Time: November 6, 2:30- 4:00 PM  BJT

Venue: LIB 1115

Zoom: 997 2448 0568; Password: 1106

Guest Speaker: Dr. Xi Liu (Ph.D, FHEA), Associate Professor at Dept. of China Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Abstract

Lost, Found (Zhaodaoni, 找到你2018) directed by Lü Yue 吕乐 and produced by Feng Xiaogang 冯小刚, is an influential Chinese commercial film on many dark themes: child-kidnap, gender violence, motherhood penalty, and broken families. By integrating critical content with creative forms, this film has done successful work in exploring the meanings of motherhood, the realities of class disparities, and the possibilities of female solidarity in film languages. This study looks into the interrelated politics of class and gender behind the cultural (re)imaginaries of Chinese mothers that are neglected in the existing research on this work. It asks whether discourses on female agency and solidarity support or question the myth‐making of reform-era urbanization, social mobility, and neoliberal individualism. It also investigates the explicit and implicit visions and ideologies on class and gender by looking at the artistic portrayal of women’s labor especially domestic and care labor. Through semiotic and cultural studies, the study will reexamine and answer whether and what kind of “feminist film” this film is from a Marxist feminist perspective.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Xi Liu (Ph.D, FHEA) is Associate Professor at Dept. of China Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Her main research fields are Chinese literature and Chinese women’s studies. Her research articles appeared in journals including Literary Review, Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, SFRA Review, Journal of Chinese Women’s Studies, and Frontiers of Literary Studies in China. She has published two monographs on Chinese literary and gender studies and has co-edited one volume on cultural studies of contemporary northeast China.

Presented by Care and Gender Cluster, Center for the Study of Contemporary China