Queer@King’s invites you to the launch of Queer Literature in the Sinosphere (Bloomsbury, 2024). With chapters by leading international scholars, the volume considers Chinese literature, history and culture through a queer lens, and is the most comprehensive English-language anthology on the topic. From classical homoerotic texts to contemporary boys' love fan fiction, this book showcases the richness and diversity of queer Chinese literature across a spectrum of genres, styles, themes and cultural politics. The book features authors and literary works from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the global Chinese-speaking diaspora.

At this launch, four panellists will present their contributions to the volume. Dr Dylan K. Wang (SOAS) will begin with ‘An Ideal Woman: Cross-Dressing and Male Homoerotic Desire in Modern Chinese Literature’, analysing cross-dressing as a motif that complicates genders and desires. Dr Liang Ge’s (UCL) talk, ‘The Little Mushroom as the Queer/Wild: Disordering Desire and Desiring Disorder’, will investigate themes of disorder, wildness and radical potential in the danmei sci-fi The Little Mushroom. Dr How Wee Ng (Westminster) will share insights on ‘Queer Singapore Chinese Theatre: Staging Homosexuality, AIDS, and Familial Acceptance’, focusing on Singaporean theatre’s role in broaching queer identity. Finally, Dr Hongwei Bao (Nottingham) will share his conversations with the renowned Chinese queer author Cui Zi'en concerning the writer’s own life and literary works.

The presentations will be followed by reflections from Professor Chris Berry (KCL) and an audience Q&A. The event will be chaired by Dr Liang Ge.

Speaker bios 

Hongwei Bao is Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is the author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (NIAS Press, 2018), Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020), Queer Media in China (Routledge, 2021) and Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance (Routledge, 2022). He coedits Contemporary Queer Chinese Art (Bloomsbury, 2023) and Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender and Sexuality (Routledge, 2024). As a creative writer, his poetry collections include The Passion of the Rabbit God (Valley Press, 2024) and Dream of the Orchid Pavilion (Big White Shed Press, 2024).

Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London. In the 1980s, he worked for China Film Import and Export Corporation in Beijing, and his academic research is grounded in work on Chinese-language cinemas and other Chinese-language screen-based media, as well as work from neighboring countries. He is especially interested in queer screen cultures in East Asia; mediatized public space in East Asian cities; and national and transnational screen cultures in East Asia. Together with John Erni, Peter Jackson, and Helen Leung, he edits the Queer Asia book series for Hong Kong University Press. Prior to his current appointment, he taught at La Trobe University in Melbourne, The University of California, Berkeley, and Goldsmiths, University of London.

Liang Ge is a Lecturer in Digital Sociology at the Social Research Institute, University College London. Their research interests include digital media, cultural sociology, youth, gender and sexuality, and East and Southeast Asian popular cultures an creative industries. They received their PhD in Culture, Media and Creative Industries from King’s College London. Before that, Liang gained a BLit in Chinese Language and Literature from Peking University, and their MSc in Sociology from the London School of Economics. Their recent publications can be found in Media, Culture & Society, European Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Asian Studies Review, among others.

How Wee Ng is Senior Lecturer at the School of Humanities, University of Westminster. His research interests include censorship in Sinophone cinema and television, and the exclusionary politics of representation in relation to gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class in theatre and media. Selected publications are ‘Articulating Silences around Death in Both Sides, Now: Medical Professionals Grappling with Grief’ (2022), and ‘Taipei Golden Horse Film Awards and Singapore Cinema: Prestige, Privilege and Disarticulation’ (2020).

Dylan K. Wang is a PhD candidate at SOAS University of London, having previously studied at Tsinghua University, the College of William and Mary, and the University of Oxford. His publications include essays on comparative literature and queer studies, as well as English-to-Chinese translations, including A New Literary History of Modern China (edited by David Der-wei Wang), Chinese Art and Dynastic Time (Wu Hung) and Shaping the World (Antony Gormley and Martin Gayford). His latest article on Eileen Chang’s practice of self-translation was published in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation.