Events

Past Event

Media and Ethnography of the Heart: Inequality in China and its Intimate Consequences

October 15, 2024
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
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School of International and Public Affairs, 420 West 118th Street, Room 918, New York, NY 10027

Registration is required for non CUID holders to access the Morningside campus. Attendees must present a government-issued ID with their name matching exactly the name registered for the event, along with an one-time QR code (via email), for entry. For non CUID holders, please register by 4 pm on Oct. 14 for entry onto campus.

Speaker: Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology, Sydney

Moderator: Ying Qian, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, East Asian Languages & Cultures, Columbia University

Decades of economic reforms have made China one of the most unequal countries in the world. But what is less known is how structural issues of socioeconomic inequality shape the ways in which individuals from different socioeconomic groups understand, think about, and experience love and intimacy. But how do we document practices of intimacy and the love lives of individuals in the socioeconomic margins? Drawing on her interactions with rural migrant factory workers in the Pearl River Delta area of southern China, Wanning Sun discusses how researchers can forge new ethnographic partnerships through the prism of media and cultural practices.

Speaker's Bio: Wanning Sun is a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is also the deputy director of the UTS Australia-China Relations Institute. A fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, she is best known in the field of China studies for her ethnography of the media and cultural practices of China’s rural migrant workers. She is the author of Subaltern China: Rural Migrants, Media and Cultural Practices (2014), Maid in China: Media, Morality, and the Cultural Politics of Boundaries (2009), and Love Troubles: Inequality in China and Its Intimate Consequences (2023). Wanning Sun also researches on the digital Chinese diaspora and transnationalism, against the background of escalating geopolitical tensions between China and the West. She is co-author of WeChat and the Chinese Diaspora (2022), and Digital Transnationalism: Chinese-language Media in Australia (2023).

This event is hosted by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

Registration:

  • To attend this event in-person, please register HERE.
  • To attend this event online, please register HERE.