Date: 25 October 2021 (Monday)

Time: 15:30 – 17:00pm

Speaker: Dr. Ling Tang

Language: English

Gamification of Economy: The Aesthetic Labour and Emotional Labour in Making Taobao a Theme Park Spectacle

Abstract:

In contrast to the “rational” Amazon which demonstrates an intensification of McDonaldization of the economy in the digital economic realm (Ritzer, 2018), this talk discloses how Taobao crafts itself into an emotion-fuelled theme-park for online shopping. Taobao wishes to establish itself as a platform full of adventurous products and unexpected encounters. Based on my one-year ethnography with businesswomen in the Internet age, many of whom Taobao shop owners, I show how they need to do an extensive amount of aesthetic labour and emotional labour in order to make the shopping experience more fun and entertaining for customers. This echoes Byung-Chul Han (2017)’s notion of the gamification of the economy where production and consumption are made into games of instant rewards and punishment.

Speaker:

Ling is an artist academic who considers sociology as art and vice versa. Her research interests includes Internet studies, Gender studies, Chinese studies and innovative methods. Her academic writings are published in journals including Journal of Sociology and British Journal of Chinese Studies. Besides, she also produces music, fine art pieces and public academic cultural products.

Zoom Link: https://eduhk.zoom.us/j/98246400615?pwd=T3dIaVdtZkFZUDFZNlJnTjIwSERvUT09

Zoom Meeting ID: 982 4640 0615

Passcode: 462291

Shocking images of migrant bodies washed ashore, epitomized in Ai Wei Wei’s re-enactment of the Syrian infant Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body on a beach in Lesbos, have almost become a macabre shorthand for migrant deaths on foreign shores as more and more refugees undertake perilous sea crossings and other hazardous inland journeys, in search of a better life. We may wonder what happens to these bodies, what happens to these bones; are they repatriated back to the homeland? If not, are they in a cruel twist of fate, simply buried in mass graves on the foreign shores they tragically failed to reach while alive? How are the victims memorialized, if at all? This also raises related questions about the immigrant’s desire for a home burial. How is the longing for home manifested as a longing to die in the homeland? What about those who are criminalized and refused a burial? How is the right to die linked to citizenship and human rights in the context of migration and diaspora?

“Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces” seeks to explore these questions as they are articulated in literary and visual culture, and across disciplines.

CFP

Reading Shaun Tan in Hong Kong:

Literature, Pedagogy, and Community

6-7 DECEMBER 2019 / Education University of Hong Kong

Abstracts due 31 July 2019

Abstracts are invited for a two-day conference centered on the work of author, illustrator, and artist Shaun Tan. We invite contributions that focus on Tan’s work from the point of view of literary and visual studies, on teaching Tan’s work across disciplines and curricula, and on Tan’s work in the context of community reading. Proposals for academic presentations, teacher talks or workshops, and panel discussions in any of these interrelated areas are very welcome.

Participants might consider:

• Any aspect of Tan’s work, including the media and genres Tan has favored, his major themes, and the ways in which his works have been read. Contributors might explore how Tan’s distinctive vision can be understood alongside other forms of graphic narrative, children’s literature, or visual art.

• Any aspect of how Tan’s work has been taught, including its usefulness in language, literacy, literature, drama, history or arts education and other social science education. Tan’s work also foregrounds the power of visual language, and might be discussed in terms of education for visual literacy, multimedia literacy, or other emerging domains.

• Any aspect of how Tan has been read and discussed in communities. Tan’s graphic novel The Arrival was chosen as the book for the first year of 我城我書 / One City One Book Hong Kong, a community reading project initiated by the Centre for Popular Culture in the Humanities (EdUHK). Events related to the book have been held in the literary, artistic, and education communities, and the book has been widely discussed and enjoyed throughout the city in 2019.

Selected participants will be invited to contribute papers to an edited collection of essays to be published by Springer, as part of the Book Series Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education, which has been included in the Scopus Index.

Call for Grant Applications

我城我書 / One City One Book Hong Kong would like to foster the development of city-based community reading projects in Asia. If you would like to found a “One City One Book” or “Big Read” project in a city in Asia, please consider applying for a stipend to attend this conference. The stipend, in the amount of HK10,000, is intended to facilitate the attendance of one or two persons who are in a position to develop a community reading project, so academics, educators, and librarians are particularly invited to apply. Please send a CV or resume, along with a one-page description of your vision for your project, to onecityonebook@eduhk.hk, by 31 July 2019.

Abstracts are due to conference organizers by 31 July 2019. Please send your proposal title, a 200-word abstract, and a brief biographical statement to onecityonebook@eduhk.hk.

Book Talk: Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture by Dr. Dorothy Lau (HKBU)

Date: 28-03-2019

Time: 10:30-12:00

Venue: B2-LP-20, Tai Po Campus

Abstract

The advent of web technology and participatory culture drastically change how celebrities are represented, interpreted, and consumed. Ordinary audiences easily search, poach, edit, post and share filmic and publicity materials about famed figures, realizing a new mode of celebrity-fan dynamics. This presentation investigates the celebrity image of Chinese actress, Zhang Ziyi, on YouTube, of which users negotiate her debatable persona, as situated in the politics of cultural nationalism, by sharing and commenting on Zhang’s notoriety on the Web. Zhang’s international fame began with her performance in the martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). As she grew internationally notable, her English-speaking flair becomes a point of tabloid and fan attention. Moreover, her public personality is dogged by a series of quasi-sex scandals that chiefly draws negative domestic responses. The viewers’ sentiments garner a force in cyberspace, expressing a kind of collective resentment of the icon’s nationalistic status. Taken together, the YouTube videos entail complexity of the celebrity presence in ethnic, national and linguistic terms in the global visual circuit that can illuminate the possibilities of celebrity-making scene in the latest times.

網絡科技及參與式文化的來臨大大地改變了名人如何被再現，詮釋及消費。普通觀眾可以輕易地搜尋、挪用、編輯、張貼及分享名人的電影及宣傳材料，體現了名人與粉絲間新的互動。這堂課探討中國女演員章子怡在YouTube的名人形象，用家如何透過意見書寫及分享視頻，把她放置在文化國族主義中，談判其具爭議的人物性格。 2000  年章子怡以武術電影《卧虎藏龍》在國際上嶄露頭角，隨著她的國際聲譽日漸增加，傳媒和公眾對她的英語能力愈加留意。此外，她也不時被醜聞纏身，在國內惹來負面反應。觀眾的情緒在網絡世界形成一股力量，對章子怡的國族地位表達了一種集體的怨恨。這種種現象意味著，名人在全球視覺路徑上於族裔、國族及語言方面複雜性，也闡明了新時代裡名人建構的可能性。

Bio

Dorothy Wai Sim Lau is an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests include stardom, fandom, Asian cinema, transnational cinema, and digital culture. Her publications appear in journals such as positions: asia critique, Continuum, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Journal of Asian Cinema, and a number of edited volumes. She is also the author of Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture (2018). She is currently writing her next monograph, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Network: Voice, Ethnicity, Power (working title) (Palgrave Macmillan, under contract).

劉慧嬋博士，香港浸會大學電影學院助理教授。研究範圍包括明星研究、粉絲文化、亞洲電影、跨國電影及數碼文化。其著作出現於多本學術期刊及編輯作品中。她的第一本英文專書為Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture (2018)。她現正書寫第二部著作Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Network: Voice, Ethnicity, Power (暫名) (Palgrave Macmillan)。