Upcoming events
Call for papers: Men and masculinities in East Asian cinema
In the past two decades, there has been an increasing number of East Asian films at international film festivals. These works – including Koreeda Hirokazu’s Shoplifters (2018), Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster (2023), Chie Hayakawa’s Renoir (2025), Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) and Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides (2024) – have distinct male characters. Moreover, Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 film Parasite, the first East Asian film to win both the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Picture, places strong emphasis on variously compromised or contested masculine identities and spaces.
The overall focus on men and their complex lives and identities in many of these films is a widely observed yet little theorised phenomenon. The focus on men at this historical moment, on different types of masculinity that have formed prominent yet under-represented or even culturally detailed or defined subcultures, is key to understanding how these men have shaped and been shaped by the socio-political milieu of their countries in the contemporary globalised world. The screen representations of these groups speak to the historical and social change in East Asia in the 20th and 21st century, and the role of cinema and the film industries in shaping such representations has been notable. Serious critical engagement with this importance is urgently needed. The specific ways that these representations and masculinities engage with extant and discursive types shed important light on how they are defined, constructed, disseminated and performed.
This book examines the representation of men and masculinities in East Asian cinema. It looks at screen representations of historically and culturally specific expressions of masculinities (such as bishōnen and Boys’ Love in Japan, konminam in South Korea and meinan in China – all of which tend toward constructions of masculinity in which softness, androgyny, physical prettiness, sometimes but not necessarily queerness, all find expression) in tandem with the influence of global masculinity cultures in the processes of East Asia’s industrialisation and commercialisation in the 20th and 21st centuries. It also interrogates the genres, stardom, and creative and affective labour of men working in East Asian screen industries, shining light on hierarchies, inequalities and exploitations in the industries, as well as regimes of physical training, personality crafting and celebrity-making and image manufacture required for men by the industries.
This book is designed to expand upon extant work on gender and culture in East Asian cinema by focusing on different types of men and masculinity being portrayed on screen, such as Herbivore men in Japan, conservatism in young South Korean males as a homosocial grouping, and so-called diaosi men in Mainland China. It seeks to offer contemporary, transnational, critical and media-conscious perspectives on East Asian screen cultures and to index these explorations to an elucidation of industrial and representational paradigms in the contemporary film industries of China, Japan and South Korea. These countries all have clearly defined and delineated heteronormative gender roles (at least the perception thereof) and socio-political and socio-cultural norms, as well as clearly demarcated and specific responses or challenges thereto, and this project intends to interrogate these groups as a means of exploring men and masculinities as discursive constructs.
This book has been proposed to international publishers, with a firm interest expressed by Edinburgh University Press. We therefore invite proposals for papers that cover all aspects of East Asian screen masculinities.
Subjects can include but are not limited to:
- New models of masculine identity
- Fatherhood, family and domestic masculinity
- Men and masculinity at work
- Masculine subcultures
- Masculinity and Hegemony
- Historical explorations of masculinity
- Masculinity, gender and nation
- Masculinity and gender fluidity
- Queer and trans masculinity
- Genre and masculinity
- Men in East Asian screen industries
- East Asian stardom and celebrity culture
- Audience and fandom
- Studies of individual films or filmmakers (such as Koreeda Hirokazu and Hong Sangsoo)
- Comparative studies across regions in Asia
- Inter-Asia media and cultural flows
- East-West connections
- Global North-Global South connections
- Cinema/Television comparison/s
Please send your 300-word abstract and 100-word bio to Dr Hongwei Bao and Dr Adam Bingham (adam.bingham01@btinternet.com) by Sept 30th.
Queering the Chinese Diaspora Film Screening and Curator’s Q&A
Screening of five short films and Introduction and Q&A with Love Queer Cinema Week curator Jenny Man Wu
Time: 1L00-3:00 pm, Friday 28 February 2025
Place: Clive Granger A48, University Park Campus
Register now
In recent years, more and more queer people choose to leave China due to a deteriorating environment for LGBTQIA+ existence within China. What do their lives in Europe and North America look like? What opportunities and challenges do they find in these new environments? We have invited Love Queer Cinema Week (aka Beijing Queer Film Festival) curator Jenny Man Wu to curate a series of five short films made by queer filmmakers living in the Chinese diaspora. Together these films tell stories of migration, displacement, queer resilience and hope.
The film screening will be an in-person event held in Nottingham. The curator will attend the Q&A online.
The Parisian in Bali Village
Director: Bingxing Cen | 15 min | 2023 | Dialogue: Mandarin Chinese, Sichuan dialect
Synopsis
Li Simiao, a girl who lives in Bali Village, Chengdu, China, has never travelled abroad. But she is convinced that she is a true Parisian at heart. And many others like her share the sense of “hometown disorder” …
Wegen Hegel
Director: Popo Fan | 15min | 2023 | Dialogue: Mandarin Chinese, German
Synopsis
“The real is rational, and the rational is real”, says German Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. But when the pandemic hits Germany, everything changes. Chinese student PING just started his philosophy studies and faces many obstacles: hostility, loneliness, and lockdown. On a dating app, he receives spicy photos from MAX, who proposes a “social distance hook-up”. Ping is excited and embarks on his adventure. Offered a mysterious drug, he is about to have sex when he suddenly notices a book by Hegel. It sucks him into a drug-induced reflection about free will and reality, which kills the vibe of the moment. He flees after an argument and loses himself in the drug experience. The next morning, he makes another unexpected discovery – and all that because of Hegel (Wegen Hegel).
Here, Hopefully
Director: Hao Zhou | 11min | 2022 | Dialogue: Mandarin Chinese, Hunan Dialect, English
Synopsis
Zee, a nonbinary aspiring nurse from China, strives to build a gender-affirming life in rural Iowa, US. After graduating from nursing school, they work tirelessly to pass their licensure exam in hopes of obtaining a work visa.
Frozen Out
Director Hao Zhou|5min|2021 | Dialogue Sichuanese
Synopsis
An émigré retreats to frozen prairies and swamps, hoping to find a meaningful story and escape the anxieties of dislocation. Delivered as a film-letter to the protagonist’s sister in rural China.
FLYING FISH
Director: Mengmeng Ming | 10min | 2024 | Dialogue: Mandarin Chinese
Synopsis
The film combines real family archives with fictional narratives to explore the complex journey of self-discovery and gender identity. I found many artistic photos from my childhood, which made me realize certain connections between photo studios and drag performances. In a fictional studio, I discovered a group of crocodile companions, where all the crocodiles could dance freely…
The film portrays the fluidity of memories and the boundless possibilities of fantasy. It also reflects on societal pressures and the performativity of gender.
Curator’s Bio
Jenny Man Wu is a researcher and practitioner specialising in queer performance, film, and cultural resistance in China. She is the committee member and former director of the Beijing Queer Film Festival. As a filmmaker, she has worked on independent queer films, including The Drum Tower (2019) and The Taste of Betelnut (Berlinale 2017). Her research examines alternative queer theatre and activism, and she is the author of ‘Unveiling the Unspoken: The Evolution of Beijing Queer Film Festival’ in Reflections in the Post-Independent Cinema Era, edited by Cao Kai and Wen Hai (Tang Shan Publication, 2024).
A Chevening Scholar, she holds a Master of Arts in Applied Theatre from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she explored theatre as a site of political resistance. As an early-career researcher, she aims to bridge academic and artistic approaches to queer performance, contributing to a deeper understanding of how cultural production resists state repression.
Food and Cultural Identity: A Conversation with Curtis Chin
Time: Friday 23 May, 1-2:30pm
Place: A48 Clive Granger Building, University Park Campus
Guest speaker: Curtis Chin (author of Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant)
Interviewer: Dr Ruth Maxey (Associate Professor of Modern American Literature)
Chair: Dr Hongwei Bao (Associate Professor in Media Studies)
Register now
This is a free, in-person event and everyone is welcome!
If ‘You are what you eat’, then what we eat can say a great deal about who we are and what we want to become. The Chinese saying, ‘the desire for food and sex is part of human nature’, on the other hand, points to the important relationship between food and sexuality. What and how do we eat? How do our foodways speak to our racial, ethnic, class, gender and sexual identities?
In this public conversation, Dr Ruth Maxey, Associate Professor of Modern American Literature, and acclaimed Chinese American writer Curtis Chin will discuss the relationship between food, sexuality and cultural identity. Curtis will also read from his recently published, award-winning memoir Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant.
Curtis Chin is the author of the award-winning memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, which has recently won an honorary mention for the Association for Asian American Studies Prize for Creative Writing. A co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City, Chin served as the non-profit’s first Executive Director. He went on to write comedy for network and cable television before transitioning to social justice documentaries. Chin has screened his films at over 600 venues in twenty countries. He has written for CNN, Bon Appetit, the Detroit Free Press and The Emancipator/Boston Globe. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Chin has received awards from ABC/Disney Television, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and more. His essay in Bon Appetit was just selected for The Best Food Writing in America 2023 (HarperCollins) and his short doc, Dear Corky, premiered on American Masters (PBS). He is currently working on a new docuseries on the history of Chinese restaurants in America.
Punching Above its Weight - Nottingham in the Context of Britain's Queer History
- Time: 11am-1pm, Tuesday 18 February 2025
- Speaker: David Edgley (Nottinghamshire’s Rainbow Heritage)
This public lecture, delivered by guest speaker David Edgley from Nottinghamshire’s Rainbow Heritage, will offer a brief survey of the UK’s queer history, heritage and activism, with a focus on those relevant to Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.
It will start with the 1885 Labouchere amendment and include the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, banning of The Well of Loneliness, the 1948 Kinsey report, the arrest of Alan Turing, the outing of April Ashley and the 1967 Sexual Offences Act and its deficiencies leading up to Section 28. It will then move on to the positive legislation from 2000 onwards.
This workshop type of public lecture may include interactive ‘thought exercises’ about what constitutes homophobia, biphobia and transphobia and how to deal with them.
- Chair: Dr Hongwei Bao (Associate Professor in Media Studies)
- Place: Trent Building B46, University Park Campus
- Accessibility information: This venue is wheelchair friendly. Access guide
Register (free)
Speaker’s Bio:
David Edgley was born in 1945. He did a postgraduate course at the University of Nottingham in 1966. He was involved with gay rights group CHE between 1971 and 1982. He helped start Notts LGBT+ Network (formerly Switchboard) in 1975 and acted as treasurer and fundraiser for that group for 35 years.
He launched Nottinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage LGBT+ history project in 2008 and provided LGBT+ awareness training for over 100 organisations/groups.
David produced newsletters for several organisations:
- Chimaera (1972-82) for CHE
- I'm Free for Outhouse/Switchboard (2003-5)
- QB for GAI project/Switchboard (1998-2003) and for Switchboard/Network (2005-2024)
- Notts Rainbow Review for Nottinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage (2024 onward).