The 2025-2026 annual Comparative Literature Conference will include two main events, a symposium on global Asian photography in the early fall of 2025 and a graduate
symposium in spring 2026.
Transnational Visual Culture
Across Korea, Hong Kong, and Burma
A Symposium
August 22-23, 2025
University of South Carolina
University of South Carolina
Location: Gambrell Hall 431
Transnationalism as a methodological approach, a circulation of images/objects, and
a distributed network of scholars has been an important development in the field of
Asian Studies. To be held August 22-23, 2025 at the University of South Carolina, this
symposium on transnational Asian visual culture will reflect, and build on, this twofold
current in Asian studies and the studies of global visual culture in North America.
It also seeks to reconceptualize multiple temporalities of global modernity by exploring
photographic image-making and image-circulation and compel decolonial imaginations
from a transnational perspective. This in-person interdisciplinary conference will
bring together speakers and discussants specializing in visual culture, Korean Studies,
art history, comparative literature, Asian studies, and related fields, as we collectively
explore images of, from, and beyond Korea, Hong Kong, and Burma. The conference will
consist of three sessions, a roundtable discussion between speakers and graduate students,
and a visit to USC’s Moving Image Research Collections (MIRC) to explore footage from
their military and other collections.
Speakers:
- Jae Won Chung(Rutgers University)
-
Jingtao Harry Gu (William and Hobart Colleges)
-
Jie Guo (University of South Carolina)
-
Jung Joon Lee (Rhode Island School of Design)
-
Minna Lee (Princeton University)
-
Sohl Lee (Stony Brook University)
Sponsors
Association for Asian Studies-Northeast Asia Council (AAS-NEAC)