Dialogues in Research: Gender, Nationalism, and Media in China and Europe
Date: 4 November 2021 (Thu)
Time: 2:30-4:00pm
Venue: ELB 307
Speakers:
Prof. Katrien Jacobs (CRS, CUHK)
Prof. Ka-ming Wu (CRS, CUHK)
Moderator and Discussant:
Prof. Kecheng Fang (COM, CUHK)
Hybrid event
1: Join us in-person: 40 seats (first come first served)
2: Join us online (ZOOM link will be sent upon registration)
Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13640346
Conducted in English. All are welcome.
Please register by 2 November 2021
Website: www.cuhk.edu.hk/crs/ccs
Enquiry: cuccs@cuhk.edu.hk
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Prof. Katrien Jacobs (Dept of CRS) on
Femininity, Fluidity and Floods Amongst the Dutch and Flemish Alt-Right
Political activists across cultures are using online visual cultures as “extreme speech” in order to envision revolutionary concepts of national identity, the body, gender and sexuality. This talk presents a case-study of Flemish and Dutch Alt-right social media imagery and sexual contra-revolution. It gives an overview of how a national identity is associated with gender polarity, a thesis about WWII fascism that was first proposed by Klaus Theweleit, and that will be critically revisited. The contemporary constructs of gender polarity and the nation are primarily triggered by novel conspiracy theories such as the “Great Replacement” (in Dutch, omvolking) of native-born citizens through controlled pro-migration policies. Scholars have argued that global online discourses about the Great Replacement have become acts of transgressive identity management as well as affective communication amongst far-right networks. (Deem, 2019) I will build on this insight to show how the alt-right constructs sexual vanities and pleasures alongside attacks on feminists, overweight women, queer and ethnic minorities.
Prof. Ka-ming Wu (Dept of CRS) on
Grannies and Policing: Gender and the Excess of Surveillance
During the coronavirus outbreak in Beijing last year, community volunteers, composed mostly of retired women and men, were massively mobilized to help with monitoring the flow of people at the entrance of many residential communities. It was not the first time retirees helped out with neighbourhood patrolling. In the last few years, both the municipal government and the capital police glorified retirees as community heroes for their intelligence gathering abilities and actively recruited them for community policing. According to official statistics, there are close to two hundred thousand of community volunteers in Beijing. Scholars would call them grassroot governing agents but grannies speak of their service in terms of staying active and civic duty. Based on media representations, my own interviews with these grannies, and netizens online discussion, this talk explores the interplay between gender, the surveillance state, and mobilization of elderly citizens. I ask how different players, including the police department and television channels, normalize the discourse of security through narratives of gender, race and age. I also show how netizens make satirical writings online to voice their ambivalence at the excess of surveillance. This paper is based on a broader project on gender and nationalism in contemporary China.
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This event is organized by the Centre for Cultural Studies, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, CUHK