About Us
Louis Cha Lecture Series on Transcultural Fandom Studies
School of Chinese Scholar Seminar
Louis Cha Lecture Series on Transcultural Fandom Studies
Lecture #1:
The 30 Years of China’s Online Fandom
Speaker:
Prof. Weiyu ZHANG
Department of Communication & New Media,
National University of Singapore
Moderator:
Prof. Dingkun WANG
School of Chinese, HKU
Date: 12 December 2024 (Thu)
Time: 17:30pm - 19:00pm (HKT)
Language: English
Venue: CRT-7.30, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Mode: Face-to-face & Online
Abstract:
The fan communities in China have undergone several generational shifts, progressing from the era of 1.0 websites dedicated to Hong Kong and Taiwan idols to the contemporary landscape involving data manipulation and traffic management. The talk commences with a historical account of significant fandom events over the past 30 years, emphasizing the evolving digital, localized, industrialized, and financialized nature of fan culture. The talk continues to introduce the diverse analytical perspectives found in both English and Chinese academic works, encompassing state-society relationships, labor, transcultural flow, youth development, and identity politics that have been applied to scrutinize China’s online fandom. In its conclusion, the talk invites the audiences to consider two key actions: initiating discussions among the various analytical perspectives to reconcile conflicting assessments of fan practices and encouraging a critical reflection on how China's online fandom contributes to a broader understanding of the global landscape.
About the Speaker:
Weiyu Zhang is Professor at the Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on civic engagement and Information and Communication Technologies, with an emphasis on Asia. She is the author of the book The Internet and New Social Formation in China: Fandom Publics in the Making (2018). She is Director of the Civic Tech Lab (www.civictechlab.org), and has led on multi-nation projects on youth engagement, online deliberation, and civic tech in Asia.
Lecture #2:
Fan Translation beyond the Global North
Speaker:
Dr. Jonathan EVANS
Translation Studies,
University of Glasgow
Moderator:
Prof. Dingkun WANG
School of Chinese, HKU
Date: 16 December 2024 (Mon)
Time: 17:30pm - 19:00pm (HKT)
Language: English
Venue: CRT-7.30, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Mode: Face-to-face & Online
Abstract:
This talk examines the way in which much existing research in fan studies overlooks or sidelines fandom that does not take place in English, leading to an imbalance in fan studies theorizing that prioritizes work in the Global North and North America in particular. In order to address this imbalance, the speaker argues for a more multilingual and polycentric fan studies, drawing from Lionnet and Shi’s idea of the creolization of theory, for which fan translation offers a privileged site of intercultural fan activity. However, an analysis of journals published in the Global South shows there is little work on fan translation emanating from there. Examining research on fan translation in Vietnam, Thailand, and Iran highlights significant differences from Global North practices. To demonstrate the entanglement of North and South, a case study analyses how translations are embedded in Spanish-language videos from Mexico reviewing North American board games.
About the Speaker:
Jonathan Evans is a Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He is the author of The Many Voices of Lydia Davis (2016) and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics (2018). He is deputy editor of The Journal of Specialised Translation.
