Browsing by Department "East Asian Studies"
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Item Embargo A Century of Sleeplessness: Zheng Guangzu, Lower Gentry and Religion, 1776-1866(2023) Wang, YuanIn this thesis, I probe the incremental religious and social changes in the local society that led up to the great transformations of the mid-19th century. I use the word “sleeplessness” both literally and figuratively. My protagonist, Zheng Guangzu (1776-1866), a member of a local elite from Lower Yangzi Delta, suffered from insomnia and was perturbed by the corruption of Confucianism by popular Buddhism and Taoism. These were, however, merely an interlude to the great challenge of his life, the spread of the Taiping religion, a heterodox Christian ideology that triggered the mid-19th century civil war. Through a case study, my research highlights the Confucian literati’s daily interaction with local religious practices that are alien to their cultural ethos. In doing so, I explore the diverse appeal of Confucianism to different social groups and uncover the tension between elite and popular culture. Significantly, this tension sheds light on Confucian’s responses to the Taiping. More broadly, based on my protagonist’s description of local religion, my thesis evaluates the extent of the state’s success in reaching into local society through the lens of its religious policy. Although it was the greatest patron of Confucianism, the state, I argue, exhibited an ambivalent attitude toward local cults rather than outright rejection.
Item Embargo A Visit to the First Chapter of Korean Popular Music History: A Critical Introduction of Brother Is A Street Musician - Viewing the Landscape of Modernity through Popular Songs and Translation Excerpts(2024) Han, SeulbinBrother Is a Street Musician – Viewing the Landscape of Modernity Through Popular Songs by Zhang Eujeong was originally published in Korean in 2006. Described as a “fascinating journey upstream into the past to understand where the current will bring the future of Korean pop music,” (Busan Ilbo Review, 2009) Brother Is a Street Musician does not deal with contemporary K-Pop; rather, it visits the first chapter of Korea’s popular music history, which coincided with Japanese colonization in the first half of the 20th century. Combining archival research with a critical analysis of the earliest popular songs, the early recording industry, the first modern era musicians and composers, and the first formation of the consumer masses, Zhang’s book seeks to address the essential question – how did a colonized people construct their own, unique form of popular culture? Today, popular music from Korea has established itself as a formidable, global cultural phenomenon, garnering the interest of not only the power players in the global music industry, but also scholars in many cross-disciplinary fields. As an academic inquiry into the first moment in the history of popular music from Korea, an English translation of this book will be an essential resource in today’s lively conversations around the emerging field of Korean popular music. Furthermore, as a companion to more books coming from Korea to meet the growing demand for resources with diverse perspectives in the study of popular music and culture from the periphery, this book can spur on thoughtful discussions about how dialogue between English academia and the academia of host-language countries/regions, facilitated by translation, can progressively enrich the way we expand knowledge about transnational phenomena as they flow across time, borders, and languages.
Item Open Access Affect, Violence, and Sovereignty: Reading Collective Isolation in Post-Catastrophic Trauma Writings(2024) Wu, YishuAs the twenty-first century has entered an era of catastrophes, post-catastrophic trauma writings in world literature bear witness and give testimonies to the moments of crisis. With a comparative literary study of the post-catastrophic trauma writings and other forms of representations that respond to the 9/11 terrorism in the United States and the Covid-19 pandemic outbreaks in China, this research explores the question of how the collective traumas develop dynamic relationships with individuality and influence individuals’ mental lives affectively. In the catastrophic aftermath, the collective traumas shared by the individuals act on their interiority and form a sense of collective isolation, which means that an individual staying in a collectivity remains unconsciously isolated affects. The research will illustrate the embodiments of collective isolation at an individual level and delve into its social causes at a collective level. On an individual level, collective isolation is recognized as a traumatized subject’s sense of detachment from the chronological present, showing a dislocation with time. On a collective level, collective isolation is an exteriorization of a traumatized society by two types of violence: subjective violence and objective violence. The intensive conflicts around subjective violence directly by catastrophes may transform into invisible objective violence, which constantly and implicitly influences politics, cultures, and human affects. This research would land at the point that collectivity and individuality as two spatial concepts could be interpenetrated through affects, illustrating that the collective traumas represent dynamic relationships among violence, affects, public spheres, and the individual’s mental world.
Item Open Access An Invisible Conundrum: Visualizing “Queer Immobility” in the Contemporary PRC(2022) Lou, QionglinUntil the end of the 20th century, with the deepening of the Opening-up and Reform movement under the context of globalization and advancement of communication methods, both culture and economy in the PRC have achieved unprecedented success. Due to this mobilized improvement, the queer community in the PRC seems to have gained more and more visibility at the same time. In this case, the increasing queer activities in the PRC may be associated with a Westernized sense of “queer mobility”, which indicates an expanding space of recognition, identification, and presence for queer individuals. However, regarding the specific post-socialist context in the contemporary PRC, the economic, cultural, or social mobility may directly result in the phenomenon of “queer mobility”, since such progression in other aspects may potentially neglect or conceal the marginalized backwardness that has been embedded in the process of development. In other words, the sense of queer mobility cannot fully represent the intricate reality of queer subjects in the PRC. Thus, this thesis will primarily focus on the concept of “queer immobility” as an alternative to interpret the queerness in the contemporary PRC. Specifically, this queer immobility may not be understood as negative or an outright opposition to the sense of queer mobility; instead, the stress of “immobility” may offer us a novel lens to re-investigate the underlying circulation of loss and continuous melancholy structured by the spatial and psychological constraints within Chinese queer subjects. Also, the intervention of “immobility” may tentatively break the illusion of queer activism structured by the economic, cultural, or political prosperity. To visualize such queer immobility, the thesis will focus on four films in the contemporary PRC. Through the analysis of the immobilized psychological and geographical space, the thesis intends to reveal the multifaceted conundrum of Chinese queer subjects, who struggle between the mobilized illusions and uncompromising restrictions.
Item Open Access Between Optimism and Precarity: Unravel the Intersectional Challenges of Chinese Female Immigrant Teachers in the United States(2023) Yang, YumengThis thesis investigates the work and life experiences of an under-discussed and female-dominant Chinese diasporic community, Chinese immigrant teachers in American K12 education. I argue that, firstly, while being privileged as high-skilled professionals and enjoying more mobility compared to their domestic sisters, Chinese female immigrant teachers are also subject to the precarity and intersectionality deriving from the underfunded American education and their triple marginality of being women, Asian and first-generation immigrants. Secondly, the structural inequality of gendered labor performed in both the professional and domestic roles of female teachers tends to be reinforced in the diaspora. By adopting mixed approaches of interview-based ethnography and digital ethnography, this thesis offers a critical alternative to the masculine and material version of Chinese immigration and contributes to a more extensive intellectual effort to understand the systematic racial and gender inequality associated with globalization.
Item Open Access Boundary between Virtuality and Reality: Comprehending VTubing Phenomenon through Posthuman(2024) Xu, DanniWhen Kizuna AI debuted as the first VTuber in the world, a new Japanese popular culture emerges. In just five years, as a new category of YouTubers, a group of VTubers (virtual YouTubers) is gradually coming into the public eye. Different from other YouTubers, VTubers use a digital avatar to represent their body and response to their audience. By using technologies such as 3D and live2D, VTuber are able to create any characters they want ignoring the limitations of their real-life identity. Through their interactions with audience through digital avatars, some VTubers have gained a large number of followers and earnings during live streaming. Graphics technology and VTuber’s performance create a connection between virtuality and reality. However, since the emergence of VTuber agencies in 2018, the VTubing phenomenon faces several new limitations. The agency’s business contract shatters the fantasy world that VTuber brings to their audience and prompt the audiences to shift their attention from the VTuber's behavior to that of the people manipulate the avatar (naka no hito). The result dilutes or even eliminates the connection between the VTubers and their digital avatar.
Item Open Access Chinese Cloud Players: How Proxy Play Develops From the Game Live Streaming(2022) Gu, YueThe term “Cloud Player” (云玩家) has been widely used as a put-down of the alleged pseudo-players who actively engage in online game discussion but seldomly play games themselves, and game live streaming is considered as the major channel for those to indirectly experience games. This paper enquires into the identification and population of the so-called cloud players in China by investigating Chinese players’ habits, consumption, and preferences in game and game live streaming through survey and interviews. The study showed that cloud players are an endogenic subgroup of the Chinese game community that has been marginalized and stigmatized. Cloud player as an identity is not a static but fluid and composite status an individual can opt for in experiencing one game at a time. To analyze the complex play mechanism of cloud players, a particular play conduct named proxy play by which gamers actively take on avatars of avatars and tune their levels of agency to varying play scenarios, is proposed and elucidated based on the established research on individuals’ motivations for and engagement in game live streaming as well as reflective discussion of prominent theoretical frameworks in game studies such as the magic circle and the frame theory.
Item Open Access Chollywooding and Pandering: The Present and Future of Sino-Hollywood Negotiation(2022) Chen, MengyuThe relationship between China and Hollywood has been a contested subject as a result of complicated historical trajectories. Whether during the Republican era or during the post-1994 period when Hollywood films were reimported to the Chinese market, Hollywood’s “dominance” seems to be the prevailing narrative, a narrative that describes one party’s (Hollywood’s) position of dominance over the other (the Chinese market). From the perspective of marketization, Hollywood and the Chinese film industry are entangled in an intense competition. From the perspective of culturalization, though, such a black and white binary is not entirely applicable, because culture itself is always undergoing continuous negotiation and reformulation. This thesis takes two recent Chinese films—Wolf Warrior II (2017) and The Great Wall (2016)—as my case studies to discuss two of the major forms of representation in the current Sino-Hollywood relationship, namely: “chollywooding” and “pandering.” I seek to highlight the dynamics of cultural negotiation and accommodation occurring between the two parties. Inspired by Prasenjit Duara’s concept of “circulatory history,” I challenge the idea of the “exclusiveness” of Hollywood, or the stationariness of any cultural form. I argue that Wolf Warrior II represents a new cultural space—a “Chollywood cinema” (that is, “Hollywood cinema with Chinese characteristics”) that combines Hollywood filmmaking techniques with Chinese ideology. I show that, while Chollywood cinema is particularly appealing to Chinese audiences, it is viewed much less favorably by overseas viewers. By contrast, The Great Wall employs a strategy of pandering that is less successful in terms of both its domestic and international receptions because it deviates from both “Hollywood” and “Chollywood/Chinese” ideologies. The aim of this thesis is twofold. On the one hand, I demonstrate that, from a cultural standpoint, the Sino-Hollywood relationship must be characterized as one of “negotiation”: both parties are not simply in a competitive relationship but also a collaborative one, whether they wish to be or not. This reveals a dynamic global-local interplay between “chollywooding” and “pandering.” On the other hand, the growing popularity and success of “Chollywood cinema” indicates how “chollywooding” will take on an increasingly significant role in reformulating Sino-Hollywood negotiation in the foreseeable future.
Item Open Access Echoes of Logos and Dao: "Yellow Earth" and the Question Concerning Technology, Language, and Cross-Cultural Dialogue(2024) Wang, YuezhouThe study aims to elucidate and address the problem of cross-cultural encounters and artwork interpretation by exploring the philosophical concepts of “the Logos and Dao.” Through the examination of Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s thoughts on “Logos” and referencing Daoist thought, the essential meaning of “the logos and Dao” is gradually explained with the notion of “Enframing” (Ge-stell), which denotes a mechanism that gathers and sends over. The structure of “Gestell” not only supports the fundamental function of the “house of language,” but also plays an important role in the question of modernity and technology. Through a detailed analysis of the film work Yellow Earth, the study illustrates how technology, while presenting challenges to the essential relation between humans and beings, also holds the potential to unveil the “Enframing” force of “the Logos and Dao.” This revelation fosters a reimagined understanding of cross-cultural dialogue in the age of modern technology, and it also urges us to rethink the relation between humanity, language, and technology.
Item Open Access Embodied Fate: The Character Economy and the Neoliberal Subjectivity in Gacha Games(2023) Huang, SihaoGacha game is a new type of video game that gained popularity in the 2010s and the 20s. In popular gacha games such as Genshin Impact, Fate/Grand Order, and Blue Archive, like a video game version of lottery, players pay virtual or real currencies to obtain random valuable items or playable characters. In Embodied Fate, the author conducts a symptomatic reading of the gacha game: to analyze the desire structure of gacha gaming from the perspectives of media studies, ludology, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies. Numerous theoretical frameworks and critical categories are used for the analysis, including database consumption, character merchandising, psychoanalysis, avatar theory and action theory of ludology, neoliberalism, and precarity. By contextualizing gacha games in the anime media mix, it is shown that the production and consumption of virtual characters are the foundation of gacha games’ desire structure. Also, the author purposes that over-possession, the sophisticated dynamics between the player and the character, boost the desire for repetitive gacha gaming. Last, the author puts gacha games in the wider context of late capitalism and shows that neoliberalism creates gacha games and gacha players develop parasociality with characters to resist the insecurity of their precarious lived experience.
Item Open Access Fall of the Father: On Literary Influence of Chen Yingzhen’s Early Writing (1959-1965) from Lu Xun to Wang Anyi(2024) Wang, ChenyanThis thesis examines the profound literary influence of Taiwanese writer Chen Yingzhen’s early writing, spanning from 1959 to 1965. It explores his journey from initially embracing the legacy of Lu Xun to the reciprocal impact of his collaboration with fellow writer Wei Tiancong, and ultimately, to his recognition by Wang Anyi. By situating Chen within the intricate literary landscape, conducting three comparative analyses of novellas that have adaptations and intertextual relationships, and focusing on the motif of the "fall of the father," both within the texts and in broader contexts, the thesis argues that:Chen Yingzhen’s early novels, characterized by their originality, rawness, and discernible traces of learning, reveal a more obvious adaptation of Lu Xun’s works alongside a closer reflection of his childhood. Chen’s engagement with Lu Xun commenced with his father’s reverence for this literary giant, but it is the shared experience of losing their fathers at an early age that forged a unique emotional resonance and literary bond between the two. Furthermore, Chen’s experience of dual fatherhood—both biological and adoptive—enabled him to continue Lu Xun’s pioneering narratives of intellectuals returning to their hometowns, albeit with a exploration the familial traumas and identity confusion in the younger generation, rather than the broader modernist dilemma. Also, the amalgamation of influences from his three fathers—in reality, and literature—shaped Chen’s distinctive literary and ideological framework, setting him apart from his contemporaries. While he introduced Western modernism to Taiwan and absorbed techniques from it, he retained elements of the May Fourth tradition and remained rooted in realistic concern, neither being swallowed by nihilism nor deviating from leftist aspiration. Moreover, Chen Yingzhen himself emerged as a literary father figure, serving as an exemplar or ideal with answers for the subsequent generation of authors from both sides of the trait. It is crucial to acknowledge that despite serving as a literary beacon for the emerging intellectual youth, Chen’s status as a literary father was not immune to the barriers of intergenerational, cultural, or temporal disconnects, due to the lack of understanding or inability to communicate. These divides make his figure hardly avoid being detached from the obscuration of imagination or even prejudice, and subjective projection.
Item Open Access Falling in Love With Virtual Boyfriends: Otome Games in Japan and Mainland China(2022) Tian , YuanMy thesis focuses on the popularity of otome games in Japan and mainland China. During the time of COVID-19, people have to stay at home and be isolated from their families and friends. Thus, playing video games, individually or collectively, has become a way to relax and socialize. I noticed that information about different otome games can be easily seen online, and some players have spent a great amount of money on them. As a female in my twenties, I myself am a target player of this game genre. Thus, I became interested in the popularity of this genre of game.My thesis has two chapters. After the Introduction, Chapter 1 discusses otome games from the cultural perspective, and I argue that this game genre today is popular in both locations after it is introduced from Japan to mainland China in the early 2000s. Furthermore, I explore otome game’s “queer potential” to suggest that the game goes beyond its intended player demographics, young heteronormative women. Chapter 2 analyzes the sociological implications beyond gameplay itself and onto the social relationship fostered by otome game culture. I argue that, as one of the manifestations of the popularity of this game genre, otome dream has been brought from the virtual world to the real world, but this digital intimacy has caused certain problems that may limit otome games’ possibilities to be enjoyed and further developed.
Item Open Access Feminists without Feminism: Women’s Online Movement in Contemporary China(2022) Li, JinyiWith the widespread stigmatization of “women’s rights” in China, I observed that young women increasingly reject the identification of “feminists.” In comparison, some of them voice their opinions on social media advocate for “feminist” agenda, such as demands for equal employment opportunities and an end to sexual harassment. This thesis focuses on a cultural phenomenon, which I call “feminist without feminism.” I argue that “feminism without feminists” is symptomatic of the failure of both state feminism and Western neoliberal feminism to address daily issues confronting Chinese women today. Social media provides the space for them to challenge patriarchy on a micro-level, sometimes by strategically avoiding being targeted by censorship or vilified by misogynist netizens. Moreover, I believe this feminism-from-below constitutes a postmodernist/postsocialist rejection of any singular feminist metanarrative. With guerilla-like decentralized tactics, “feminism without feminists” is a creative and strategic form of online activism
Item Embargo “Happy Farmwives and Bright Life”: Ie no hikari and the Reshaping of Women’s Lives in the Countryside in Postwar Japan from 1945 to 1950(2024) Chen, LingyiThis paper seeks to contribute to the study of early postwar Japanese women’s history by focusing on rural women, a group that has received relatively less attention in recent scholarship. It aims to understand the changes in the lives and worldviews of Japanese farm women from 1945 to 1950 as shaped by the ambitious initiatives of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), the Japanese government, and the local reception and internalization of new ideologies. Through the lens of women-and-lifestyle-related content in Ie no hikari 家の光 (Light of the Home), the most influential rural family magazine in prewar and postwar Japan, this paper intends to explore how the magazine tailored official campaigns to the rural context with the help of local activists and farm women themselves, leaving both tangible and intangible impacts on the daily lives of women and their families. It also investigates the various ways in which local women responded to and interacted with the official new life campaigns that promised them concrete improvements in material lives and social status. As the magazine served as a middle ground where top-down initiatives intersected with local efforts to internalize official languages in the late 1940s, it also provides access to the local voices of farm women at the time. These precious voices, however limited, allow us to better situate rural women within the tabulating social milieu of early postwar Japan and to delve deeper into their daily lives.
Item Open Access Imperial Ambitions and Colonial Spectacles: Examining Fascist Elements and Space Politics in the 1935 Taiwan Exposition(2024) Wong, Yi-NingThis thesis examines colonial exhibitions as imperial propaganda tools in Taiwan, particularly the 1935 exhibition The Taiwan Exposition under Japanese rule, and compares it with fascist Italy's 1940 Mostra d’Oltremare and Korea's 1929 Chosun Exposition. Among the research on Taiwan's history during the Japanese colonial period, this study delves into a nuanced analysis of how Japan, aspiring to match Western imperial powers, adopted and adapted the concept of exhibitions to compete with the West and to project its imperial ambitions. It contextualizes Japan's engagement with museum and exhibition culture as part of its broader modernization and imperial agenda. By delving into the exhibitions' function in manifesting the regimes’ ambitions through carefully curated displays, artwork, and spatial designs, the analysis underscores The Taiwan Exposition as not merely strategic embodiments of political power and ideology but also as cultural spectacles designed to engender a colonial fascination. This approach subtly packages and presents these exhibitions in a way that ideologically shapes colonial subjects, molding their perceptions through the awe-inspiring experiences they offer, thereby spotlighting The Taiwanese Exposition's pivotal role in this intricate process. By juxtaposing The Taiwan Exposition with its counterparts, the study seeks to unravel the layered expressions of colonialism, nationalism, and cultural exchange, offering insights into the WWII colonial discourse.
Item Open Access In Between the Closet and the Wild: Queer Animality in Contemporary China(2023) Wang, YidanThis thesis investigates the intersections between queer and posthuman studies, exploring how animality can serve as a force for queer movements. Drawing on the theories of Eve Sedgwick and Jack Halberstam, this project proposes the existence of an intermediate space between the domestic and the wild, which is linked by queer movements. Particularly, by examining three queer works from Hong Kong and Taiwan, this project demonstrates how animality provides resources and imaginative space for queering to transgress fixed features and identities. The works examined in this project queer taxonomies, language, species, bodies, and sexualities, opening up infinite possibilities for becoming. In this way, it intends to inspire new ways of thinking about identity, community, and the natural world.
Item Embargo Narrating the Covid-19 Cyber-Memoryscape in China: from the Social Media Infodemic to the Politicisation of Pandemic(2023) Hu, HuanqiuWhen it comes to issues concerning the media and communication system in contemporary China , a monolithic view of a top-down, hierarchical order between the repressing party-state censorship vs. the repressed media dominates the discussion in general. It is true that all media are under surveillance and control of the party-state, and this is usually the central focus of existing scholarship in this area. However, the simple presence of media and information control does not predetermine the uses to which media are put. Today, under the digital transformation of contemporary media systems, alternative organizations and individuals can voice out and communicate with the public in the interconnected cyber space. Therefore, the previous absolute discursive power of the party-state has been divided, shifted, and distributed.The COVID-19 pandemic and infodemic crisis have already shown us that apart from the tightening online censorship and digital surveillance, there are more complex and even unpredictable processes of negotiation, contestation, competition and even conspiracy between different power dynamics. Those cyber activities and discourses that shape collective memories of this pandemic era can tell us much about the changing dynamics among the party-state, economy, media, and society, as well as the ways in which these forces interact and clash in China today. This thesis adopts a cultural studies approach that examines a series of online pandemic-narratives and some significant public events and social movements that had been caused and directed by these narratives. Chapter 1, from spatial dimension, illustrates the complexity of the dynamics between different powers that are moving between various knots in the meshy discursive (inter)net space. Chapter 2, from temporal dimension, demonstrates the complexity of the process, both the occurrence and development, of cyber public events and social movements in the arena of digital communication sphere. By drawing a series of cases from a wide range of media texts and communication practices, I try to move beyond the conventional dichotomy and to explore the vast array of variations concerning nationalism, class, and other social conflicts in contemporary China. It is my hope that by directing attention toward the complexities and interdependencies of these cyber activities and discourses, I could offer an alternative way of looking at Chinese media and communication system, as well as the drastic social changes under the crisis of pandemic.
Item Embargo Nishi Amane’s Reception and Translation of Political Thought in the Early Meiji Era(2023) Pyo, Seung HyeonThis project will explore Meiji Japan’s reception of right training its sights on Nishi Amane 西周 (1829-1897)’s discussion of the concept in Meiroku Zasshi. The importation of numerous western political concepts, which had not existed in the Japanese language, naturally entailed intellectual efforts to come up with new words, or neologisms, and political ways of thinking. In this project, from the understanding that right as in Nishi’s analysis resulted from the Dutch political economic thinking in the nineteenth century, I intend to examine both the historicity of the concept and semantic clash involved in Meiji Japan’s translation of right as ken權. From the exploration of Nishi’s ken, illuminating epistemological shifts that occurred both in the target and source languages, I hope to observe the originality with which he attempted to articulate the new political economic make-up of the new Japanese state.
Item Open Access Reading and Writing in Negotiations: Studies in the Chinese Harry Potter Danmei Tongren Fandom(2023) Sun, YufeiUsing the Chinese "Harry Potter" danmei tongren fandom as an example, this thesis discusses the specific reading and writing habits of the Chinese danmei tongren fans. "Danmei tongren" is a Chinese umbrella term for fan fiction about male homoerotic romance that uses characters from popular texts. It is a type of popular culture appreciated mainly by young Chinese female netizens. The thesis is divided into two chapters. The first chapter discusses the reasons why danmei has become the mainstream genre/modality of tongren writing in contemporary PRC, by exploring the lineage of Chinese tongren culture and the desire and needs of its major female participants. The second chapter analyzes the specific fannish reading and writing habits fostered by online communities from the perspectives of the relationship between fans and the source texts, the interactions and conflicts between tongren readers and writers, and fans' literary innovation under communal limitations. Based on participant observation of fan practices, textual analysis of fan texts, and qualitative interviews with eight Harry Potter danmei tongren fans, I argue that danmei tongren fans' reading and writing are shaped and mediated by the complex negotiations in the intimate online community built and connected by fans' emotional investments.
Item Embargo Residing in Yesterday’s Tomorrow: Domestic Spaces in Domestic Spaces in 21st Century Chinese-Language Documentary Films(2024) Fan, YueThis project explores the concept of domestic space as depicted in the films Small Talk (2016) and The Moon Palace (2007), alongside philosophical and cultural insights. Through an interdisciplinary lens that incorporates cinema studies, philosophy, and cultural analysis, we examine how these filmmakers navigate the complexities of familial relationships, societal norms, and individual identities within the context of domesticity.
Small Talk by Huang Hui-chen provides a deeply personal exploration of domesticity, shedding light on taboo topics such as sexual identity and domestic violence. Meanwhile, Qiu Jiongjiong's The Moon Palace offers a fragmented yet profound portrayal of domestic space, challenging conventional boundaries and inviting viewers to contemplate the interplay between physical architecture and emotional resonance. Drawing from philosophical, this project expands understanding of domestic space as a liminal entity shaped by both tangible structures and intangible narratives. Through the lens of these filmmakers, the analysis interrogates the narratives embedded within the walls of our homes, gaining insight into the complexities of the human condition and the enduring power of familial bonds.
Ultimately, this thesis project argues that the study of domestic space transcends mere architectural analysis to encompass a deeper interrogation of human existence itself. By engaging with cinematic representations of home, we gain a deeper appreciation for the multiplicity of meanings that reside within the spaces we call home, offering valuable insights into the complexities of modern life and the human experience.