Events

Jointly organized by Department of Communications and New Media, East Asia Institute, and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Weiyu Zhang, Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In writing The Wuhan Lockdown, what Prof Guobin Yang wanted to do most was to tell the stories of people’s experiences in the lockdown. In this book talk, Prof Yang will explain the reasons for this choice and the narrative strategies he followed. In particular, Prof Yang will discuss why presenting individual scenes from Wuhan can be an effective means of re-enacting the drama of the lockdown.

The speaker for this session is Professor Guobin Yang, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. He will be joined as discussants by Professor Jack Qiu (NUS CNM), Dr Gang Chen (NUS EAI), and Dr Dongxin Zou (NUS ARI).

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Dongxin Zou is a historian of modern China specializing in the history of medicine. Her research studies the connections between medicine and decolonization in China and its global health networks. She is writing a book on Chinese medical missions to postcolonial Africa, focusing on the case study of Algeria. Her articles will appear in Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies and Technology and Culture in 2022. Dongxin received her PhD in History from Columbia University. She is now a postdoctoral fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

Gang Chen is Assistant Director and Senior Research Fellow of the East Asian Institute (EAI), National University of Singapore (NUS). Since he joined the EAI in 2007, he has been tracing China’s politics, foreign policy, environmental and energy policies and publishing extensively on these issues. He is the single author of Politics of Renewable Energy in China (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2019), The Politics of Disaster Management in China: Institutions, Interest Groups, and Social Participation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), China’s Climate Policy (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), Politics of China’s Environmental Protection: Problems and Progress (Singapore: World Scientific, 2009) and The Kyoto Protocol and International Cooperation against Climate Change (in Chinese) (Beijing: Xinhua Press, 2008). His research papers have appeared in internationally refereed journals such as Asian Survey, Asia Pacific Business Review, The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, The International Spectator, The Polar Journal, China: An International Journal, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, and The Journal of East Asian Affairs. He provides consultancy for the Singapore government on policy issues in East Asia. He is frequently interviewed by media like Bloomberg Television, South China Morning Post, Channel NewsAsia and Xinhua News Agency. He occasionally gives lectures at NUS.

Guobin Yang is the Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology at the Annenberg School for Communication and Department of Sociology of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the director of the Center on Digital Culture and Society, interim director of the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication, and deputy director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China. He is the author of The Power of the Internet in China (2009), Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China (2016), and most recently, The Wuhan Lockdown (2022). He is the editor or co-editor of six books, including Engaging Social Media in China: Platforms, Publics, and Production (with Wei Wang, 2021).

Jack Qiu works on issues of digital media and social change in relation to labor, class, globalization, and sustainability, especially in the contexts of Asia and the Global South. He has published more than 100 research articles and chapters and 10 books in both English and Chinese including Goodbye iSlave: A Manifesto for Digital Abolition (University of Illinois Press, 2016), World Factory in the Information Age (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2013), and Working-Class Network Society (MIT Press, 2009). His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. He is an elected fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA) and a recipient of the C. Edwin Baker Award for the Advancement of Scholarship on Media, Markets and Democracy. He also served as President of the Chinese Communication Association (CCA).

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. Please click on the following link to register for the event: https://nus-sg.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIld-uhqj8rGNe1hV1oaBrAFdpD6-swXflE.