The language and visuality of nationalism and social identity are often constructed through gendered performances of the body. This talk examines the gendered construction of nationalism and transnationalism in media products from contemporary China and South Korea. The hypermasculinity and militarism of Wolf Man II is contrasted with the hybridity and gender-bending culture of K-pop commercialized music performances that have global reach.

Mayfair Yang is Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley. She specializes in the Anthropology of Religion, modernity and the state, China Studies, Gender and Media Studies. She was Director of Asian Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia in 2007-2009. She is the author of Gifts, Favors, & Banquets: the Art of Social Relationships in China (Cornell University Press, 1994) (American Ethnological Society prize) and Re-Enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2020). She is also the editor of Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity & State Formation (University of California Press, 2008), and Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China (University of Minnesota Press, 1999). She produced two documentaries: Through Chinese Women’s Eyes (distributed by Women Make Movies) and Public and Private Realms in Rural Wenzhou, China. Her book in-progress is: Religious Environmentalism in the Anthropocene: Potentialities and Actualities in China and the U.S.

Introduction and moderation of the Q&A by Leksa Lee, Clinical Assistant Professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai.

This event is cosponsored by the Center for Global Asia and the Global China Studies Program, NYU Shanghai.