You’re Invited: HUM Exhibit Launch & Class of 2025 Signature Work Showcase

We are thrilled to invite you to the HUM Exhibit Launch, featuring the remarkable Signature Work projects of the Class of 2025.​

Event Details:

• Date: Friday, April 18
• Time: 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
• Location: HUM Space (AB1075A), Duke Kunshan University​

Join us for an inspiring evening celebrating the creativity and dedication of our students. The event will commence with welcome remarks by Richard Davis, Signature Work Director, and Selina Lai-Henderson & Carlos Rojas, Co-Directors of the Humanities Research Center.​

Following the showcase, enjoy a reception with light refreshments and an opportunity to engage with the featured students and faculty.​

We look forward to seeing you there!

All conference participants are warmly invited to attend a concluding gala dinner—with keynote speakers and special guests—on Saturday, April 19. (Registration required)

Please register for the conference and dinner by April 16 using the QR code below.

THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2025

18:00-20:15         Film Screenings

IB1008    Coolie Pink and Green, Patricia Mohammed, dir. (2010)

Comfort Women: One Last Cry (2013)

 

FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2025

08:30-09:00           Registration and Coffee

AB2103

09:00-09:15           Opening Remarks  

AB2103                   John Quelch, Executive Vice Chancellor, DKU

Carlos Rojas, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University

Selina Lai-Henderson, Associate Professor of American Literature & History, DKU

09:15-10:45            Keynote Lecture 1:

Gabriel N. Rosenberg, “Hubert Goodale’s Feminized Cockerels: Industrial Chicken Breeding, Sex Control, and the Queer Ecology of Early Twentieth Century Endocrinology”          

AB2103                   Chair: Carlos Rojas

10:45-11:00            Coffee Break

11:00-12:30            Keynote Lecture 2:

Usha Iyer, “The Sticky Intimacies of Jammin’: Mapping Media Traffic and Femme Performance Repertoires between India and the Caribbean”

AB2103                   Chair: Titas Chakraborty

12:30-14:00            Lunch

Community Center

14:00-15:30            Student Panels

AB3101                   1A: South Korean politics and culture

Discussant: Hyun Jeong Ha

• Emma Yun, “The 4B Movement, Korean Feminism, and the Colonization of South Korean Feminist Narratives”
• Yongkun Wu, “Exploring Corporeal Affects Through the Virtual: Bodily Potential in Lee Heejoo’s Phantom Limb Pain”
• Shauna Stewart, “Constructing Desire: A Cross-Cultural Feminist Analysis of ‘Cheer Up’ and ‘The Applicant’”

AB3103                     1B: Female communities in China and the diaspora

Discussant: Megan Rogers

• Wuyou Wang, “From Dating App to Diasporic Queer Community:  Rela and the Chinese Lesbians Community in New York”
• Wenjing Xu, “Love, Vulnerability, and Resistance: The Politics of Female Fictive Kinship in Contemporary China”
• Yuting Zeng, “Cai in Her Ways: Gendered Talent and the Identity of Cai Nü in Female Communities”

AB3107                     1C: Feminist and queer histories

Discussant: Titas Chakraborty

• Yizhi Lyu, “The Queering Witch: Unexplainable Bodies and Contemporary Identities”
• Philip Yanakiev, “The Suffering of Women in Times of War”
• Jingxuan Xu, “Cinematic Persona: Female Cross-Dressing in Republican China” 

AB2103                      1D: Social Media and the Metaverse

Discussant: Erin Wilkerson

• Haoxin Feng, “Disrupting Time, Reconstructing Selves: The Metaverse’s Role in Memory and Personal Identity”
• Chengxi Yin, “Gaining Pleasure in Infinite Game Worlds:  Digital Reading Practices of Infinite Fiction in China”
• Xiaosang Wang, “Feminist Discourse System of Chinese Social Medias”

15:30-15:45           Coffee Break

15:45-17:15           Student Panels

AB3101                  2A: Gendered Perspectives on Chinese Literature

Discussant: Odelia Lu

• Yuqing Wang, “Investigating Female Education through the Character of Lin Daiyu in Dream of the Red Chamber”
• Ethan Mills, “Wanderer, Storyteller, Feminist: The Untranslated Legacy of Sanmao”

AB3103                   2B: Comparative Historiography                            

Discussant: Qian Zhu

• Marta Ewelina Wieczorklewicz, “Between Deification and Damnation: Female Spiritual Authority, Legal Codes, and Religious Anxieties in Ming-Qing China and Medieval Europe”
• Enkhkhuslen Bat-Erdene, “Women’s Political Empowerment in East Asia”
• Canran Zhang, “Similar structure between colonialism and patriarchy”

AB3107                     2C: Chinese Social Media and Feminist Discourse

Discussant: Kolleen Guy

• Flora Xu, “Beyond the Gaze: Ethnic Identity and Feminist Expression in Chinese Social Media Platforms”
• Xinyu Liao, ”Between Liberation and Marketing: Examining Sex Toy Discourse on Xiaohongshu”

AB2103                      2D: Cultural Imaginations

Discussant: Andrew Field

• Shenglang Nie, “The Yellow Horn: The White American’s Self-Prisoning in Their Fetishisation of African American Jazz Music and Asian American Woman”
• Isabelle Zhang, “Empowered Representations: Race and Gender in Rosetta Reitz’s Album Covers”
• Ngo Hana, “Vietnam’s Complex Relationship with the Concept of the American Dream through ‘Goodbye Mother’ (2019)”
• Iveel Tengis, “Tomie: Victimhood and (Monstrous) Femininity”

17:30-18:30               HUM Exhibit Launch 

18:30-19:30               Dinner, Community Center Cafeterias

19:30                          Karaoke Night! (Hum Space) 

 

SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 2025

08:30-09:00            Light Breakfast

09:00-10:30            Keynote Lecture 3: Yujie Zhu, “From National Memory to Global Justice: Heritage Politics and the Transnational Movement for ‘Comfort Women’”          

AB2103                   Chair: Kolleen Guy

10:30-10:45            Coffee Break

10:45-12:15            Round Table Discussion on Anniversary of 1995 Beijing Conference on Women

AB2103                   Chair: Carlos Rojas

Panelists: Nellie Chu, Qian Zhu, Yujie Zhu, Usha Iyer, Gabriel N. Rosenberg

12:30-14:00            Lunch

Community Center

14:00-15:30            Student Panels

AB3101                   3A: Queer Practices

Discussant: Zhiqiu Benson Zhou

• Mingliang Gao, “Gay Bear Culture on Chinese Social Media: Influencers, Visual Self-Presentation, and Platform Visibility”
• Tongyu Mao, “Psychoanalytical Factors Contributing to Cultivating Gay Men’s Misogyny: Castration Anxiety, Phallic Desire and Male Homosocial Desire”
• Eva Guo, “Unwritten Queerness: Resisting Western Identity Politics in Queer Asian America”
• Leqian Huang, “Seeking Spaces of Belonging: An Ethnographic Study of Bisexual Women in Shanghai and Guangdong”

AB3103                     3B: Labor and Identity

Discussant: Nellie Chu

• Nga Phuoc Luong, “Campus Connect: Enhancing Cross-cultural Communication Through a Centralized Student Hub for Academics, Socializing, and More in a Global University Setting”
• Hang Luong, “Campus Connect—The All-in-One Student Hub for Academics, Socializing, and More: Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Centralized Social Media Platform in a Global University Setting”
• Feifei Luo, “Oil Migrants to Maoming in Early New China”
• Dongkun Lyu, “Care Work, Female Domestic Workers and Art Workers in Shanghai, and Material, Social, and Artistic Reproduction”

AB3107                      3C: Feminist and Queer Philosophy

Discussant: Hwa Yeong Wang

• Yiwen Zhou, “Queer Orientation and Phenomenology of Atmosphere”
• Zu Gan, “The Self in Making: An Engaged Cultural Criticism”

15:30-15:45               Coffee Break

15:45-17:15               Round Table Discussion on Politics of Gender and Sexuality

AB2103                      Chairs: Carlos Rojas

Panelists: Robin Rodd, Kolleen Guy, Titas Chakraborty, Selina-Lai Henderson

17:30-18:30            Closing Ceremony

Water Pavilion

18:30                       Gala Dinner

AB Executive Dining Room

 

 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS BIOS

Gabriel N. Rosenberg

is Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and History at Duke University and a Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He writes about the historical and contemporary linkages among race, gender, and sexuality and the global food system with a specific emphasis on the interwoven ecological, political, and cultural imprint of animal agriculture. His first book, The 4-H Harvest: Sexuality and the State in Rural America (UPenn 2016), was a gendered and sexual history of the USDA’s iconic agricultural youth clubs and their role in socializing heteronormativity and agribusiness in 20th century rural America. His current book project, American Flesh, explores the historical overlaps between livestock breeding and human race science and the role that they have both played in shaping reproductive technologies and governance–for people and animals alike. For popular outlets such as The New Republic, Vox.com, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, Rosenberg frequently writes about food policy and, with political scientist Jan Dutkiewicz, he is currently writing a book about the topic, Feed the People!: Why Industrial Food is Good and How We Can Make it Better, which will be published by Basic Books later this year. He has held fellowships at Yale University, the University of Pittsburgh, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Humanities Center. At the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, he co-leads a project on animal mobilities in the history of science that will culminate in an edited issue of Osiris scheduled for publication in summer of 2025.

Usha Iyer

is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University. They are the author of Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2020). Their current book project, Jammin’: Black and Brown Media Intimacies between India and the Caribbean, studies the affective engagements of Caribbean spectators with Indian cinema and the impact of Caribbean performance cultures on Indian film industries. They are co-editing the volume, Shift Focus: Reframing the Indian New Waves, with Manishita Dass. 

Yujie Zhu

is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, Australian National University, specializing in critical heritage studies. He has authored and edited nine books, including Making Places Sacred (2025) and China’s Heritage through History (2024). He was vice-president of the International Association of Critical Heritage Studies (2014–2020) and deputy chair of the IUAES Anthropology Tourism Committee (2013–2021).

 

 

KEYNOTE SPEECH ABSTRACTS

Gabriel N. Rosenburg

Hubert Goodale’s Feminized Cockerels: Industrial Chicken Breeding, Sex Control, and the Queer Ecology of Early Twentieth Century Endocrinology

Through gonadal grafting experiments, endocrinologists in the early 20th century engaged animal bodies as important sites of comparative knowledge production about human sexual development and “plasticity.” This talk explores the role of livestock animals in early endocrinology, in particular, by focusing on the experimental endocrinology of the early twentieth century poultry geneticist, Dr. Hubert Goodale. Goodale grafted hen ovaries into the bodies of castrated juvenile roosters to experimentally chart the mechanisms of galline sex development and to theorize about the complex relationships among genetics, hormones, and sex-linked traits in a variety of organisms—chickens, mice, cattle, swine, and humans. The talk foregrounds the economic and ecological context of emerging industrial chicken farming that mobilized Goodale’s work and it examines the “spillover” effects when galline and human bodies were compared. The talk shows the multispecies ecologies underpinning histories of human race, gender, and sexuality, and it discloses the animating and pervasive powers of affect, fantasy, and desire within the applied life sciences and the broader food system.

Usha Iyer

 The Sticky Intimacies of Jammin’: Mapping Media Traffic and Femme Performance Repertoires between India and the Caribbean

This talk draws from my current study of the traffic of media forms between South Asia and the Caribbean in relation to discourses of race and ethnicity that have developed around the histories of African enslavement and Indian indentureship. In particular, I examine the performative repertoires of a female Indian orchestra singer, Kanchan, and a double diasporic, Indo-Caribbean-Canadian drag queen, Priyanka. Across these two instances of transoceanic media exchange, I ask what intimacies and distances become apparent in the negotiations of race, gender, and region when an Indian singer performs Caribbean women’s plantation songs and a Caribbean-Canadian performer crafts her drag avatar out of a cinephilic attachment to popular Indian cinema. I develop the framework of “jammin’” to map multi-directional, transregional, cross-racial flows and frictions. Working between the scales of empire, enslavement, and indenture on the one hand, and the “wayward” and minor forms and figures of the plantation song, the orchestra singer, and the drag queen on the other, organizes and narrates this long story of capital and labor as an embodied and intimate history of industrial forms and cultural circuits mediated by femme performance forms.

Yujie Zhu

From National Memory to Global Justice: Heritage Politics and the Transnational Movement for ‘Comfort Women’

How does global memory movement challenge national narratives of war and reshape the gendered politics of historical justice? Difficult heritage—histories of suffering, violence, and displacement—has long been contested and instrumentalized within national frameworks, often reinforcing male-centered war narratives and political identity formation. This talk examines how the global memory movement disrupts these structures through transnational efforts to recognize and commemorate ‘comfort women’, women subjected to military sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army. Through museums, statues, public education, and activism, this movement has facilitated historical recognition, feminist interventions into war memory, and transnational advocacy for justice. Moving beyond nation-centered remembrance, it has mobilized translocal memory networks through UNESCO Memory of the World nominations, student and volunteer exchanges, and community healing initiatives. More than just historical recognition, this movement actively addresses contemporary social justice issues, including women’s rights, sexual violence, education, and public health. By examining the intersections of heritage and memory politics, this address argues that the global memory movement for ‘comfort women’ has not only advanced historical justice and transnational solidarity but has also reshaped the landscape of remembrance and gender justice in the contemporary world.

 

 

STUDENT PAPER ABSTRACTS 

1A: South Korean Politics and Culture 

Emma Yun尹美莲/ DKU

The 4B Movement, Korean Feminism, and the Colonization of South Korean Feminist Narratives

Following the news of Donald Trump winning America’s 2024 presidential election, social media sites such as TikTok and Twitter/X were flooded with posts raising concerns over how his reelection may impact the status of women’s rights in the nation. Memories of his promotion of overturning Roe v. Wade’s protection of abortion rights, sexual misconduct and rape cases, and contributions towards inciting acts of violence committed predominantly by other white men have provided many with valid reasons for panic and questions on how to navigate Trump’s socially tense America (Levine, 2020). In particular, American women have been mentioning South Korea’s 4B movement as a possible form of protest against a sociopolitical atmosphere they view as increasingly misogynistic, with posts encouraging others to adopt the 4B lifestyle garnering millions of views and comments in hours (@jungsooyawning, 2024). Accordingly, American and other Western news companies such as Politico, Rolling Stone, PBS, the Washington Post, and more have jumped to report on the rising popularity of the 4B movement and introduce the feminist movement they portray as having swept across Korean youths to American audiences (Kim, 2024). However, this idealized Western idea of the 4B movement is inaccurate to Korean women’s realities, oversimplifies the unique struggles of feminism in Korea, and over exaggerates the movement’s significance in its home country in a way that borders on a colonialist appropriation of 4B that’s divorced from its cultural context. 

Yongkun Wu (Vicky) 吴泳锟/ DKU

Exploring Corporeal Affects Through the Virtual: Bodily Potential in Lee Heejoo’s Phantom Limb Pain

Focusing on bodily sensations and connections, this article explores the abundance and diversity of corporeal affects arising from deokjil activity, which refers to passionate love and devotion for a particular person, group, or interest in the context of fandom culture. Based on a close reading of Lee Heejoo’s Phantom Limb Pain 환상통, a Korean novel that approaches the emotional complexities of deokjil from the perspective of two fans and an observer, this study particularly attends to the emergence and flow of physiological affects in deokjil moments directly or indirectly mediated by technologies.

In this context, virtuality extends beyond the realm of information technology by embracing the broader meaning of the virtual as bodily potential. The body refers not only to the biological entity marked by skin and physiological boundaries but also to entities such as language that are capable of travelling through affect. This article unpacks corporeal intensities through the phenomena of entrainment, mimesis, and synchrony occurring when the protagonists are affectively “touched” by their multi-sensory, kinesthetic engagement in deokjil. In exploring the characters’ corporeal affects through the concept of the virtual, this article considers the novel Phantom Limb Pain as an effective narrative that portrays deokjil as a field of affect and bodily potential.

Stewart Shauna/ NYU

Constructing Desire: A Cross-Cultural Feminist Analysis of “Cheer Up” and “The Applicant”  

Using Simone de Beauvoir’s discussions of women as the other in reference to their relationship to man from The Second Sex, I analyze “The Applicant” a poem by Sylvia Plath and “Cheer Up” a song by South Korean girl group Twice. These pieces, despite being produced in different historical and cultural contexts and delivered in varied genres, possess similar understandings of the role of the female body in relation to the male. The woman serves as object of desire for the man. In these pieces however, these desires are shaped and manufactured by the females themselves, in order to cater to the male gaze. “The Applicant” focuses on the selling of a bride to a groom by a female intermediary, while “Cheer Up” showcases pleasurable images of women, mediated by the personification of the male gaze. Through both of these pieces, the female figures wish to please the male consumer through commodifying female bodies. In order to maintain the attention of their consumers, the women rely on the reinforcement of gender norms to make their products (bodies) desirable. These norms dictate the interactions between the male and female which once disrupted leads to chaos and confusion. Through literary and visual analysis, I engage with the two pieces in order to recover the significance of their resemblance. I aim to highlight that even when female agents construct desire it may still follow patriarchal notions and to free themselves from the male gaze, they must create images that are no longer informed by male fantasies.

 

1B: Female Communities in China and the Diaspora

Wuyou Wang 王无忧/ NYU

From Dating App to Diasporic Queer Community:  Rela and the Chinese Lesbians Community in New York

This study investigates how diasporic Chinese lesbian college students in New York City navigate dual identities of nationality and sexuality through the use of the digital platform Rela, a popular lesbian dating app.

By employing ethnographic methods, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the research explores how this group forms a tightly-knit diasporic queer community. Rela serves as more than a dating app; its multifunctional interface fosters socialization, community building, and identity negotiation.

The study examines how these women balance cultural dissonance between their East Asian upbringing and the liberal environment of New York, using the app to maintain transnational ties with their homeland while resisting compulsory heterosexuality. The research draws on Adrienne Rich’s framework of compulsory heterosexuality and incorporates insights from digital media studies to analyze how technology reconfigures traditional notions of space, identity, and belonging. Ultimately, this work highlights the liberating potential of digital platforms in shaping queer diasporic experiences while acknowledging the class privileges that influence access to such spaces.

Wenjing Xu许雯静/ DKU

Love, Vulnerability, and Resistance: The Politics of Female Fictive Kinship in Contemporary China

China’s compressed modernity has hastened social transformation, widening generational gaps in feminist consciousness, while young women grapple with enduring patriarchal norms rooted in Confucian ideology. Historically, Chinese kinship has emphasized blood ties, filial piety, and rigid gender hierarchies, often constraining women’s autonomy under expectations of duty and sacrifice. Within this context, “parenting-style friendships”—mentor-like bonds among peers with slight age differences, such as senior and junior students in schools, offering emotional and intellectual support—emerge as a distinctive feminist phenomenon among young Chinese women. This paper theorizes these relationships as fictive kinship in family of self-choice, drawing on Judith Butler’s “vulnerability as resistance,” bell hooks’ “love as a liberatory practice,” and xiaofictive kinship scholarship, to explore how these connections, grounded in shared vulnerability, resist patriarchal structures in Chinese society through a practice of love infused with critical rationality. By applying Western theories to a non-Western context, this study enriches feminist and kinship frameworks, proposing a resistant feminist perspective that reimagines fictive kinship beyond transactional ties like religion, race, or community. Findings show that these friendships, arising from mutual vulnerability to patriarchal oppression, challenge traditional mother-daughter roles within patriarchal frameworks through a purposeful practice of love focused on growth, trauma healing, and emotional support rather than material obligations. Unlike collective kinship models, they remain individualized and adaptable, avoiding new rigidities. This research underscores the potential of redefining kinship through feminist values, offering young women globally a model to dismantle patriarchal legacies and forge liberatory bonds. 

Yuting Zeng曾钰婷/ DKU

Cai in Her Ways: Gendered Talent and the Identity of Cai Nü in Female Communities

The identity of cai nü 才女 (talented woman) in late imperial China was not a fixed category but a negotiated construct shaped within female communities, where women played a central role in defining and sustaining literary talent. While male-dominated literary traditions contributed to shaping cai nü, this study examines how the meaning of cai 才 (talent) differed between cai nü and cai zi (talented men). Rather than merely replicating the masculine ideal of literary talent, cai nü embodied qualities that were deeply intertwined with feminine virtues and interpersonal relationships, particularly within inner-chamber female networks. Through a close reading of Wu Meng Tang Ji 午梦堂集, this research explores how women themselves engaged in the making of cai nü. This study examines maternal and female kin influence, considering how mothers and elder sisters cultivated cai nü within the household, reinforcing a feminine literary lineage that emphasized qualities beyond mere textual competence. Second, it investigates the role of marital networks, highlighting how literary talent was not only a means of personal distinction but also a tool for navigating relationships among sisters-in-law, where talent functioned as a shared social asset. Third, it explores the female gaze on cai nü, analyzing how talented women assessed one another and formed literary networks that reinforced a distinctively feminine interpretation of talent. By repositioning cai nü within female relational frameworks, this study seeks to demonstrate that the meaning of talent was not neutral but gendered, shaped by the expectations and negotiations within women’s communities. Examining cai nü through women’s perspectives offers a deeper understanding of how literary talent functioned as a fluid and context-dependent identity within female spaces.

 

1C: Feminist and Queer Histories

Yizhi Lyu闾怡之/ DKU

The Queering Witch: Unexplainable Bodies and Contemporary Identities

This essay examines the evolution of witch imagery from historical vilification to contemporary reclamation, exploring the intersections of gender, power, and societal norms. It investigates the origins of the witch archetype as a malevolent, child-harming figure and traces its transformation into a symbol of empowerment. It delves into the colonial history of witch hunts, analyzing how the female body became a site of repression, ignorance, and fetishization. The investigation then shifts to the modern reinterpretation of witchcraft, examining its significance within queer temporalities and spaces that challenge heteronormative family structures and gender roles. Through analysis of diverse cultural artifacts, including films, literature, museum and performance art, the essay illuminates how the witch figure has become a powerful emblem for feminist and queer communities. The essay will also expand beyond Western discourse to explore witchcraft’s reflections and roots in East Asian culture. Ultimately, this essay aims to unravel the complex history of witchcraft and examine its contemporary implications, offering insights into how historical symbols can be repurposed to challenge oppressive structures and create new spaces for marginalized identities.

Philip Yanakiev/ DKU

The Suffering of Women in Times of War

Paweł Pawlikowski’s 2013 film Ida focuses on how the Second World War turned civilian women into casualties and the terror through which it defined what it meant to be a woman in such trying times. The device through which this is done is the story of a young woman, orphaned in childhood, searching for her parents in Soviet-aligned Poland. Visually, the collective traumatic memories of the war taint the relationships between people in the gray in which the film is shot. This bleakness is most evident in the history of Ida and her aunt Wanda. The former is an innocent civilian suffering the consequences of war directly – for most of her life, she has been living without her parents, her true name, her Jewish heritage, and her agency in a remote Catholic convent. Her only surviving relative is the polar opposite of the values she has been taught. Her parents’ fate is one of cruelty, and her desire to visit their graves before starting a new way of life is part of the duty she feels towards them and their memory. Ida’s aunt Wanda seemingly has a different story – she is corrupt, heartless, and has many vices. Though freed from fear, her existence is reduced to indulging in carnal pleasures, chain-smoking, and drinking herself to sleep. The trauma of losing a child, the experience of serving the communist regime without emotions, and the duty she goes on to fulfill with her niece are enough to turn her character into a critique of the consequences of war and push her to find the human inside of her by jumping to her death. The circumstances of her suicide contain the tragedy of war in the contributing to the understanding of what it meant to be a woman in such extraordinary times.

Jingxuan Xu徐靖萱/ NYU

Cinematic Persona: Female Cross-Dressing in Republican China

The Republican era in China (1912–1949) marked a period of cultural transformation, shaped by Western influence, the rise of mass entertainment, and evolving gender norms. While cross-dressing had long been a tradition in Chinese theater—most notably in Yue opera, where female performers took on male roles—the phenomenon gained new prominence in the Republican period. In the film industry, a number of films incorporated narratives in which actresses cross-dressed as men, which met with widespread popularity and sparked significant public discussion, ultimately influencing contemporary fashion trends. Beyond individual films, certain actresses, such as Yuan Meiyun, cultivated star personas centered around cross-dressing, frequently appearing in a series of films that showcased this aesthetic and captivated a broad audience. This phenomenon was not confined to the film industry alone; female celebrities from other spheres, particularly courtesans, also adopted male attire in photographs and public appearances, leveraging cross-dressing as a means of attracting attention and shaping their public image.

This study examines how movie stars and other female celebrities of the period leveraged cross-dressing to craft an androgynous allure, challenging and redefining contemporary gender expectations. Through an analysis of films, press coverage, and photographs, I explore how these performances subverted dominant familial-based gender norms and engaged with new ideas of “modern woman.” In this case, cinematic and photographic performance became a site of both accommodation and negotiation, facilitating and popularizing different gender expressions with new visual technology.

 

 

1D: Social Media and the Metaverse 

Haoxin Feng 冯好歆/ DKU

Disrupting Time, Reconstructing Selves: The Metaverse’s Role in Memory and Personal Identity

The rise of digital media has profoundly altered traditional perceptions of time and space. Electronic communication compresses and distances these dimensions, enabling interconnectedness while reshaping spatial awareness and temporal experience (Tsatsou, 2009). The emergence of the metaverse, driven by immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI), intensifies this transformation. As an extension of earlier digital environments, the metaverse does not merely extend reality but actively interferes with it, constructing relational spaces that redefine agency and perception (Verhoeff, 2025). This disruption has significant implications for memory, identity, and storytelling, as virtual spaces enable new modes of self-construction and interaction.

Scholars have noted that globalized digital flows contribute to a loss of spatial orientation and a reconfiguration of reality in cyberspace (Virilio, 2023). In this context, the metaverse challenges conventional understandings of presence, as users navigate a fluid interplay between physical and digital selves. The concept of “internet time” (Tsatsou, 2009) illustrates how media compress temporal experiences, altering how individuals engage with memory and narrative structures. Furthermore, Katachie and Kessler (2024) argue that the metaverse inherits and transforms prior digital imaginaries, granting users greater control over identity and social interaction while simultaneously disrupting traditional temporal and spatial boundaries.

This paper explores the implications of these shifts, focusing on how the metaverse reconfigures storytelling through temporal fluidity and spatial transformation. By fostering immediacy and interconnectedness, the metaverse opens new avenues for identity formation while introducing fragmentation and uncertainty regarding the “true self.” Through an analysis of contemporary media theories, this study examines how digital environments reshape human perception, raising critical questions about the future of time, space, and selfhood in an increasingly virtual world.

Chengxi Yin尹呈兮/DKU

Gaining Pleasure in Infinite Game Worlds:  Digital Reading Practices of Infinite Fiction in China

Infinite fiction is a popular genre of Chinese online literature characterized by protagonists navigating through various survival games in distinct small worlds with horror elements. This study examines the audiences’ fascination with this type of genre driven by the motivation to gain pleasure through digital reading practices. Drawing on audience research, this study challenges the textual determinism model that assumes a fixed meaning in media texts by indicating the role of the active audience and further incorporates the concepts of narrative transportation and realism in the analysis. The study combines textual analysis of eleven infinite fiction novels and thematic analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews with 24 readers. The findings highlight the active role of readers in their discerning criteria and preferences for evaluating infinite fiction, as well as their transportation and immersion in the narrative worlds mediated by realism. Based on the findings, this study further proposes a theoretical model integrating narrative transportation and realism in order to explain the mechanisms through which active readers derive pleasure from infinite fiction in three pathways. By examining infinite fiction through an audience-centered perspective, the study provides insights into the evolving dynamics of digital reading practices in contemporary China.

Xiaosang Wang 王小桑/ DKU

Feminist Discourse System of Chinese Social Medias

Despite its isolation from the global internet, Chinese social media have developed distinguishing feminist discourse systems across different platforms, as an extension of the global feminist ideology system and its influence. This paper is limited in length so it will not have mass data collections and list all the information one could reach at a certain time on different media platforms. Instead, this paper will focus on the summarization of different aspects of this discourse system: the theoretical source, the application/evaluation, and the participation manifested in communities, discussion groups, and public figures/opinion leadership accounts. The given examples will be analyzed to proceed with a discussion on the definitive features of this feminist discourse system, and the key elements that make it an integrated system to be recognized. In conclusion, these studies will show the distingushing features of the Chinese feminist discourse system on social platforms, as well as interpret its role in the global feminist discourse system. 

 

2A: Gendered Perspectives on Chinese Literature 

Yuqing Wang 王雨晴/ DKU

Investigating Female Education through the Character of Lin Daiyu in Dream of the Red Chamber

This project explores female education in pre-modern China through the character of Lin Daiyu in Dream of the Red Chamber. Unlike most women of her era, Daiyu received a well-rounded academic education that included studying the Confucian classics, the Four Books, poetry, and theater. Her exposure to literary knowledge cultivated her intelligence, self-confidence, and artistic talent. However, female education in pre-modern China was not solely about intellectual development; it also served as a means of reinforcing Confucian gender norms.

Beyond textual learning, Daiyu’s education was shaped by non-textual influences, such as guidance from elders and social interactions with peers. Figures like Grandmother Jia and Xue Baochai played a crucial role in instilling Confucian ideals of feminine virtue, teaching Daiyu restraint, social conformity, and emotional discipline. Over time, Daiyu undergoes a transformation—from an outspoken and emotionally expressive girl to a more socially conscious woman.

Her journey reflects the dual nature of female education in pre-modern China: it functioned both as a tool for intellectual growth and as a mechanism for shaping gender roles, ultimately influencing women’s self-expression, behavior, and identity. By examining Daiyu’s experiences, this project provides a comprehensive analysis of the educational pathways available to elite women and the broader implications of female learning within the sociocultural framework of the time.

Ethan Mills/ DKU

Wanderer, Storyteller, Feminist: The Untranslated Legacy of Sanmao

Sanmao (Echo Chen Ping, 1943–1991) was a transnational writer whose life and work embodied a “life in translation.” As a woman who defied societal expectations, she became a literary icon, inspiring generations of readers—particularly women—across Asia. This paper focuses on two main aspects of her legacy. First, Sanmao: A Life in Translation explores how her nomadic life across continents and languages shaped her identity and storytelling. Born in China and raised in Taiwan, Sanmao lived in Spain, the Western Sahara, and the Canary Islands, communicating in Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, and English. Her writing vividly reflects these multilingual, multicultural experiences: she often narrated Spanish or Arabic dialogues through Chinese, effectively translating her life for her readers. Themes of cross-cultural adaptation, displacement, and belonging pervade her essays and travelogues. Second, The Absence of Translations examines why the majority of Sanmao’s works remain untranslated into English. It discusses challenges in translating her narratives, including the linguistic texture of her writing (with its mix of Chinese idioms and foreign words), rich cultural references, and hybrid genre (memoir, travelogue, essay). Examples from her work—such as her essay “The Phoenix”—are used to show the challenges of translating her work. This paper argues that bringing Sanmao’s works into English and other languages is crucial: it would not only fill a gap in world literature but also introduce global readers to a pioneering female voice that bridges East and West. By examining Sanmao’s life in translation and the reasons for her limited presence in English, this paper emphasizes the importance of making her legacy accessible to a broader audience—allowing her to take her rightful place as an international feminist icon.

 

2B: Comparative Historiography

Marta Ewelina Wieczorkiewicz/ NYU

Between Deification and Damnation: Female Spiritual Authority, Legal Codes, and Religious Anxieties in Ming-Qing China and Medieval Europe

This interdisciplinary study examines how female spiritual figures in Ming-Qing China, medieval Europe encountered contrasting legal responses—ranging from divine endorsement to heretical condemnation—through an analysis of official legal codes, religious texts, and cultural narratives. Focusing on the case studies of Lady Jinhua, a shamaness subsequently revered as a local deity in China, and Joan of Arc, the visionary executed for heresy, this research draws on the Great Ming Code, the Great Qing Code, inquisitorial records, and canon law to uncover the gendered and religious forces shaping these divergent outcomes. Methodologically, the project employs readings of primary sources such as the writings of Xie Zhaozhe and Qu Dajun, alongside biblical injunctions (e.g., Deuteronomy 12:32–13:10; Luke 11:14–28) and trial documents from ecclesiastical courts and edicts. Additionally, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) provides a cinematic lens on her trial, offering a visual counterpart to archival records. By examining key legal statutes—such as the Confucian-influenced tolerance for spirit mediums in China versus Europe’s rigid canon law—this study illuminates how state-religion relations influenced the policing of spiritual authority. In parallel, religious anxieties concerning demonic influence, ritual purity, and doctrinal orthodoxy underscored the tension between grassroots reverence and institutional censure. Through a comparative lens, the paper analyzes how female spiritual power was alternately institutionalized, commodified, or criminalized, revealing its significance to broader sociopolitical structures. From Lady Jinhua’s eventual deification in local temple cults to Joan of Arc’s posthumous sanctification yet initial condemnation, the outcomes highlight both the malleability of public perception and the capacity of legal frameworks to codify or suppress female religious agency.

Enkhkhuslen Bat-Erdene/DKU

Women’s Political Empowerment in East Asia

The 2024 Parliamentary elections marked a significant milestone for women’s representation in Mongolia; electoral reforms increased the number of Parliamentary seats and instituted a 30% female candidate quota. Although more women are in the Parliament, they still face some challenges such as widespread misogyny, marginalization and limited fundings. This paper compares the treatment of female politicians on social media to that of their male colleagues. Facebook comments on four male and female MPs are collected to explore gendered political prejudices. Five themes are identified from the comments: “gender/sex-related,” “related to identity,” “related to action,” “related to policy,” and “others.” The findings show that female members received nearly twice as many comments, with extremely uncivil, gendered remarks. Both male and female politicians received negative comments regarding their appearance, but female politicians received twice more negative comments than male politician. Female MPs were more commonly targeted for their hairstyles, dress, and makeup, whereas male MPs were subjected to personal attacks on ethnic identity and family background. These trends demonstrate the continuing gender prejudices that shape popular perceptions of Mongolian leaders. Furthermore, both genders were harshly criticized for their acts, with seasoned politicians facing the most negative comments. The findings show the persistent challenges experienced by female politicians, underlining the current challenges of achieving gender equality in Mongolian politics.

Canran Zhang张粲然/ DKU

Similar Structure Between Colonialism and Patriarchy

Within the framework of patriarchy, men have historically been portrayed as the stronger, more rational, and superior gender, while women have been posted to the role of the weaker, emotional, and inferior gender, which justified the loss of women’s right. In the context of colonialism, colonizers often positioned themselves as the standard of civilization, progress, and enlightenment, while framing the colonized as barbarous, backward, and in need of “saving.” This binary opposition—civilized versus barbarous—served to justify the domination, exploitation and damage of colonized societies. These dualistic structure—colonizer/colonized and men/women—reveal striking parallels in their structures of superiority, suppression, domination, and damage. This essay seeks to explore the similar structure of colonialism and patriarchy, showing that patriarchy is the colonialism between genders, responding to the argument that colonialism can reduce patriarchy in colonized societies, seeking to provide evidence that colonialism and patriarchy can strengthen each other.

 

2C: Chinese Social Media and Feminist Discourse

Flora Xu徐昂/ DKU

Beyond the Gaze: Ethnic Identity and Feminist Expression in Chinese Social Media Platforms

2024 was hailed by Chinese netizens as the “Year of Feminism,” a period that witnessed a remarkable rise in feminist discourse in online spaces. Many educated Chinese feminists, particularly those studying abroad, use social media to promote feminist ideas through short videos, representing a new form of intersectionality. Positioned at the intersection of cultural collisions between Chinese and Western ideologies and intellectual struggles in a patriarchal world, they use their knowledge and social media to challenge their situation. Through semi-structured interviews with 10 Chinese feminist influencers studying in the U.S., this paper explores the link between ethnic spectatorship and feminist expression. Drawing on Teresa de Lauretis’ concept of narrative identification in films, which explains how viewers align with narrative elements for pleasure, ensuring “the hold of the image” under the male gaze, this study reveals a different situation for these influencers due to their ethnic identity. As ethnic spectators, they view Chinese culture from a Western perspective, creating a cultural gaze and experiencing a detachment of image from narrative. Even if they empathize with the narrative, they cannot fully identify with the images in mainstream Chinese narratives. This detachment is exemplified in their social media content in reverse, as their new mechanism for Chinese digital feminism to deconstruct the male-dominated structures of image-making. It potentially forecasts future changes in how people perceive culture and gender in this era of rapid technological advancement and information flow.

Xinyu Liao廖心语/ DKU

Between Liberation and Marketing: Examining Sex Toy Discourse on Xiaohongshu

Xiaohongshu has become a key platform for feminist discourse in China, offering an accessible yet performative space for digital feminism. While related research has explored topics like beauty standards and body shame, little attention has been given to more sensitive but deeply feminist-aligned issues such as female sexuality and sexual agency. In the broader Chinese context, studies on sex toys remain scarce—especially regarding emerging brands that market aesthetically designed, women-centric products through feminist narratives, often emphasizing female sexual autonomy and empowerment.

This study examines how such sex toys—both as commercial products and symbols of female sexual agency—are marketed and discussed on Xiaohongshu. It investigates whether these commercial narratives genuinely foster sexual empowerment or merely commodify feminist discourse for consumer engagement.

Using a qualitative approach, this research analyzes user-generated discussions and brand-sponsored content on Xiaohongshu, alongside semi-structured interviews with 20 Chinese female users (ages 18-25). Grounded in feminist consumerism and digital feminism, it explores how users perceive sex toys—as tools of empowerment, objects of stigma, or commodified expressions of feminism. It also examines how Xiaohongshu’s platform structures shape discussions on female sexuality while constraining feminist expression.

By situating Xiaohongshu at the intersection of commerce and feminist discourse, this study interrogates whether the commercialization of empowerment fosters open discussions on female sexuality or reinforces consumer-driven gender norms. Contributing to the growing scholarship on feminist consumerism in China, it highlights an overlooked topic in digital media and gender studies.

This research was supported by the 2023-2024 Gender Study Initiative Research Grant and conducted in collaboration with Tong Yang (Class of 2027) under the supervision of Prof. Fan Liang.

 

 

2D: Cultural Imaginations

Shenglang Nie 聂圣朗/ DKU

The Yellow Horn: The White American’s Self-Prisoning in Their Fetishisation of African American Jazz Music and Asian American Woman

This paper interrogates how white American masculinity consolidates power through fetishising African American jazz and Asian American women, framing these practices as symbiotic tools of racial domination. Merging Freudian ambivalence with postcolonial and feminist critiques, it argues that desire and repulsion toward marginalised groups sustain white supremacy via paradoxical performances.

In jazz history, the trumpet—silent as an inanimate object—becomes a site of phallic authority when performed by African Americans like Louis Armstrong. White musicians, coveting this perceived virility, appropriated jazz while denigrating its Black roots, epitomising ambivalent desire. Similarly, the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, where six Asian women were murdered, reflect how racialised sexual fantasies (“Lotus Blossom,” “Dragon Lady”) license violence under the guise of “eliminating temptation.” Historical precedents like the 1875 Page Law, which barred Chinese women under moral (and libidinal) panic, underscore the enduring conflation of Asian femininity with deviance.

Artistic resistance, however, destabilises these fetishes. Helen Lee’s “Sally’s Beauty Spot” interrogates the commodification of Asian female bodies, while David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly” dismantles colonial fantasies of submissive “Oriental” women; both revealing how racial fetishism silences complex identities to sustain white dominance. Ultimately, such fetishisation entraps its perpetrators: reducing marginalised groups to static stereotypes exposes the fragility of white hegemony, which depends on the very Others it seeks to control. The trumpet and Asian American woman emerge as “Yellow Horns”—objects of white desire that, when critically reanimated, unveil the contradictions of racial capitalism and the potential for emancipatory resistance. The work aims to advance intersectional discourse by illustrating how race, gender, and power intertwine to uphold domination while catalysing subversion.

Isabelle Zhang张简童/ DKU

Empowered Representations: Race and Gender in Rosetta Reitz’s Album Covers

This paper examines how Rosetta Reitz’s album covers challenge traditional racial and gender representations in African American jazz album cover art. As a jazz producer in the 1980s, Reitz reissued albums of African American female jazz artists whose contributions had been largely forgotten from history.

As a predominantly African American musical form, jazz album visuals tend to favor modernist art styles and lack any black cultural representations at that time. In contrast, Reitz’s designs consistently featured images of African American women, making their presence central to the records’ identity and challenging dominant visual narratives.

Moreover, unlike conventional portrayals of women in advertising, which Goffman (1979) critiques for their passive postures and expressions, Reitz’s album covers depict women in active and empowered positions. For instance, the cover of Red White & Blues (1980) features one of the album’s artists, Bessie Smith, holding a torch in a stance reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty, visually linking Black female presence to national pride and iconography. Through this imagery, Reitz positioned these women not as passive subjects but as key figures in jazz history.

Through these visual representations, Reitz’s covers become a form of cultural intervention. Schudson (2000) argues that advertising serves as an ideological force shaping public perceptions. Similarly, Reitz’s cover art reshaped cultural understandings of African American women by acknowledging both their racial and gendered identities. Through album design, she created a space where these artists were not only recognized but celebrated, challenging mainstream narratives that have obscured them.

Ngo Hana / DKU

Vietnam’s Complex Relationship with the Concept of the American Dream through “Goodbye Mother” (2019)

This paper examines the concept of the American Dream in Vietnam, tracing its evolution from the post-Vietnam War era to the present day through a mix of comparative and textual research methods. The study suggests how the immigrants’ American Dreams are constructed and influenced by several aspects beyond financial ambition while considering the historical, social, and economic factors that shape the formation of such a phenomenon. Using the impacts of the American Dream on one’s identity and family in Trịnh Đình Lê Minh’s LGBTQ+ film Thưa Mẹ Con Đi – Goodbye Mother as an exemplification, the research uncovers the intricate relationship between the connection and disconnection, expectation and reality, outer and inner conflicts as a Vietnamese diaspora in contemporary Vietnam. Through exploring the conceptualized American Dream under the current changes in Vietnamese society, the research reveals how wars can generate multigenerational impacts on human society, thus suggesting a new perspective while looking at war and its long-lasting consequences. Ultimately, this study contributes to a broader discussion on immigration and diaspora studies, drawing a connection between Vietnamese studies and Vietnamese American studies.

Iveel Tengis / DKU

 “Tomie: Victimhood and (Monstrous) Femininity”

This paper explores the complex entanglement of victimhood and (monstrous) femininity in Tomie, Junji Ito’s seminal horror manga, through a gendered lens grounded in Japan’s sociocultural context. While conventional horror tropes often reduce women to passive victims or vengeful spirits, Tomie presents a figure who is simultaneously victimized and monstrous—both subject to patriarchal violence and a potent disruptor of gendered norms. Drawing from Japanese popular culture and feminist theory, the paper argues that Tomie’s regenerative monstrosity destabilizes hegemonic ideals of femininity, embodying cultural anxieties about women’s shifting roles in post-bubble Japan. Yet, Tomie’s refusal to conform is not a straightforward act of feminist rebellion; her identity is inextricably linked to male desire and violence. By analyzing the interplay between gender norms, bodily excess, and narrative framing, the paper highlights Tomie as a cultural site of ambivalence—where popular media does not merely reinforce social norms but also creates space for multiplicity, subversion, and reimagining gendered subjectivities.

 

3A: Queer Practices

Mingjiang Gao 高铭江/ DKU

Gay Bear Culture on Chinese Social Media: Influencers, Visual Self-Presentation, and Platform Visibility

In recent years, the bear culture, originally a Western gay subculture, has gained significant visibility on Chinese social media platforms. Unlike the Western bear culture, which embraces diverse body types and natural physical traits, the Chinese gay bear is strictly defined as a man with a robust, slightly chubby body, short hair, a thick mustache, and a round face. This visual-oriented gay identity has become widely admired and sought after within China’s online gay community, leading to many gay men deliberately modifying their bodies to become a qualified bear. Unlike other gay influencers, gay bear influencers have reached significant visibility even in public realms on Chinese social media. Moreover, although they must conform to a strict body standard, they are less pressured by such an external gaze than many other social media influencers, displaying high self-esteem and confidence. Therefore, this paper examines the role of social media platforms in shaping the rise and reconfiguration of bear culture and how it mediates Chinese gay bear’s identity, self-presented bodies, and external gaze. It takes two representative gay bear influencers on Chinese social media as an interpretative case study, integrating theories of media self-presentation, platform (queer) visibility, and sexual objectification to highlight the role of Chinese social media platforms in constructing such a phenomenon. The findings suggest that the rise and transformation of bear culture on Chinese social media not only result from the visual self-branding ideology of social media but are also shaped by the visibility politics of Chinese digital platforms. It further demonstrates how the dynamics of self-presentation and sexual objectification on social media—often considered causes of anxiety and low self-esteem among online influencers in previous research—do not always manifest similarly in nonheteronormative contexts, such as the Chinese bear culture.

Tongyu Mao 毛彤羽/ DKU

Psychoanalytical Factors Contributing to Cultivating Gay Men’s Misogyny: Castration Anxiety, Phallic Desire and Male Homosocial Desire

Misogyny is traditionally understood within heterosexual male frameworks, yet its presence among gay men remains underexplored. This study investigates the psychoanalytic factors contributing to possible misogynistic attitudes among gay men, focusing on castration anxiety, phallic desire, and male homosocial desire. Drawing from in-depth interviews with gay male college students, this research examines how unconscious anxieties and patriarchal power structures shape their perceptions of women. Freud’s concept of castration anxiety reveals how the fear of symbolic emasculation fosters disdain toward femininity, while the phallus, as a symbol of power, reinforces the subject-object dynamic that positions men as dominant figures. Furthermore, male homosocial desire cultivates an exclusionary in-group dynamic, wherein women are marginalized to affirm male bonds. The findings suggest that gay men, navigating an ambiguous social position between heterosexual men and women, may internalize patriarchal norms to secure their status within male-dominated spaces, inadvertently perpetuating misogynistic attitudes. This study contributes to gender studies by expanding the discourse on misogyny beyond heterosexuality and highlighting the complexities of power, identity, and desire in shaping gender relations.

Eva Guo 过佳烨/ NYU

Unwritten Queerness: Resisting Western Identity Politics in Queer Asian America

Queer Asian Americans navigate a fraught relationship with cultural belonging, caught between the exclusions of western assimilation and the rigid expectations of heritage. Within dominant queer discourse, visibility and self-disclosure are often positioned as necessary steps toward authenticity and liberation. Yet, these frameworks fail to account for the complexities of diasporic identity, where queerness does not always conform to western models of self-definition. This paper examines queer Asian American melancholia—not just as grief for an unattainable sense of belonging, but as a generative force for reimagining identity beyond dominant cultural narratives. Drawing from Wen Liu’s framework of diasporic melancholia and Sky Cleary’s existentialist theory of authenticity, this paper explores how queer Asian Americans resist western expectations of identity formation. Through a comparative case study of nonbinary Khmer American artist June Kuoch and Chinese Jewish transmasculine artist Chella Man, I analyze how both challenge dominant frameworks of queer identity in distinct ways. Kuoch resists hypervisibility, rejecting the expectation that queerness must be performed through confessional narratives, while Man engages with visibility while critiquing its commodification in mainstream media. By juxtaposing their perspectives, this paper highlights the multiplicity of queer Asian American resistance—a resistance that cannot be reduced to a single narrative of assimilation, visibility, or identity politics. Rather than viewing queerness as a fixed category, I argue that it operates as a dynamic negotiation of belonging, one that resists the imposition of rigid frameworks and embraces the complexities of diasporic identity.

Leqian Huang/ NYU

Seeking Spaces of Belonging: An Ethnographic Study of Bisexual Women in Shanghai and Guangdong

Bisexual women in Western discourse often struggle with belonging, being dismissed within heterosexual communities and stereotyped as promiscuous within lesbian communities. This project explores the lesser-studied experiences of bisexual women in Shanghai and Guangdong as they navigate social spaces and build community ties. I conducted a 5-month ethnographic longitudinal study with six bisexual women. Findings reveal these women grapple with heteronormative expectations in domestic settings, as none successfully came out to their parents or countered their efforts to enforce heterosexual relationships. Additionally, they face compromises within lesbian spaces: fearing rejection by “pure-blooded” lesbians and finding these spaces as not inclusive enough or too networking-focused. Bisexual women also connect through queer media, which serve as vital avenues for identity affirmation and community engagement. Regionally, differences emerged: In Shanghai, bisexual women form social groups through queer-friendly work cultures or remain passive on platforms like Weibo and WeChat due to busy schedules and an aversion to structured matchmaking events. Conversely, those in Guangdong are deeply embedded in various LGBTQ+ grassroots organizations, engaging in micro-activism and creating tight networks facilitated by key community figures. This research highlights the unique community-building practices of Chinese bisexual women and their use of digital technologies in crafting new connections, especially in contexts where physical spaces are increasingly subject to political crackdowns.

 

3B: Labor and Identity                                             

Hang Luong/ DKU

Campus Connect – The All-in-One Student Hub for Academics, Socializing, and More: Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Centralized Social Media Platform in a Global University Setting

This study examines the impact of Campus Connect, a centralized social media platform, in bridging cultural divides and enhancing communication between international and domestic students in a global university setting, especially in China. Using sentiment and thematic analysis of participant interviews, the study explores the platform’s intercultural bridging ability with engagement drivers, such as gamification features, barriers to connection, and sustainability of usage. Findings reveal that Campus Connect significantly enhances intercultural communication by fostering cross-cultural interactions through its English-language interface and organized content, which streamline dialogue and information sharing among diverse student groups. The platform’s design, which prioritizes inclusivity and structured engagement, positions it as a promising model for future initiatives aimed at bridging cultural divides in global academic settings. However, there are also challenges such as lower adoption rates among Chinese students, who remain skeptical of new platforms and entrenched in established tools like WeChat, and persistent technical inefficiencies. To fully realize its vision as a next-generation platform, the study underscores the importance of addressing technical limitations, expanding adoption through targeted campaigns or institutional partnerships, and integrating features like controlled anonymity to further lower barriers to participation. These insights offer practical recommendations for educators seeking to implement similar platforms in global academic environments, emphasizing the need for thoughtful design and institutional support to maximize their impact on student engagement and intercultural communication.

Feifei Luo 罗菲菲/ DKU

Oil Migrants to Maoming in Early New China

In 1950s and 60s, with a series of oil exploration programs carried out by the newly established government of People’s Republic of China, many oil workers from different parts of China moved to and settled down in places where the oil was extracted, forming a phenomenon of “oil migration”. As an offspring of an oil migrant family who moved to Maoming, a well-known “southern oil city” in the early days, I will study the experience of my family members who grew and lived within the system of Maoming Petrochemical Company, as a reflection of the broader state-initiated oil migration in collectivism era of early New China. Drew from the cases of my grandparents, uncle Huang, my mother’s siblings and my mother, this article will depict a picture of oil migration to Maoming from the perspectives of, respectively, the first generation of oil migrants, Maoming locals, and descendants of oil migrants’ family who chose to stay in or leave this oil city. Their experiences will be analyzed to proceed with a discussion on the features of domestic migration in a time of collectivist and related people’s reaction to it. In conclusion, this article will delve into my own family story as a case of oil migration to Maoming, aiming at reflecting the broader context of early New China’s collectivism era, as well as investigating the impact that this migration has on the migrants, the locals and their offsprings.

Dongkun Lyu吕东昆 / DKU

Care Work, Female Domestic Workers and Art Workers in Shanghai, and Material, Social, and Artistic Reproduction

This essay is about two kinds of care work. One is assigned to sustaining and reproducing the human body, and the other is about the reproduction of art spaces and the resurrection of the aura in artworks. I will discuss the former within the context of Shanghai’s domestic service companies from the late 20th to the early 21st century. By briefly tracing mythology and colonial history, I will introduce how care work was associated with, solidified, and institutionalized with gender divisions. Within the framework of Shanghai’s domestic service industry, I intend to unveil how the commodification and marketization of care work, essential to social reproduction, intertwine class conflict with gendered violence. Furthermore, I will delve into how these dynamics actively shape the acquisition of cultural capital in the symbolic realm, potentially contributing to the reproduction of the Transfuge de Classe. For the latter aspect of care work, I employed an analogy. Within the framework of Boris Groys’ art documentation and Foucault’s biopolitics, artworks can be positioned analogously to bodies in care work, with art workers serving as their caretakers. This form of care work with material and artistic reproduction, unfolds along both spatial and temporal dimensions. Vertically, it reconstructs the symbolic system of artistic value by resorting to constructing material spaces, while horizontally, it extends the sacred space through topological proliferation. Temporally, the care work of artworks is enacted through both demystifying preservation practices and re-sacralizing ritualistic activities. These two practices are interconnected through migrant women’s care labor. These women engaged in care work have indirectly and unintentionally fabricate the emergence of the art service world and by undertaking the responsibilities of social reproduction, they have made the latter form of care work possible.

 

3C: Feminist and Queer Philosophy

Yiwen Zhou周翊文/ Fudan University

Queer Orientation and Phenomenology of Atmosphere

This paper examines queer experience and orientation through the lens of phenomenology of atmosphere, arguing that sexual schema and intercorporeal atmosphere shape queer embodiment as a lived, dynamic process rather than a priori essence.

Queerness is an object of phenomenology because, as part of the body schema, the sexual schema is not an incidental attribute added to our existence but a fundamental way in which we inhabit the world as living, sexual beings.

Queerness is also a useful tool of phenomenology because, as so called “non-normative experience”, it creates distance from everyday life, allowing for critical reflection on the unexamined structures that shape our understanding of sexuality and gender.

Queer individuals often navigate spaces with an atmosphere of exclusion, where hostility or discomfort is not always explicit but felt. Phenomenology of atmosphere, as developed by Hermann Schmitz, provides a framework to analyze such experience. Atmosphere is neither purely subjective nor objective but a shared field that shapes bodily experience pre-reflectively. The queer body is immersed in and affected by this atmosphere before people consciously interpreting them. Unlike structuralist views that reduce the queer body to an inscribed object by social norms and construction, phenomenology of atmosphere emphasizes its lived, interactive nature.

Sexual orientation involves a desire directed toward others, situating individuals in an intercorporeal relation where atmosphere plays a crucial role. Within the sexual schema, one exists both for oneself and for others, shaping bodily experience through repeated intentions and performative acts. This process renders sexual schema an individualized bodily style rather than an innate essence, rejecting the gender binary. By emphasizing the fluid, dynamic nature of sexuality, this perspective justifies queer orientation as a legitimate mode of being, grounded not in fixed categories but in the lived, relational interplay between body, atmosphere, and social context.

Zu Gan 颜佐睿/ DKU

The Self in Making: An Engaged Cultural Criticism

This essay investigates the self within autobiographical writing. A key insight in autobiographical scholarship argues that the self is constructed and multiple. Yet, this investigation often takes place through a removed distance, ignoring the investigator’s own experiences. The omission of the critic’s own subjectivity creates an understanding of the self that is incomplete. Hence, I explore the self through a reflexive engagement. Drawing on cultural theory scholars such as Annette Kuhn and Ien Ang, I utilize an “engaged cultural criticism” that seeks to bridge the gap between the personal and the professional. I engage with self and autobiography in a double fashion. Firstly, I explore my self in writing my own autobiography in response to other similar auto/biographers. Secondly, I utilize self-reflexivity and analyze the self in my own autobiographical writing. I conclude by agreeing with other scholars that the self is not constructed in isolation. Instead, the self can be understood through literary conventions, global networks and relations with others. Uncovering these relations towards the self not only furthers the conversation about the self in general but also has lasting implications for the individual.

 

PARTICIPATING FACULTY BIOS

John Quelch / DKU

Dr. John Quelch is the Executive Vice Chancellor and Distinguished Professor of Social Science at Duke Kunshan University, with a distinguished career as a global academic leader. He has served as dean of top business schools in Europe, China, and the U.S., including London Business School, CEIBS, and the University of Miami. A former long-time professor at Harvard Business School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, his research centers on strategic marketing and consumer behavior. Quelch has authored 25 books and over seven million copies of his case studies have been sold worldwide. He is also known for his mentorship, having guided many students and future academic leaders. Educated at Oxford, Wharton, and Harvard, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a CBE honoree, and a recipient of Shanghai’s Silver Magnolia Award.

Carlos Rojas / Duke

Carlos Rojas is Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies; Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; and Arts of the Moving Image, and his research focuses on issues of gender and visuality, corporeality and infection, and nationalism and diaspora studies. Dr. Carlos Rojas is a Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, as well as a Professor in Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2000 and completed his undergraduate studies at Cornell University in 1995.

Selina Lai-Henderson / DKU

Dr. Selina Lai-Henderson is an Associate Professor of American Literature and History at Duke Kunshan University and co-director of the Humanities Research Center. She is the author of Mark Twain in China and has published widely in leading journals and edited volumes in the field of transnational American Studies. Her PMLA essay, “‘You Are No Darker Than I Am:’ The Souls of Black Folk in Maoist China,” is the recipient of the 1921 Prize in American Literature in the tenured category. Dr. Lai-Henderson is the book review editor of American Quarterly, and was chair and co-chair of American Studies Association’s International Committee. She is currently a Fellow with the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. She is also on the jury of the 2025 ACLS open access book prize in literary studies. She holds degrees from HKU and Heidelberg University, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford.

Titas Chakraborty / DKU

Her research focuses on South Asian and world history, with special attention to labor, migration and gender. Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include global China studies, global history and South Asian history.
Chakraborty has a B.A. and M.A. in history from Jadavpur University, India, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Pittsburgh. Previously, she was a visiting assistant professor at Oberlin College and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies, University of Texas, Austin.

Hyun Jeong Ha / DKU

Dr. Ha is a sociologist whose research focuses on power, religion, sectarianism, and gender in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt. Trained as an ethnographer, she has conducted fieldwork in Cairo since 2006, examining Muslim-Christian relations and, more recently, the impact of the 2011 Egyptian Arab Uprisings on sectarian dynamics through an intersectional lens. Her work has been published in journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies and edited volumes on the Arab Spring. At Duke Kunshan University, she teaches courses on social theory, identity, religion, and Middle Eastern politics. Dr. Ha holds degrees from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul National University, and the University of Texas at Austin, and has held research fellowships at the University of Notre Dame and Seoul National University Asia Center.

 Megan Rogers / DKU

Her research focuses on religion in contemporary China, and she has a particular interest in the intersection of religion and social inequality. She has conducted extensive qualitative fieldwork in China, including as a Fulbright fellow in Suzhou in 2015 and 2016). Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include sociology, culture and movements, religion, and China studies.
Rogers has bachelor’s degrees in international studies and Chinese from the University of Mississippi, an M.A. in Chinese from the Ohio State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame. Before joining Duke Kunshan, she was a postdoctoral research fellow with the Global Religion Research Initiative, University of Notre Dame.

 Erin Wilkerson / DKU

American guerilla gardener turned guerilla filmmaker and visual artist, Erin Wilkerson, is the co-founder of the political art collective and production company, Creative Agitation along with her partner, Travis Wilkerson. They have exhibited in the Venice Biennale, Locarno Film Festival, the Viennale, and the Berlinale, and their film, “Nuclear Family (2021)” was awarded Mencion Especial at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, screened in 20+ festivals, and is distributed by Arsenal (Berlin). Grounded in ecology thanks to her early professional work in landscape architecture, her solo practice is rooted in the exploration of global narratives. Her international exhibitions include, The Second Burial (2023), which streamed on MUBI Latin America. She has also exhibited at Prismatic Ground (New York), FICUNAM (Mexico), Arica Docs (Chile), and INTERSECCION (Spain). After receiving a PhD in Research and Practice from Liverpool John Moores University, in partnership with the TransArt Institute, comprised of an intensive theoretical investigation of “Invasive Species” as a study of feral filmmaking as decolonial practice, and an accompanying speculative fiction film, “Strange Flower (little sister to the poor)” about a witch navigating colonial history on the border of Europe with the east, she was awarded Global Fellow at Duke Kunshan University.

 Odelia Lu / DKU

Ye Odelia Lu is an essayist, translator, and editor with an MFA degree in Writing and Literary Translation from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in *Sine Theta Magazine*, *Columbia Journal*, *The Margins*, *Epiphany Magazine*, and *Samovar*. In 2023, she was awarded the Travel Fellowship by the American Literary Translators Association. Before joining DKU, Lu taught creative nonfiction, TV writing, and video game narrative design at Columbia University and Wellesley College. Currently, she is translating Lin Hsin-Hui’s *Contactless Intimacy* from Chinese to English, a queer sci-fi novel that explores themes of human-machine relationship, autonomy, and heteronormativity.

Kolleen Guy / DKU

Her main research interest is on how both the consumption and production of food and drink shape national memory and identity. Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include global history and areas related to food systems and the environment.

She has won numerous awards for teaching innovation and is the author of the prizewinning book, “When Champagne became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity.”

Guy has a B.A. in history and English from North Central College and a Ph.D. in history from Indiana University, Bloomington. Before joining Duke Kunshan, she was associate professor of history and the Ricardo Romo Distinguished Professor in the Honors College at the University of Texas, San Antonio.

 Qian Zhu / DKU

Her research focuses on modern Chinese history and China’s current global challenges. Her first project is a comparative and transnational inquiry of intellectual and cultural history focused on Chinese leftism and anti-colonialism in Southeast Asia from 1938 to 1948. She has a second project on feminism and everyday life in post-socialist China, which focuses on feminism in entrepreneurship, reproductive labor, and social welfare. Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include global China studies and Chinese history, as well areas related to global health, gender and sexuality, and media and art.
Zhu has a B.A. and M.A. in history from Shandong University and a Ph.D. in history from New York University. She taught for four years at Wabash College, Indiana, and since 2016 has been a Global Perspectives on Society Fellow at NYU Shanghai.

Andrew Field / DKU

Dr. Andrew Field, a specialist in Chinese and East Asian languages, cultures, and history, focuses particularly on the history of Shanghai. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. At Duke Kunshan University, he teaches courses on ancient and modern Chinese history, Shanghai’s urban culture, and music scenes in contemporary China. He is the author of Shanghai’s Dancing World, Mu Shiying: China’s Lost Modernist, and Shanghai Nightscapes (co-authored with James Farrer), and has directed two documentary films, Down: Indie Rock in the PRC and A Century of Jazz in Shanghai. His work explores both historical and contemporary urban culture in China, and he shares his reflections on his blog, shanghaisojourns.net.

 Zhiqiu Benson Zhou / NYUSH

Dr. Zhiqiu Benson Zhou is an Assistant Professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai, whose research explores the intersections of media culture, queerness, gender, and race in transnational contexts. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University, with a certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies. His current book project investigates sexual norms and hierarchies within Chinese queer communities, analyzing how media, global capital, and political culture shape notions of ideal gayness in China. His interdisciplinary work has been published in leading journals and has earned multiple awards, including the National Communication Association’s Dissertation of the Year Award and fellowships from ACLS, AAA, and AAS.

Nellie Chu / DKU

Her research focuses on global supply chains in fashion and the transnational role of migrant entrepreneurs. She has a project on West African and Korean religious communities related to the doctrine of prosperity based in Guangzhou, China. Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include cultures and movements, global China studies and cultural anthropology.

In 2016-17, she held a fellowship with the American Council for Learned Societies / Henry Luce Foundation for China Studies and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and served as visiting professor at the University of Goettingen’s Center for Modern East Asian Studies in Germany. In 2017-18, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University’s School for Industrial and Labor Research.

Chu has a B.A. in international relations (highest honors) and German language and culture (high honors) from the University of California, Davis, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). In 2014, she won the Outstanding Teacher’s Assistant Award given by the graduate divisions at UCSC.

Hwa Yeong Wang / DKU

Wang’s research interests include Asian and comparative philosophy, feminist philosophy and Confucian philosophy with a special focus on women, gender and ritual. Her recent publication includes “Chastity as a Virtue: Song Siyeol and Hume” (Religions, 2020) and “Women Who Know Ritual” (Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 2022). Her first translation of and commentary on the writings of two Korean women philosophers is in press with Oxford University Press with the title “Korean Women Philosophers and the Ideal of a Female Sage: The Essential Writings of Im Yunjidang and Gang Jeongildang” (July 2023).

Wang has a. B.A. in Confucian philosophy, an M.A. in Confucian studies at Sungkyunkwan University, and a Ph.D. in philosophy (philosophy, interpretation and culture program), an interdisciplinary program from Binghamton University (State University of New York). She served as a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University 2020-2022 and Emory University 2022-2023.

 Robin Rodd /DKU

Dr. Rodd’s current research is at the interface of critical theory, Latin American studies and anthropology. His work explores political memory and the symbolic bases of citizenship, democracy and dictatorship in Latin America. He has also done long-term fieldwork in lowland Amazonia focusing on indigenous notions of mind, knowledge, and health. At Duke Kunshan, his teaching interests span medical and political anthropology, Latin American cultures and politics, migration and citizenship studies, and critical theory.
Rodd has edited two special journal issues – International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society and Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research – and published book chapters in English, Spanish and French. His articles has appeared in anthropology and politics journals including Critique of Anthropology, Anthropology of Consciousness, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Journal of Latin American Religion, Democratic Theory, and Citizenship Studies. He served as the secretary of the Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia (AILASA) from 2016 to 2020, and has twice co-convened the Australian Anthropological Society annual conference.

Rodd has a B.A. (Hons) in history from the University of Western Australia, a B.A. in Spanish from Edith Cowan University, and a Ph.D. with distinction in socio-cultural anthropology from the University of Western Australia. Before joining Duke Kunshan, Rodd taught anthropology at James Cook University, Australia.