Sci-Tech Asia Webinar
Rethinking the Eco-Media Event in Pandemic Times
Webinar Description
This talk will focus on how the pandemic moment has prompted us to further develop the concept of “eco-media events,” which we defined as spectacular and ephemeral moments in which the material processes of digital production link the old forms of resource extraction with our new lives of electronic gadgetry and media tool dependency. While we address the intensification of the Yellow Eco-peril discourse, which depicts China through a racialized Eco-Otherness at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis in the US, we also seek to rethink the possibilities for politics amidst the transpacific, ecological entanglements that the pandemic has made visible. Engaging the ending of China’s zero-COVID policy following the A4 white paper protests, Foxconn “uprising,” and diasporic protests and vigil, we argue that the pandemic as an eco-media event offers a glimpse into new ways of imagining the relationship between media and citizenship.
Speaker
Ralph LITZINGER is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. He directed Duke’s Asia/Pacific Studies Institute from 2001-2007, the Duke Engage Migrant Education Project from 2008-2015, and co-directed Duke’s China-India health and environment program from 2010-2013. He is the author of Other Chinas: the Yao and the Politics of National Belonging (Duke University Press, 2000), and, with Carlos Rojas, Ghost Protocol: Development and Displacement in Global China (Duke University Press, 2016).
Fan YANG is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies and a faculty affiliate in Asian Studies, Global Studies, and the Ph.D. program in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She is the author of Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture, and Globalization (Indiana University Press, 2016).
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Sci-Tech Asia Webinar Series
Our Webinar series features scholars from all over the world sharing their on-going research on topics at the intersection between science, technology, and society (STS) in the 21st century. Our virtual seminars are hosted via Zoom and live-streamed via our social media.
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