The Public Humanities Hub and UBC Connects at Robson Square present a free screening of Olivier Assayas’ meta-cinematic masterpiece, Irma Vep (France, 1996), starring global Hong Kong superstar Maggie Cheung. The screening will be accompanied by a talk and discussion led by Dr Mila Zuo, whose new book, Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium (Duke University Press, 2022), looks at how the charisma of Asian women film stars, including Cheung, shifts when placed in a transnational context. All are welcome also to discuss how the film engages with issues of nationality, gender, race, and cinematic history in its story of a director trying desperately to remake Louis Feuillade’s classic silent film, Les Vampires (1915-1916). The event, which will be hosted by Dr Danielle Wong, is part of the Cinema Thinks The World project, a series of 12 screenings and discussions held between UBC and the Cinematheque.
Mila Zuo is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at UBC. Her research areas include transnational Asian cinemas; film-philosophy; abject epistemologies; star studies; digital and new media; and critical theories of gender, sexuality, and race and ethnicity. Her book Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium (Duke University Press, 2022) focuses on the affective racialization of Chinese women film stars, demonstrating the ways which vulgar, flavourful beauty disrupts Western and colonial notions of beauty. In addition to her scholarly work, Zuo writes, directs, and produces narrative films, visual essays, documentaries, and music videos. Her short films have screened in international film festivals and universities, including Carnal Orient (2016) which premiered at Slamdance Film Festival, and her short narrative film Kin (2021), which was the recipient of the 2019 Oregon Media Arts Fellowship, and screened at HollyShorts Film Festival.
“Cinema Thinks the World” is sponsored by the Public Humanities Hub at the University of British Columbia. Through a series of public screenings, panel talks, and discussions, it aims to explore the ways in which global cinema represents and helps us to think about the world.
Co-sponsored by UBC Connects at Robson Square and the Public Humanities Hub.
Hear from the editor and co-creators of this graphic narrative: Dr. Charlotte Schallié, Chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria and PI of “Visual Storytelling and Graphic Art in Genocide and Human Rights Education”; Miriam Libicki, award-winning American-Israeli graphic novelist whose work explores culture clash and the construction of identity; and David Schaffer, who survived with his family in Romania due to their refusal to obey Nazi collaborators.
Moderated by Dr. Abby Wener Herlin, VHEC Program & Development Manager.
Audience Q&A and book signing to follow.
Presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, UBC Public Humanities and the University of Victoria Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies and supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Please join us for a lecture by visiting speaker Dr. Alisha M.B. Heinemann on the Challenges of Teaching Critical Diversity Literacy to Teacher Training Students in Germany.
Abstract
Based on my research I argue that most teacher education candidates in Germany view themselves as non-racist and therefore they do not think they require anti-racism education. The particularities of Germany are important to consider given its present is marked by the history and legacy of the Nazi era in addition to its a long and cruel history of colonialism that connects it with most Western countries. I argue that there is a need for students to decode their histories to understand their own entanglement within these legacies. On the one hand, many of the white students have family members who were part of the Nazi era. It is important for these students to have an opportunity to process this history as part of learning to decode and fight against present day racism that impacts students. On the other hand, twenty per cent of Germans are firstor second generation immigrants, and many of them who are racialized and impacted by racism; however, most of them appear to have accepted discourses of meritocracy.
In this presentation I will discuss my research project which focuses on Critical Diversity Literacy (Steyn, 2015) for teacher education students in Bremen, Germany. In particular I will discuss specific German discourses on diversity and discrimination and how these discourses maintain silences while amplifying the figure of the ‘good-hearted’ student. The empirical data includes portfolio and reflection entries which were created online in the context of four seminars focussing on diversity literacy for teacher education students in “Vocational Education with an Industrial-Technical Focused cohort”. The total of over 150 entries on well over 520 pages of material were created in the years 2020 to 2022 and analyzed using grounded theory (Corbin and Strauss, 2008).
Speaker
Dr. Alisha M.B. Heinemann is professor for diversity education and learning passages at the University of Bremen, Germany. Her research focusses on critical pedagogy, post- and decolonial theories, teacher education for a diverse society and learning in the life course. For more information: www.alishaheinemann.eu
Moderated by Dr. Michelle Stack, UBC Department of Educational Studies
