[Gala-l] Call for Papers: Queer Cultures in Digital Asia

Tue Mar 23 08:45:18 UTC 2021

Dear IGALA friends,
Please circulate widely!

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*Queer Cultures in Digital Asia*

A symposium hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong

10 December 2021

Shatin, Hong Kong

*Call for Papers*

Digital media have transformed the cultures and practices of LGBTQ+
communities worldwide. Sexual minorities explore and express their
identities, look for belonging and build communities, seek multiple types
of intimate relationships, and undertake collective action on and through
both old and new digital media. Extensive research has been conducted to
examine the influences and implications of digital and social media
platforms, such as Grindr, Her, Reddit, Tumblr, and more, on the social,
political, and personal lives of sexual minorities. Meanwhile, digital
media also facilitates the flourishing of subcultures that challenge
normative conceptions of gender and sexuality and promote creative forms of
gender expression through online literature, video production, and other
forms of fandom (e.g. slash/yaoi/Boys’ Love/Girls’ Love communities). While
increasing attention has been paid to new and digital media in Asia
(Cabañes & Uy-Tioco, 2020; Dasgupta, 2017; Yue & Zubillaga-Pow, 2012), most
contemporary studies of digital queer cultures still focus on North
American and European contexts.

Inspired by *Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia* (Berry, Martin, Yue,
& Spigel, 2003), this full day symposium aims to foster a critical
interrogation of the intersection between queerness and Digital Asia.
Digital Asia has been a topic for many previous articles, edited
collections, and conferences (e.g., 2018 Digital Asia event at QUT and
Baulch, Flew, and Li, 2019; 2019 Digital Asia conference organized by NIAS
and Lund University). Being the continent with the most Internet users in
terms of absolute numbers, Asia has a range of diverse digital
infrastructures. While China’s digital media ecology operates as an
entirely closed system, in other countries like India, a wide array of both
Western and local digital media is available. Hence, in previous works on
Digital Asia, issues covered have related primarily to infrastructures,
governance, commerce, smart cities, nationalism, and so on. Voices from and
about queer communities are underrepresented in this conversation. We
understand “queer” as “definitional indeterminacy” (Jagose, 1996, p. 1).
Queerness taps into a zone of possibilities regarding our sex, sexuality,
gender, and intimacy. Asia also provides a complicated context for the
development and survival of queer communities as social norms and laws
regarding homosexuality and transgenderism vary across regions. There are
regions where governments are taking measures to grant some rights to
sexual minorities (e.g., Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage in 2019;
Pakistan recognized transgender as a separate gender category in 2017);
there are also places where homosexuality is still considered illegal
(e.g., Iran, Singapore) or is not legally protected from discrimination
(e.g., Hong Kong).

As Chen (2010) advocates, “using the idea of Asia as an imaginary anchoring
point, societies in Asia can become each other’s points of reference” (p.
212). This symposium takes “Asia as method” as a foundation to
provincialize Euro-American knowledge production. This critical vision of
Asia has also been taken up in two special issues related to the
intersection of transgender studies and Asia studies (Martin & Ho, 2006;
Chiang, Henry, & Leung, 2018). In this symposium, we extend this approach
to focus on the digital, giving equal significance to the triple concepts
of “digital,” “Asia,” and “queer.” We welcome contributions that
empirically examine queer digital cultures, platforms, practices, and
communities from one Asian region or compare these across several Asian
territories. We expect interdisciplinary contributions from the fields of
media and cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, regional studies,
and related disciplines from the humanities and social sciences.

Broad themes might include, but are not limited to:

   - Politics of queer digital cultures
   - Digital intimacies
   - Digital circulation and/or economy of queer content
   - Intersections of sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and
   more in digital cultures
   - Online activism
   - Emerging digital practices and communities
   - Queer digital health and wellbeing

*Submission Process and Key Dates*

Please submit paper proposals to *digitalqueerasia at gmail.com
<digitalqueerasia at gmail.com>* by 30 June, 2021. Proposals should include an
abstract of 250–400 words along with a brief bio of no more than 100 words.
Presenters will be notified of acceptance by 16 July, 2021. Draft papers
(3000–4000 words) of accepted presentations are to be submitted by 17
November, 2021 for sharing and discussion among symposium participants. We
are planning for a face-to-face symposium in Hong Kong on 10 December,
2021. Modest subsidies will be provided to symposium participants to cover
airfare; two-night’s accommodation and meals on the day of the symposium
will be provided. The symposium will convert to an online event as required
in line with COVID-19 health and safety considerations or should travel
restrictions remain in place.

Following the symposium, presenters will be invited to submit full-length
papers to be considered for publication as part of a themed collection. We
are approaching major international media and/or cultural studies journals
with a proposal for a special issue on the symposium theme.

*Organisers*

Lik Sam Chan (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Elija Cassidy (QUT Digital Media Research Centre)

Jia Tan (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

*Reference*

Baulch, E., Flew, T., & Li, N. L. (2019). The shifting institutional bases
of digital Asia studies: Communication, culture, and governance in
Asia-Introduction. *International Journal of Communication, 13*, 4579-4585.
https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/10994/2800

Berry, C., Martin, F., Yue, A., & Spigel, L. (Eds.). (2003). *Mobile
cultures: New media in queer Asia.* Duke University Press.

Cabañes, J. V. A., & Uy-Tioco, C. S. (2020). *Mobile media and social
intimacies in Asia: Reconfiguring local ties and enacting global
relationships*. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.

Chen, K. H. (2010).* Asia as method: Toward deimperialization*. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.

Chiang, H., Henry, T. A., & Leung, H. H. S. (2018). Trans-in-Asia,
Asia-in-Trans: An Introduction. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 5(3),
298–310.

Dasgupta, R. K. (2017). *Digital queer cultures in India: Politics,
intimacies and belonging*. London, UK: Routledge.

Jagose, A. (1996). *Queer theory: An introduction.* New York, NY: NYU Press.

Martin, F., & Ho, J. (2006). Editorial introduction: Trans/Asia,
trans/gender. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 7(2), 185–187.

Yue, A., & Zubillaga-Pow, J. (Eds.). (2012). *Queer Singapore: Illiberal
citizenship and mediated cultures.* Hong Kong, China: Hong Kong University
Press.

*Supported by*

Improvement on Competitiveness in Hiring New Faculties Fund, CUHK

The School of Journalism and Communication, CUHK

The Centre for Chinese Media and Comparative Communication Research, CUHK
The Centre for Cultural Studies, CUHK

********************

Dr Benedict J.L. Rowlett

Assistant Professor

Department of English Language and Literature

Hong Kong Baptist University

Office: OEW1110

Tel: (852) 3411 5031

http://eng.hkbu.edu.hk/people/academic-staff/assistant-professor/rowlett-benedict/
<http://eng.hkbu.edu.hk/people/academic-staff/assistant-professor/rowlett-benedict/>

Advisory Board Member, International Gender and Language Association
http://igalaweb.wixsite.com/igala

ORCID Page: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0500-4126

Academia.edu Page: https://hkbu.academia.edu/BenedictRowlett

Recent Publications:

Affect as narrative action in the Global South
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.17062.row

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