Ka Lee Wong is an Assistant Professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai. After earning her PhD from the University of Southern California, she was a Dornsife Fellow at USC (2022-23) and a Postdoctoral Associate in the Comparative Media Studies and Writing Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2023-24).

Ka Lee’s research explores Chinese languages and cultures in the transnational context, particularly issues concerning the global Chinese diaspora and the ways that “Sinophone”, or sounds of Chinese languages, illuminate the dynamics between media, identities and language politics. One major focus of her work involves the sounds of Cantonese, such as how Cantoneseness is articulated, listened to, and reimagined in media and literature. She is now working on a book project about the transnational production and circulation of Cantonese media between China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. In the book project, through tracing the sonic connections of Cantonese media between these locations, she investigates how “sound” reveals and/or converges with Sinophone politics and diasporic identities.

Select Publications

• “Recovering the Lost Cantonese Sounds in Pre-handover Hong Kong: Sinophone Politics in Dung Kai-cheung’s ‘The Rise and Fall of Wing Shing Street’”. Asian Sound Cultures. Edited by Martyn Smith and Iris Haukamp. London: Routledge, 2022, p. 162-178.

• “Textualizing YouTube: Cultivating Bonds of Community via an Online Collaborative Platform in Hong Kong”. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 63 no. 1, 2022, p. 25-36.

Education

• PhD, East Asian Languages and Cultures
  University of Southern California

• MPhil, English
  Chinese University of Hong Kong

Research Interests

• Global Chinese diaspora

• Transnational Chinese media and literature

• East and Southeast Asian popular culture

• Language and identity

• Ocean and island studies