Asian Media Studies: Politics of Subjectivities

Asian Media Studies is a volume of original essays that provide new perspectives in Asian media studies. Accounting for a paradigm shift in these studies from cultural imperialism to globalization this book retheorizes Asian media studies to develop a larger context of critical internationalism in the field.

The unique voices here are from a younger generation of Asian–born scholars of different backgrounds indigenous, subaltern, diasporic, and others who make up the ′second wave′ of critical Asian media studies. The coverage includes Singapore TV news and advertising, Hong Kong nostalgia, sexuality in Malaysian film, VCD technology, and queer communities in Taiwan. This groundbreaking collection is both an advancement and a hallmark of Asian media studies.

Notes on Contributors.

Acknowledgments.

1. Introduction: Our Asian Media Studies? (John Nguyet Erni, City University of Hong Kong and Siew Keng Chua, Nanyang Technological University).

Part I: Moving In, Moving Out: Transnational Flows.

2. Discrepant Intimacy: Popular Culture Flows In East Asia (Koichi Iwabuchi, International Christian University).

3. Hook ′em Young: Mcadvertising And Kids In Singapore (Siew Keng Chua, Nanyang Technological University and Afshan Junaid, Nanyang Technological University).

4. Techno–Orientalization: The Asian VCD Experience (Kelly Hu, National Chung Cheng University).

Part II: Moving Backward, Moving Forward: Histories And Politics.

5. The Struggle For Press Freedom And Emergence Of "Un–Elected" Media Power (Myungkoo Kang, Seoul National University).

6. "Forward–Looking" News?: Singapore′s News 5 and the Marginalization of the Dissenting Voice (Sue Abel, University Of Auckland).

7. Beyond the Fragments: Reflecting On "Communicational" Cultural Studies in South Korea (Keehyeung Lee, Yonsei University).

8. Re–Advertising Hong Kong: Nostalgia Industry and Popular History (Eric Kit–Wai Ma, Chinese University Of Hong Kong).

Part III: Moving Between: Formations Of Audiences And Subjectivities.

9. The Whole World is Watching Us: Music Television Audiences in India (Vamsee Juluri, University Of San Francisco).

10. From Variety Show To Body–Sculpting Commercials: Figures Of Audience and the Sexualization of Women/Girls (Irene Fang–Chih Yang, National Dong Hwa University).

11. Recuperating Malay Custom/Adat In Female Sexuality in Malaysian Films (Gaik Cheng Khoo, Asia Research Institute).

12. The Formation of a Queer Imagined Community in Post–Martial Law Taiwan (John Nguyet Erni and Anthony Spires, Yale University).

Index.

John Nguyet Erni is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and Coordinator of Graduate Studies in the Department of English and Communication, City University of Hong Kong. He is author of Unstable Frontiers: Technomedicine and the Cultural Politics of Curing AIDS (1994); editor of a special issue entitled Becoming (Postcolonial) Hong Kong for Cultural Studies (2001); and co–editor, with Ackbar Abbas, of Internationalizing Cultural Studies (Blackwell 2004).

Siew Keng Chua is Professor of Communication Studies at the Auckland University of Technology. Her work in the fields of Asian media, gender studies, and cultural studies has been published in The Journal of International Communication, Jump Cut, and Cinemaya.

"With the publication of this volume, cultural studies begins to speak with a multiplicity of Asian accents, marking an excellent step towards meaningful and contrapuntal dialogues with those who have Anglo–American accents in the era of globalization."
–– Chin–Chuan Lee, City University of Hong Kong

"This book represents a coming of age of critical media studies in Asia, and about Asia. Written by Asian authors who are attuned to the hegemonic power of both Western media and Western paradigms of media studies, this collection of essays outlays the complex landscape of Asian media scholarship in one of the most dynamic regions in the world today. What we find is that there are many Asias, shaped by the intersections of power and subordination, pessimism and optimism, hope and despair."
––Ien Ang, University of Western Sydney

"The mediascapes of Asia are among the most dynamic and exciting in the world right now, and the most politically vital. This absorbing collection does much more than explore the profound changes occurring in the region as transnational media flows intensify, different modes of historical and political consciousness form, and new subjective realities take shape. In doing all this with acuity and flair, it revitalizes media studies."
––Meaghan Morris, Lingnan University