Global Asia(s) Working Group

Our main aim is to pen up thematics, discuss methodological approaches, and steer stimulating conversations in the emerging field of Global Asia(s), combining area studies, ethnic studies, digital culture, and diaspora studies. Currently, there are no intellectual units on campus that focus on Global Asia(s). Therefore, this would open up ways to bring questions of race, temporality and equity, diversity, and inclusion to the same.

 

As a working group, we will primarily focus on narrative construction of identities, mobility, decoloniality, and cultural praxis as our guiding theme. We will approach questions of politics, culture, and global exchange through the registers of fiction, film, sport, and mixed media (including narratives in video games). The group will seek to host book and film discussions while also inviting guest speakers (filmmakers, artists, authors, or scholars) to address these themes. This would add a new dimension to the extant theoretical approaches to Global Asia(s) and the larger RIDGS project of building upon interdisciplinary strengths by fostering intersectional collaborative projects and community-engaged research.

Upcoming Events

Set in 1980s Hong Kong, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In follows Chan Lok-kwan, a disaffected mainland migrant who becomes entangled in Kowloon Walled City’s underworld of illicit trades and underground combat. After incurring the wrath of Mr. Big, a local syndicate boss, Chan seeks refuge in the Walled City under the protection of Cyclone, a powerful crime lord. Over two decades in development, the film premiered in 2024, exemplifying Hong Kong cinema’s enduring fascination with the aesthetics of violence, marginality, displacement, and (post-)colonial spatial fragmentation. Its critical reception — including selection for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the 23rd New York Asian Film Festival, and the Limelight section of the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam — underscores its resonance as both genre exercise and historical reflection. The film’s success invites broader inquiry into the persistence of the wuxia and crime thriller as defining frameworks for Hong Kong cinema and the Walled City’s reemergence in the cultural imagination in the post-Golden Age era.

1. SUGGESTED READING(S):
   1. Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity: Aesthetics, Representation, Circulation by Man-Fung Yip (p. 1-23).
   2. “The Second Life of Kowloon Walled City: Crime, Media, and Cultural Memory” by Alistait Frasier and Eva Cheuk-Yin Li (p. 217-234).
   3. “All Too Extravagant, Too Gratuitously Wild” and “Hong Kong and/as/or/ Hollywood” in Planet Hong Kong by David Bordwell (p. 1-29).
2. FURTHER/OPTIONAL READING(S):
   1. “The World of Wrestling” in Mythologies by Roland Barthes (p. 15-26).
   2. “The Political Tribes of Cyber-Kowloon” in Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets by Brett Scott (p. 189-202).
   3. “Faking Globalization” by Ackbar Abbas in Other Cities, Other Worlds: Urban Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age, edited by Andreas Huyssen (p. 243-264).
   4. “What Is Wrong With The Wrong Career?: A Genealogy of Playgrounds” in The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China by Ling Hon Lam (p. 91-146).
3. ADDITIONAL MEDIA:
   1. Hong Kong in video games 電玩香港 a fabulous city, both virtual and real
   2. Mr. Pumpkinhead 2: Kowloon Walled City

Past Events

Inaugural Global Asia(s) Lecture With Dr. Andrew F. Jones

The Approaching Global Asia(s) Working Group hosted Dr. Andrew F. Jones (Agassiz Professor of Chinese, Dept of East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley) for an inaugural lecture on Fri, Feb 21, 2025 from 2 - 3:30 PM.

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