April 11th, 2019 – Sex Work, Media Networks and Transpacific Histories of Affect, a talk by Lily Wong (American University)
Lily Wong, author of Transpacific Attachments: Sex Work, Media Networks, and Affective Histories of Chineseness (Columbia University Press, 2018), discusses the mobility and mobilization of the sex worker figure through transpacific media networks, stressing the intersectional politics of racial, sexual and class structures. Wong defines the significant role sex work plays in the constant restructuring of social relations within transpacific networks that reconfigure “Chineseness,” and its place in the cultural imagination, linking sexual and cultural marginality. This event was co-produced with support from USC Departments of East Asian Languages & Cultures and East Asian Studies Center.
About the speaker: Lily Wong is an Associate Professor in the departments of Literature (LIT) and Critical Race Gender and Culture Studies (CRGC) at American University. Her research focuses on the politics of affect/emotion, gender/sexuality, racial capitalism, minor-transnational solidarity movements, as well as media formations of transpacific Chinese, Sinophone, and Asian American communities. She is one of the founding board members of the Society of Sinophone Studies (SSS). Her work can be found in journals including American Quarterly, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Asian Cinema, Asian American Literary Review, Pacific Affairs, and China Review International, among others. She has published book chapters in World Cinema and the Visual Arts (Anthem Press, 2012), Queer Sinophone Cultures (Routledge, 2013), Divided Lenses: War and Film Memory in Asia (University of Hawai’i Press, 2016), and Keywords in Queer Sinophone Studies (Routledge, 2020). She is the author of the book Transpacific Attachments: Sex Work, Media Networks, and Affective Histories of Chineseness (Columbia University Press, 2018).
