Reported by Rebecca Combs, Class of 2025

The Humanities Research Center’s 2025 Spring Conference on Gender and Sexuality transformed the second and third floors of DKU’s Academic Building into a vibrant hub of intellectual exchange on April 18-19, 2025, bringing together scholars, faculty, students, and community members from Duke Kunshan University and NYU Shanghai. As one of the HRC’s three focus areas for the year, the conference created a dynamic space for exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, vulnerability, and resistance through keynote lectures, student panels, passionate round table discussions, and community events.

Keynote Speakers

On the morning of Friday April 18, the conference began with Professor Gabriel N. Rosenberg’s lecture “Hubert Goodale’s Feminized Cockerels: Industrial Chicken Breeding, Sex Control, and the Queer Ecology of Early Twentieth Century Endocrinology,” examining the intersection of animal husbandry, sexuality, and biopolitics. Dr. Rosenberg, an Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University, detailed how poultry geneticist Hubert Goodale’s 1930s experimental grafting of hen ovaries into castrated roosters served as a site of early knowledge pertaining to sex development. His presentation showcased how the emergence of industrial chicken farming influenced endocrinological research, with unexpected “spillover” effects when scientists compared animal and human bodies, revealing the multispecies ecologies underpinning histories of human race, gender, and sexuality.

Professor Usha Iyer, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Stanford University, presented “The Sticky Intimacies of Jammin’: Mapping Media Traffic and Femme Performance Repertoires between India and the Caribbean”. Her lecture examined the performative repertoires of female Indian orchestra singer Kanchan and Indo-Caribbean-Canadian drag queen Priyanka, analyzing how these performers navigate race, gender, and regional identities. Drawing from her current book project on Black and Brown media intimacies, Dr. Iyer developed the framework of “jammin'” to map multi-directional, transregional, cross-racial flows and frictions in cultural exchange.

The second day began with the third keynote speaker Professor Yujie Zhu, Associate Professor at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at Australian National University, presenting “From National Memory to Global Justice: Heritage Politics and the Transnational Movement for ‘Comfort Women’.” His lecture examined how museums and memorials in Shanghai, Taipei, and other locations serve as transnational heritage hubs that challenge male-dominated war narratives by centering women’s experiences of trauma and creating spaces for contemporary justice through global memory movements. Much discussion was had surrounding design in the context of museums over the topic of “comfort women” and their remembrance.

Finally, the conference welcomed fourth keynote speaker, Dr. Ying Zhu, founding editor-in-chief of “Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images” and Professor at the Academy of Film at Hong Kong Baptist University. Dr. Zhu’s presentation titled “Half the Sky and Women’s Programming,” examined how the CCTV program “Half the Sky” emerged amidst the 1995 Beijing Women’s Conference and positioned itself as a unique perspective and compelling piece of media for women’s rights in China. Through her analysis of this state media program, which ended before Xi Jinping’s rise to power, Dr. Zhu explored the relationship between television storytelling, national narrative, and global feminist discourse in China’s political and social transitional period.

Student research presentations

An impressive array of student scholarship was showcased across twelve panels, creating a rare opportunity for intellectual exchange between DKU and NYU Shanghai students. Topics ranged from studies of “South Korean politics and culture” and “Female communities in China and the diaspora” to “Feminist and queer histories” and “Social media and the metaverse”. Presenters were given ample feedback on their projects from Professors after each talk.

Round table discussions

The conference featured two powerful round table discussions that ignited passionate exchanges among faculty experts. The first, “Anniversary of the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women,” chaired by Carlos Rojas, featured panelists Nellie Chu, Qian Zhu, Yujie Zhu, Usha Iyer, and Gabriel N. Rosenberg reflecting on the 30-year legacy of this landmark event. The discussion touched on MLK’s quote that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice,” while confronting the sobering reality that rights once gained can indeed be taken away, as evidenced by recent rollbacks of reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights.

The second round table, “Politics of Gender and Sexuality,” led by Carlos Rojas with panelists Robin Rodd, Kolleen Guy, Titas Chakraborty, and Selina Lai-Henderson, tackled the urgent challenges of rightwing backlash targeting minorities across the globe. As Professor Guy movingly shared, three things have profoundly impacted her life: control over her reproduction, access to education, and feminism—all currently under threat. The discussion created a space for both acknowledging political depression and cultivating hope through collective action, with panelists emphasizing that “empathy can be subversive and resist the toxicness of the world”.

Awards and Publications

The conference concluded with a celebratory awards ceremony honoring six outstanding student papers that exemplified the innovative scholarship within gender and sexuality studies:

• Eva Guo (NYUSH): “Unwritten Queerness: Resisting Western Identity Politics in Queer Asian America”
• Wuyou Wang (NYUSH): “From Dating Apps to Diasporic Queer Community”
• Mingjiang Gao (DKU): “Gay Bear Culture on Chinese Social Media”
• Chengxi Yin (DKU): “Gaining Pleasure in Infinite Game Worlds”
• Philip Yanakiev (DKU): “The Suffering of Women in Times of War”
• Enkhkhuslen Bat-Erdene (DKU): “Women’s Political Empowerment in East Asia”

The event culminated in the exciting launch of the publication “Nexus Global South Journal” as introduced by DKU senior Cody Schmidt and junior Sebastián Portilla. The Lily Pad, or DKU’s premier student-led journal was advertised as well by senior Maya Peak, who revealed a creative design contest would be held for the journal’s front cover. Professor Carlos Rojas also presented the Shanghai Literary Review, inviting students to join as apprentices and continue the scholarly conversations beyond the conference walls.

The Gender and Sexuality Conference embodied the DKU HRC’s commitment to fostering not just interdisciplinary scholarship but also community building across institutions. Through critical engagement with pressing issues of gender, sexuality, and social justice in global contexts, the conference created meaningful spaces for DKU-NYUSH + student-teacher connection and intellectual growth that participants will carry forward into their future work. This event was made possible by the leadership and collaboration amongst DKU HRC Co-directors Professor Selina Lai-Henderson and Professor Carlos Rojas, involved DKU faculty members including Professor Kolleen Guy, Professor Titas Chakraborty, Professor Jay Winters, and the HRC Business Coordinator Fei Xu.