Research Focus Group Conference: Interdisciplinary Sinophone Conference

Over the past decade, Sinophone studies has emerged as a dynamic, interdisciplinary field, offering a flexible framework to explore the interconnections among Sinitic-speaking communities.

The Interdisciplinary Sinophone Conference aims to foster intellectually inclusive, creative, and rigorous conversations about the Sinophone world. It aims to enhance interdisciplinary perspectives in Sinophone studies, with a primary focus on literary studies, Indigenous studies, ethnomusicology, and gender and sexuality studies in Sinophone communities and beyond.

Biographies of the Panel Speakers:
Kyle Shernuk is a scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese and Sinophone literatures, film, and cultures. His research takes a particular interest in disempowered and minoritized populations, with recent publications focusing on issues of ethnicity, Indigeneity, queerness, and language in global Chinese communities. His current book project, Sinoscapes: Chinese Studies for the New Millennium, advances a new model for imagining the potential of Chinese studies through an investigation of ethnicity and Indigeneity in Sinitic-language texts. He is also an active Chinese-English translator, and his translation of Syaman Rapongan’s Eyes of the Sky is forthcoming with Columbia University Press.

Ho Chak Law is an assistant professor in race and musicology at The New School. His research focuses on the cultural politics of performance and representation in the Sinophone. Most recently, his article “Naamyam, Creative Music, and Immigrant Act: Meditations on Jon Jang’s Musical Setting of Genny Lim’s ‘Burial Mound’” was published in Music Theory Spectrum. He is currently working on a monograph tentatively titled Cosmopolitan Decadence: Popular Music and the Politics of the Sinophone in the Twentieth Century.

Dian Dian is a researcher and community organizer working at the intersections of gender, sexuality, migration, and labor. They received a Ph.D. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University, with a dissertation on queer feminist organizing across Sinophone communities. Dian has been involved in LGBTQ+ and feminist movements since 2009, including serving as editor-in-chief of Queer Lala Times and as communications manager of Chinese Lala Alliance. Now based in Seattle, they lead research and campaign organizing at the Massage Parlor Organizing Project (MPOP) and support community building among overseas Chinese queer women through Upwomxn.

Cosponsored by the IHC’s Interdisciplinary Sinophone Studies Research Focus Group and UCSB’s Center for Taiwan Studies