023.

• “The Walking Dead: Influencer urbanism as historical horror in the Count of E’s Chongqing Maze — Lost in the Mist.” Visual Cultures and Cultures of Reading, Oxford-Freiburg Workshop for PhDs and ECRs, co-chaired by Margaret Hillenbrand and Lena Henningsen. University of Oxford China Centre, 18-19 May 2023.

• “Mismatched Modernity: Mediated Fashion in Early Reform Era Comic Books” for the panel Old Fashions and Odd Inventions: Aesthetics of the Early Reform Era (1976–1986), chaired by Maggie Greene. Association of Asian Studies annual conference, Boston, 18 March 2023.

2022

• “Camera Luminosa: Ghostly Apparitions and Supernatural Photography in The Shade (1981).” Invited talk chaired by Jenny Jingyi Zhao for the Needham Research Institute Seminar, University of Cambridge, 18 November 2022.

• “Technologies of the Heart: Cryogenics and Revivification in Post-Cultural Revolution Science Popularization Lianhuanhua” for the panel Caricatures in Flux: Cartoons and Comics in Changing China, 1930s–1980s. Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS), Wednesday, 24 August 2022.

• “Food for Thought: Lianhuanhua as Spiritual Sustenance.” Reading (in) Chinese Comics workshop, READCHINA, University of Freiburg, 9 May 2022.

• “Change in Sinophone Comics.” Roundtable for the Sinophone Comics: A World of Changes symposium, organized by the Northern Institute of Taiwan Studies at University of Central Lancashire,
13 January 2022.

2021

• “Impossible Futures: A Chinese Star Wars.” READCHINA, University of Freiburg, 9 November 2021.

• “Putting the ‘Text’ in Context: Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem.”  Sutton Trust Summer School, University of Cambridge, 5 August 2021.

• “The Japanese Reach for Empire” and “The Sino-Japanese War.” Invited guest lectures for Introduction to East Asian Studies, taught by Mikael Adolphson, University of Cambridge, 1 & 3 February 2021.

2019

• “Low Culture Fever: Anxiety and Ambition in Chinese Comics After Mao, 1976-1983.” Genre Fiction in Contemporary China, and its Reception in the West, Centre for New Chinese Writing, University of Leeds, 11 October 2019.

2018

• “Chinese Literature in English Translation: Problems of Reception, Problems of Translation.” Invited guest lecture for CHIN 482A Translation’s Role in Chinese Literature as a World Literature, taught by Xiaowen Xu, UBC, 13 June 2018.

• “The “Arrival” of Jia Pingwa in World Literature: Translation and Interpretation.” Roundtable sponsored by the LLC Modern and Contemporary Chinese Forum for the MLA Annual Meeting in New York, 4-7 Jan. 2018.

2017

• “The Passage of Mountains and Seas: Men and Beasts in Jia Pingwa’s Master of Songs” for the panel Traditions in Modern Chinese Literature and Cinema. Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association annual conference, Spokane, 12-14 October 2017.

• Invited roundtable for “Happy Dreams Global Launch Ceremony” sponsored by AmazonCrossing for the Beijing International Book Fair, 23 August 2017.

• “Zhang Shijie’s Fisher Boy: Transformative Nationalism in New China” for the panel Materia Manhuanica: Reading Chinese Cartoons, sponsored by the Huang Yao Foundation. Association of Asian Studies annual conference, Toronto, 16 March 2017.

• “Future Perfect: Ye Yonglie and the Birth of Contemporary Chinese Speculative Fiction.” Invited guest lecture for ALC 157 Contemporary Chinese Popular Culture, taught by Michael Berry, UCLA, 16 February 2017.

• “Turtles All the Way Down: Dr. Fix-it, Mr. Wang and the Origins of Chinese Comics.” Invited lecture for The Asian Art and Visual Cultures working group, Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley, 3 February 2017.

2016

• Invited Q & A session with Yang Chao, director of Crosscurrent, Berlinale Silver Bear winner for best cinematography, YC International and Cheng Cheng Films, Cineplex Silvercity Riverport, Vancouver, 5 November 2016.

• “Ming Dynasty Looney Tunes: Reading Sun Wukong as Cartoon” for the panel The Construction of Xiyouji in the Sinographic Cosmopolis and Beyond at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, Seattle, 1 April 2016.

• “Tan Zhongguo Dangdai Wenxue Fanyi: Zuozhe yu Jiyu” [The Translation of Contemporary Chinese Literature: Challenges and Opportunities]. Invited lecture for the Jia Pingwa Research Institute, Xi’an, 19 March  2016.

• “Manga Formosa: The Wild World of Taiwanese Comics.” Invited talk for the Centre for Chinese Research (CCR), University of British Columbia, 29 February 2016.

2015

• “Lessons Learned: A discussion of a TA training program for graduate students.” Roundtable for the Society for Teaching in Higher Education (STHE) Conference, Vancouver, 18 June 2015.

• “Monkey Madness: The Many Faces of Sun Wukong.” Invited guest lecture for ASIA 342 Chinese Literature in Translation: The Vernacular Tradition, taught by Dr. Catherine Swatek, University of British Columbia, 28 January 2015.

2014

• “Propaganda and memory in Li Kunwu and Philippe Ôtié’s graphic novel A Chinese Life” for the panel Resolving Cultural Identity in Comics at the International Comic Arts Forum, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at the Ohio State University, 13-15 November 2014.

• “Border Crossings: Transnational Flows in Contemporary Chinese Comics.” Asian Studies Graduate Conference, University of British Columbia, 5 April 2014.

• “Drawing the Jin Ping Mei: Adaptations and Retellings.” Invited guest lecture for ASIA 441B Masterworks of Chinese Fiction and Drama in Translation, taught by Dr. Catherine Swatek, University of British Columbia, 31 March 2014.

• “Lost in Thailand: Nanyang Journeys.” Invited guest lecture for ASIA 355 Global Chinese Cinema, taught by Dr. Christopher Rea, University of British Columbia, 26 March 2014.

2010

• “English Language Translation of Nie Jun’s Searching for the Sea.” 7th Annual Undergraduate and Ronald E. McNair Research Conference, Portland State University, Portland, 25 May 2010.