![Zhuoyi Wang](https://s3.amazonaws.com/mediacdn.hamilton.edu/images/3:4/300/140923hmlwang007web1600jpg.jpg)
Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Zhuoyi Wang was invited to give three talks in Taiwan and Mainland China in December 2019 and January.
Wang gave a talk titled “A Chinese Fantasy and Vision of Home?: Comparing The Wandering Earth (2019) with Hollywood Sci-fi Movies” at National Central University in Taoyuan, Taiwan. He analyzed how the film The Wandering Earth both draws and departs from the Hollywood sci-fi formula to create an apparently “Chinese” sci-fi story, and how the complicated political and cultural diversity in the Chinese-speaking world resulted in vastly different receptions of the film in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Wang co-presented with Visiting Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Tiao-Guan Huang a lecture titled “Chinese Family Culture through Ang Lee’s ‘Father Knows Best’ Trilogy” at Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Wang and Huang discussed how to use the film trilogy to help students gain an in-depth understanding of Chinese family culture in language and culture classes.
Wang gave a talk titled “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: a Cross-Cultural Story of ‘Girl Power” at Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He analyzed the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), focusing on its cross-cultural connection between Chinese-language martial arts films since the 1960s and the Euro-American “Girl Power” movement since the 1990s. He offered a close reading of the leading female characters in the film through the lens of gendered power relations.
Additionally, Wang presented a paper titled “Teaching Chinese Cultural Diversity through Controversial Films: The Case of The Wandering Earth, ” at the Annual Conference of Taiwan Association of Teaching Chinese as Second Language, in Taipei in December. Focusing on the case of The Wandering Earth, the paper discusses how to use controversial Chinese-language films as pedagogical materials to direct students to a deeper understanding of the complexities and conflicts in the Chinese-speaking world.