Digital Feminisms in Asia Talk Series:

Time: Sep 9, 2024, Monday, 7:30-9:00 pm

Location: ELB LT3, CUHK

This talk will introduce a book project in progress, tentatively titled, Precarious Ecologies in/of Queer Asian Cinemas. Examining films from East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian contexts, the project focuses on those representations of queer living and belonging that lie in the shadow of the now-global rhetoric of LGBTQIA+ identities. Drawing on contemporary decolonial feminist and queer thinking, the talk will lay out the project’s rationale for “Asia as method” as well as its cinematic focus on sexual and gendered marginalization beyond identity politics. Finally, as a case study, the talk will offer a reading of the representation of female sexual subalternity in working-class New Delhi in the experimental ethnography Yeh Freedom Life (dir. Priya Sen, 2018).

Speaker bio:

Prof. Ani Maitra is an associate professor of film and media studies at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY. His research and teaching interests fall at the intersections of postcolonial and diaspora studies, gender and sexuality studies, and global media studies. Maitra is the author of Identity, Mediation, and the Cunning of Capital (Northwestern University Press, 2020).

Moderator: Prof. Jia TAN, CUHK

The event is organized by the MA in Intercultural Studies, and sponsored by the Research Institute for the Humanities, CUHK.