Symposium:
Hollywood & the Asian American Imagination
The pandemic has witnessed hostility and violence against Asians and Asian Americans in the United States. Perhaps now more than ever, by choice and by coercion, geopolitical constructions of Asia, the Asian diaspora, and racial constructions of Asian Americans inform the lives of many. Recent years have also witnessed in Hollywood the increasing number of productions that feature Asian American experience.
This symposium seeks to trace historically how Asian Americans enter the Hollywood imagination and how they are (mis/under)represented. As Asian Americans develop a voice and visual presence in Hollywood, how do they imagine, represent, and perform themselves as Asian Americans on or off-screen, speaking to Hollywood and its global audience? This symposium features two keynote lectures and four presentation panels that provide new perspectives on the (under)representation and contribution of Asian Americans to Hollywood from the silent era to the digital age.
All keynote lectures and panels are in a hybrid format at the Humanities Commons (in person) and on Zoom (virtual).
Hybrid Format
All keynote lectures and panels are in a hybrid format at the Humanities Commons (in person) and on Zoom (virtual).
Keynote Lecture
12-1:15 p.m. | Humanities Commons
Yiman Wang
Professor of Film and Digital Media, University of California, Santa Cruz
Keynote lecture: “A Thousand Deaths”: Anna May Wong’s Death Acts
Zoom Panel 1: Asian Americans in Hollywood
1:30-2:45 p.m. EST
Mary Chapman
Professor of English, University of British Columbia
Director, Winnifred Eaton Archive
Paper title: “Winnifred Eaton: Instrument of Salvage in Early Hollywood”
with co-author Sydney Lines, Project Manager, Winnifred Eaton Archive
Ph.D. candidate, Department of English, University of British Columbia
Daisuke Miyao
Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Culture, University of California, San Diego
Paper title: “Zen Showed Him the Way: Sessue Hayakawa and the Zen Boom in the 1950s”
Zoom Panel 2: Representation, Gender and Sexuality
3-4:15 p.m. EST
Ningning Huang
Ph.D. Candidate, Literature Department, University of California, San Diego
Paper title: “On the Erotic Scar: Reading Annabel Chong between Pain and Pleasure”
Na-Rae Kim
Assistant Professor in Residence and Associate Director of Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, University of Connecticut
Paper title: “Framing North Korea: American Representations of the Hermit Kingdom”
Keynote Lecture
12-1:15 p.m. | Humanities Commons
Alexa Alice Joubin
Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Theatre, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures, George Washington University
Keynote lecture: Cinematic Representations of East Asian American Women
Zoom Panel 3: Contesting Asian American Identities and Chineseness
1:30-2:45 p.m. EST
Angie Chau
Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies, University of Victoria
Paper title: “‘Swallowing More Coca-Cola Than Sorrow’: Chinese Food in Recent Hollywood Films”
Ben Ruilin Fong
Ph.D. Candidate, Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis
Paper title: “‘All I Ever Wanted was a Normal Life: Redefining Chinese-Language Films in Hollywood”