Leo Chu | The University of New South Wales (original) (raw)

Papers by Leo Chu

Plants, People, Planet, 2024

Multiple cropping, the cultivation of several crops on the same land in a year, occupied an impor... more Multiple cropping, the cultivation of several crops on the same land in a year, occupied an important part of Taiwan's agricultural research from 1950 to 1970. This research originated in the context of Taiwan's land reform and diversification programs and their connections to the government's political ambition to maximize food production. The study of how multiple cropping was politicized and depoliticized by different actors helps to expand the narratives of the Green Revolution in Asia, analyze their legacies, and highlight Taiwan's role in the international exchange of visions of agricultural development during the Cold War.

The British Journal for the History of Science

Arcadia, Sep 17, 2020

This article examines the significance of the Hong Kong countryside as a site of knowledge produc... more This article examines the significance of the Hong Kong countryside as a site of knowledge production. By analyzing biologist Geoffrey Herklots' career as a university academic, a naturalist, and a colonial official, I demonstrate the scientific and geopolitical importance of biology in interwar Hong Kong. Drawing on an article in the journal Herklots created (<i>Hong Kong Naturalist</i>), a proposal for a colonial museum, and the connection between biology and wartime experience, I illustrate the role biology plays in the imagination of the British Empire as well as how Hong Kong's countryside can be understood through the lens of science.

Agricultural History, 2023

This article studies the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in Taiwan. It be... more This article studies the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in Taiwan. It begins with the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), a US-funded agency championing plant breeding and land reform. Capitalizing on Japanese colonial legacy, a technocratic Chinese nationalism, and Cold War geopolitics, the JCRR boosted the productivity of rice while diversifying the agricultural economy through vegetable cultivation. The AVRDC, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the US government, was created in 1971 to bring this vision to Southeast Asia. The expulsion of Taiwan from the United Nations nonetheless threatened the center's survival. To carve out its sphere of influence, the AVRDC combined vegetable breeding programs with experiments on home gardening and small-scale agriculture, inserting itself into a bourgeoning sustainability discourse in the 1980s. The article argues that the center's ambiguous position within the international agricultural research network prompted it to adopt a “modest narrative” that celebrated not heroic figures but the collaborative endeavor of scientists sympathetic to farmers. However, the marginalization of agriculture and shifting identity politics in Taiwan made the center's achievement increasingly less relevant to its host country, thus complicating the significance of the AVRDC to the agricultural history of Taiwan.

Science Fiction Film and Television, 2023

This paper studies the value of the magical girl (mahō shōjo) anime in the Anthropocene through t... more This paper studies the value of the magical girl (mahō shōjo) anime in the Anthropocene through three selected works: Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), Yuki Yuna Is a Hero (2014), and Wonder Egg Priority (2021). By reading them against the history of the magical girl genre and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, this paper highlights how each presents a gendered system that both sustains and threatens the world, and how science is intertwined with magic and affects in the (de-) construction of the system. These works thus enrich the imagination of science when the world is increasingly entangled with humans.

Configurations, 2023

This paper scrutinizes the confluence of idol and racing industries in Uma Musume Pretty Derby, a... more This paper scrutinizes the confluence of idol and racing industries in Uma Musume Pretty Derby, a Japanese multimedia franchise centering on" horse girls," anthropomorphized characters based on racehorses. I study how the franchise elicits audience's emotional and financial investment by combining features of idol performance and racehorse breeding in an" affective economy," while highlighting its strategy to reconcile the contradictory concepts of purity through a process I call" purification." This paper uses the franchise to critically engage the imperial and eugenic legacies in the racing and idol industries of Japan, and demonstrates the complicated entanglement between science, empire, and entertainment.

Royal Society Open Science

Perceptions of, and attitudes toward, wildlife are influenced by exposure to, and direct experien... more Perceptions of, and attitudes toward, wildlife are influenced by exposure to, and direct experiences with, nature. Butterflies are a conspicuous and ubiquitous component of urban nature across megacities that are highly urbanized with little opportunity for human–nature interactions. We evaluated public familiarity with, perceptions of and attitudes toward butterflies across nine megacities in East and Southeast Asia through face-to-face interviews with 1774 urban park users. A total of 79% of respondents had seen butterflies in their cities mostly in urban parks, indicating widespread familiarity with butterflies. Those who had seen butterflies also had higher perceptions of butterflies, whereas greater than 50% of respondents had positive attitudes toward butterflies. Frequent visits to natural places in urban neighbourhoods was associated with (i) sightings of caterpillars, indicating increased familiarity with urban wildlife, and (ii) increased connectedness to nature. We found ...

Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue, 2022

The Lincoln Humanities Journal, 2021

This paper studies the videogame Camus in the Blue Sky through the lens of world-type, a genre of... more This paper studies the videogame Camus in the Blue Sky through the lens of world-type, a genre of fiction popular in Japan since the 1990s. Created as a visual novel, a type of game characterized by textual story-telling and limited player agency, Camus in the Blue Sky combines the narrative of personal growth with an absurdist-horror environment of zombie apocalypse. I illustrate the game’s world-type elements by reading its story against the works of existentialist philosopher Albert Camus and the Japanese novelist Miyazawa Kenji. In particular, I focus on the game’s utilization of two cultural icons—the Japanese folklore of zashikiwarashi, a spirit said to bring good luck, and the global cultural icon of zombie, an absurd creature reflecting our inner chaos and meaninglessness—to illustrate how it treats absurdity as an intrinsic condition for human happiness. Furthermore, the game also juxtaposes the struggle to keep one’s own feeling “pure” with the dilemma post-disaster Japan faces in continuing its social systems when interpersonal connections are critically threatened. Ultimately, Camus in the Blu Sky tries to approach the possibility of happiness in a world without transcendental value, and thereby reflects the existentialist potential of the world-type fiction

Journal of Planning History, 2021

This article studies the intersection of systems ecology and urban planning in the Inter-Institut... more This article studies the intersection of systems ecology and urban planning in the Inter-Institutional Policy Simulator (IIPS) project, conducted between 1970 and 1974 in Metro Vancouver, and tries to understand how ecologists influenced the planning of urban systems. I analyze the rise and fall of IIPS as the interaction between “IIPS the Platform” and “IIPS the Product,” or between the network of experts and the simulator they aimed to create. Although IIPS failed to create a desirable product, I argue that the project can exemplify ecologists’ desire to reform the practice of urban planning through the power of systems science.

Extrapolation, 2021

This paper studies the idea of care in the science fiction of Japanese writer Gen Urobuchi: The S... more This paper studies the idea of care in the science fiction of Japanese writer Gen Urobuchi: The Song of Saya (2003), Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), and its sequel Rebellion (2013). Utilizing Jacques Derrida’s notion of the gift, Bernard Stiegler’s critique of entropy, and Takeo Doi’s analysis of amae, I examine how these works situate care in relation to thermodynamic and libidinal economy. I demonstrate that care is always an embodied act intertwined with technology and economy, and that by reading care as a pharmakon that both heals and poisons, a "neganthropic" hope can emerge from the entropic system of the Anthropocene.

Aeternum: The Journal Of Contemporary Gothic Studies, 2021

Scholars have argued that the realization of cosmic horror in H. P. Lovecraft's fiction depends o... more Scholars have argued that the realization of cosmic horror in H. P. Lovecraft's fiction depends on the characters' perceptions of and reactions to Lovecraft's monsters. However, horror is not the only affect such encounter can arouse. This paper studies what I term "Lovecraftian perception," or the embodied and situated experiences which shape the understanding of radical otherness, by examining the video game The Song of Saya (2003). My focus in on the representation of Saya, a character who appears to the cognitively impaired protagonist as an adorable girl but is actually a shapeless monster. I argue that the game appropriates the Lovecraftian perception to juxtapose the cosmic indifference of Lovecraftian monsters and the domestic intimacy the game portrays, thereby achieving its goal of crafting a highly emotional melodrama revolving around the romance between the protagonist and Saya. I nonetheless problematize the gendered narrative that limits Saya to a caring and sacrificing role. In my conclusion, applying Donna Haraway's concept of situated knowledge, I demonstrate how Lovecraftian perception can create alternative narratives if Saya's encounter with humanity occurs not only in a heteronormative relationship but in contexts that better appreciate the radical otherness of her uncanny biology.

Journal of Planning History, 2021

This article studies the intersection of systems ecology and urban planning in the Inter-Institut... more This article studies the intersection of systems ecology and urban planning in the Inter-Institutional Policy Simulator (IIPS) project, conducted between 1970 and 1974 in Metro Vancouver, and tries to understand how ecologists influenced the planning of urban systems. I analyze the rise and fall of IIPS as the interaction between "IIPS the Platform" and "IIPS the Product," or between the network of experts and the simulator they aimed to create. Although IIPS failed to create a desirable product, I argue that the project can exemplify ecologists' desire to reform the practice of urban planning through the power of systems science.

Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, 2020

In this paper, I aim to analyze the animated television series Puella Magi Madoka Magica through ... more In this paper, I aim to analyze the animated television series Puella Magi Madoka Magica through a combination of critical methods: neo-noir criticism, feminist studies of technoscience, and discussion of utopia/dystopia imagination. My focus is on how desire and hope-two interconnected but potentially conflicting concepts-create the central narrative tension in Madoka Magica. Besides, I will illustrate that the "genre subversion" of the series is connected to not only the fictional struggle of magical girls against their fates but also the real power structures and asymmetries in modern society. By scrutinizing how the series represents the difficulties to resist a future imposed from the standpoint of dominant social groups and how such impasse can be confronted, the paper argues that Madoka Magica, while not really committing itself to the imagination of radical alternatives to the existent social systems, is nonetheless able to affirm the desirability of having hope for futures that are yet to be imagined.

Arcadia, 2020

This article examines the significance of the Hong Kong countryside as a site of knowledge produc... more This article examines the significance of the Hong Kong countryside as a site of knowledge production. By analyzing biologist Geoffrey Herklots' career as a university academic, a naturalist, and a colonial official, I demonstrate the scientific and geopolitical importance of biology in interwar Hong Kong. Drawing on an article in the journal Herklots created (Hong Kong Naturalist), a proposal for a colonial museum, and the connection between biology and wartime experience, I illustrate the role biology plays in the imagination of the British Empire as well as how Hong Kong's countryside can be understood through the lens of science.

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 2020

This paper will examine the ambivalences and contradictions in post-handover Hong Kong cinema thr... more This paper will examine the ambivalences and contradictions in post-handover Hong Kong cinema through the lens of gender, border, and the body politic in three crime films. The first of them, Intruder (恐怖雞 kongbuji, 1997), released when the sovereignty over Hong Kong was just transferred from Britain to China, may evoke a "crisis of masculinity" through its border-crossing female antagonist; in contrast, the portrayal of women, as well as transgender and queer people, in Ming Ming (明明, 2006) and I Come with the Rain (2009) appear to be more nuanced. Reading the three films against one another and against the established narratives about the city, I intend to investigate how these works adopt gendered narratives and the questions of border in the construction of identity politics in post-handover Hong Kong. By juxtaposing the fluid, unstable, and multi-faceted bodies of fictional characters to the city's history, this paper argues that the representation of past and future in these films reflects the struggle to narrate the anxiety and hope in the post-handover Hong Kong.

Conference Presentations by Leo Chu

NATSA 2019 Annual Conference, 2019

Within the field of Taiwan Studies, research on environmental-related issues is still burgeoning;... more Within the field of Taiwan Studies, research on environmental-related issues is still burgeoning; however, the aspects of international relationship, trade, and the roles played by science and technology have so far received little attention. This paper, as a preliminary study on the roles played by Taiwan and British Columbia in the mid-1980s North Pacific driftnet controversy, will investigate the rise of environmentalism in global political arena and its impact on the web of regional relation through a comparative and relational method, and through two "marginal" players in a debate apparently centered on United States and Japan. Divided into three parts, it will provide (1) a general introduction of the controversy and its significance to fisheries in Taiwan, (2) an analysis on the strategies different sectors of North American society adopted to pursue their interests in the convoluted local-federal, transnational, and "East-West" negotiations, and (3) a brief discussion on how the research on legal, scientific, and environmental knowledge may enrich the field of Taiwan Studies, and how this intriguing episode can be further examined in a larger project. Hopefully, this paper can offer critical insights into the power and limitations of knowledge production on the fringe of Empire, and pave the way for better appreciation of Taiwan in a global context. and environmental politics together through the focal point, or rather the tangled web, of the North Pacific driftnet controversy. It would be surprising to notice that there is rather limited academic literature outside the disciplines of marine sciences and policy-making which focuses on fisheries-related topics in Taiwan, despite it being an island with a diverse, well-established fishing industry, including a sizable distant water fishing fleet capable of utilizing the marine resources of most parts of the Earth. 1 On the other hand, although the potential of such a project in Taiwan Studies remains unfulfilled, a renewed interests in the role ocean has played in connecting and complicating the history, culture, and geographical imagination across different societies have gained more interdisciplinary attention in recent years, while the possibility to revise and problematize the many "minor" histories entailed by this method which overcomes the binary opposition of "global" and "local", "marginal" and "central", "East" and "West", can be especially conducive to a research emphasizing the complex and nuanced contexts in which Taiwan is frequently situated. 2 Moreover, the historiography of Taiwan undoubtedly featured various maritime themes, from early trade and settlement/colonization to cold-war era geopolitics; subsequently, through the specific episode examined in the paper, the attempt to extend the multiple, contrapuntal trajectories linked to the contemporary development of Taiwanese fisheries may not only benefit from an "oceanic method" but contribute to the expansion of methodology by introducing certain Taiwanese experience. The relational and global approach may also serve as a constructive critique of our (mis-)conceptualization of economic and political issues, which relies often on immediate, simplified, and largely insulated assumptions about regional history. 3

NeMLA 50th Anniversary Convention, 2019

The development of Hong Kong cinema has always reflected the city's history, a contested locus of... more The development of Hong Kong cinema has always reflected the city's history, a contested locus of capital and state, hegemony and diversity, modernity and its pre-and post-modern counterparts, and versions of British imperialism and Chinese nationalism.

Binocular 2019 Graduate Student Conference, 2019

This paper is an inquiry into how questions of visibility and disciplinary boundary can be elabor... more This paper is an inquiry into how questions of visibility and disciplinary boundary can be elaborated in a planning exercise-the Inter-Institutional Policy Simulator (IIPS) project conducted between 1970 and 1974. A joint venture created by the University of British Columbia, Ford Foundation, and various levels of the government, IIPS aimed to create a computer-based simulation model that would assist laypeople in planning processes. Before focusing on the project itself, however, I would like to first briefly inroduce the development of ecology in the human context.

A working proposal on British Columbia and Taiwan in North Pacific driftnet controversy. Presente... more A working proposal on British Columbia and Taiwan in North Pacific driftnet controversy. Presented in the Yong Scholar Workshop on Taiwan Studies at University of Ottawa.

Plants, People, Planet, 2024

Multiple cropping, the cultivation of several crops on the same land in a year, occupied an impor... more Multiple cropping, the cultivation of several crops on the same land in a year, occupied an important part of Taiwan's agricultural research from 1950 to 1970. This research originated in the context of Taiwan's land reform and diversification programs and their connections to the government's political ambition to maximize food production. The study of how multiple cropping was politicized and depoliticized by different actors helps to expand the narratives of the Green Revolution in Asia, analyze their legacies, and highlight Taiwan's role in the international exchange of visions of agricultural development during the Cold War.

The British Journal for the History of Science

Arcadia, Sep 17, 2020

This article examines the significance of the Hong Kong countryside as a site of knowledge produc... more This article examines the significance of the Hong Kong countryside as a site of knowledge production. By analyzing biologist Geoffrey Herklots' career as a university academic, a naturalist, and a colonial official, I demonstrate the scientific and geopolitical importance of biology in interwar Hong Kong. Drawing on an article in the journal Herklots created (<i>Hong Kong Naturalist</i>), a proposal for a colonial museum, and the connection between biology and wartime experience, I illustrate the role biology plays in the imagination of the British Empire as well as how Hong Kong's countryside can be understood through the lens of science.

Agricultural History, 2023

This article studies the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in Taiwan. It be... more This article studies the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in Taiwan. It begins with the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), a US-funded agency championing plant breeding and land reform. Capitalizing on Japanese colonial legacy, a technocratic Chinese nationalism, and Cold War geopolitics, the JCRR boosted the productivity of rice while diversifying the agricultural economy through vegetable cultivation. The AVRDC, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the US government, was created in 1971 to bring this vision to Southeast Asia. The expulsion of Taiwan from the United Nations nonetheless threatened the center's survival. To carve out its sphere of influence, the AVRDC combined vegetable breeding programs with experiments on home gardening and small-scale agriculture, inserting itself into a bourgeoning sustainability discourse in the 1980s. The article argues that the center's ambiguous position within the international agricultural research network prompted it to adopt a “modest narrative” that celebrated not heroic figures but the collaborative endeavor of scientists sympathetic to farmers. However, the marginalization of agriculture and shifting identity politics in Taiwan made the center's achievement increasingly less relevant to its host country, thus complicating the significance of the AVRDC to the agricultural history of Taiwan.

Science Fiction Film and Television, 2023

This paper studies the value of the magical girl (mahō shōjo) anime in the Anthropocene through t... more This paper studies the value of the magical girl (mahō shōjo) anime in the Anthropocene through three selected works: Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), Yuki Yuna Is a Hero (2014), and Wonder Egg Priority (2021). By reading them against the history of the magical girl genre and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, this paper highlights how each presents a gendered system that both sustains and threatens the world, and how science is intertwined with magic and affects in the (de-) construction of the system. These works thus enrich the imagination of science when the world is increasingly entangled with humans.

Configurations, 2023

This paper scrutinizes the confluence of idol and racing industries in Uma Musume Pretty Derby, a... more This paper scrutinizes the confluence of idol and racing industries in Uma Musume Pretty Derby, a Japanese multimedia franchise centering on" horse girls," anthropomorphized characters based on racehorses. I study how the franchise elicits audience's emotional and financial investment by combining features of idol performance and racehorse breeding in an" affective economy," while highlighting its strategy to reconcile the contradictory concepts of purity through a process I call" purification." This paper uses the franchise to critically engage the imperial and eugenic legacies in the racing and idol industries of Japan, and demonstrates the complicated entanglement between science, empire, and entertainment.

Royal Society Open Science

Perceptions of, and attitudes toward, wildlife are influenced by exposure to, and direct experien... more Perceptions of, and attitudes toward, wildlife are influenced by exposure to, and direct experiences with, nature. Butterflies are a conspicuous and ubiquitous component of urban nature across megacities that are highly urbanized with little opportunity for human–nature interactions. We evaluated public familiarity with, perceptions of and attitudes toward butterflies across nine megacities in East and Southeast Asia through face-to-face interviews with 1774 urban park users. A total of 79% of respondents had seen butterflies in their cities mostly in urban parks, indicating widespread familiarity with butterflies. Those who had seen butterflies also had higher perceptions of butterflies, whereas greater than 50% of respondents had positive attitudes toward butterflies. Frequent visits to natural places in urban neighbourhoods was associated with (i) sightings of caterpillars, indicating increased familiarity with urban wildlife, and (ii) increased connectedness to nature. We found ...

Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue, 2022

The Lincoln Humanities Journal, 2021

This paper studies the videogame Camus in the Blue Sky through the lens of world-type, a genre of... more This paper studies the videogame Camus in the Blue Sky through the lens of world-type, a genre of fiction popular in Japan since the 1990s. Created as a visual novel, a type of game characterized by textual story-telling and limited player agency, Camus in the Blue Sky combines the narrative of personal growth with an absurdist-horror environment of zombie apocalypse. I illustrate the game’s world-type elements by reading its story against the works of existentialist philosopher Albert Camus and the Japanese novelist Miyazawa Kenji. In particular, I focus on the game’s utilization of two cultural icons—the Japanese folklore of zashikiwarashi, a spirit said to bring good luck, and the global cultural icon of zombie, an absurd creature reflecting our inner chaos and meaninglessness—to illustrate how it treats absurdity as an intrinsic condition for human happiness. Furthermore, the game also juxtaposes the struggle to keep one’s own feeling “pure” with the dilemma post-disaster Japan faces in continuing its social systems when interpersonal connections are critically threatened. Ultimately, Camus in the Blu Sky tries to approach the possibility of happiness in a world without transcendental value, and thereby reflects the existentialist potential of the world-type fiction

Journal of Planning History, 2021

This article studies the intersection of systems ecology and urban planning in the Inter-Institut... more This article studies the intersection of systems ecology and urban planning in the Inter-Institutional Policy Simulator (IIPS) project, conducted between 1970 and 1974 in Metro Vancouver, and tries to understand how ecologists influenced the planning of urban systems. I analyze the rise and fall of IIPS as the interaction between “IIPS the Platform” and “IIPS the Product,” or between the network of experts and the simulator they aimed to create. Although IIPS failed to create a desirable product, I argue that the project can exemplify ecologists’ desire to reform the practice of urban planning through the power of systems science.

Extrapolation, 2021

This paper studies the idea of care in the science fiction of Japanese writer Gen Urobuchi: The S... more This paper studies the idea of care in the science fiction of Japanese writer Gen Urobuchi: The Song of Saya (2003), Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), and its sequel Rebellion (2013). Utilizing Jacques Derrida’s notion of the gift, Bernard Stiegler’s critique of entropy, and Takeo Doi’s analysis of amae, I examine how these works situate care in relation to thermodynamic and libidinal economy. I demonstrate that care is always an embodied act intertwined with technology and economy, and that by reading care as a pharmakon that both heals and poisons, a "neganthropic" hope can emerge from the entropic system of the Anthropocene.

Aeternum: The Journal Of Contemporary Gothic Studies, 2021

Scholars have argued that the realization of cosmic horror in H. P. Lovecraft's fiction depends o... more Scholars have argued that the realization of cosmic horror in H. P. Lovecraft's fiction depends on the characters' perceptions of and reactions to Lovecraft's monsters. However, horror is not the only affect such encounter can arouse. This paper studies what I term "Lovecraftian perception," or the embodied and situated experiences which shape the understanding of radical otherness, by examining the video game The Song of Saya (2003). My focus in on the representation of Saya, a character who appears to the cognitively impaired protagonist as an adorable girl but is actually a shapeless monster. I argue that the game appropriates the Lovecraftian perception to juxtapose the cosmic indifference of Lovecraftian monsters and the domestic intimacy the game portrays, thereby achieving its goal of crafting a highly emotional melodrama revolving around the romance between the protagonist and Saya. I nonetheless problematize the gendered narrative that limits Saya to a caring and sacrificing role. In my conclusion, applying Donna Haraway's concept of situated knowledge, I demonstrate how Lovecraftian perception can create alternative narratives if Saya's encounter with humanity occurs not only in a heteronormative relationship but in contexts that better appreciate the radical otherness of her uncanny biology.

Journal of Planning History, 2021

This article studies the intersection of systems ecology and urban planning in the Inter-Institut... more This article studies the intersection of systems ecology and urban planning in the Inter-Institutional Policy Simulator (IIPS) project, conducted between 1970 and 1974 in Metro Vancouver, and tries to understand how ecologists influenced the planning of urban systems. I analyze the rise and fall of IIPS as the interaction between "IIPS the Platform" and "IIPS the Product," or between the network of experts and the simulator they aimed to create. Although IIPS failed to create a desirable product, I argue that the project can exemplify ecologists' desire to reform the practice of urban planning through the power of systems science.

Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, 2020

In this paper, I aim to analyze the animated television series Puella Magi Madoka Magica through ... more In this paper, I aim to analyze the animated television series Puella Magi Madoka Magica through a combination of critical methods: neo-noir criticism, feminist studies of technoscience, and discussion of utopia/dystopia imagination. My focus is on how desire and hope-two interconnected but potentially conflicting concepts-create the central narrative tension in Madoka Magica. Besides, I will illustrate that the "genre subversion" of the series is connected to not only the fictional struggle of magical girls against their fates but also the real power structures and asymmetries in modern society. By scrutinizing how the series represents the difficulties to resist a future imposed from the standpoint of dominant social groups and how such impasse can be confronted, the paper argues that Madoka Magica, while not really committing itself to the imagination of radical alternatives to the existent social systems, is nonetheless able to affirm the desirability of having hope for futures that are yet to be imagined.

Arcadia, 2020

This article examines the significance of the Hong Kong countryside as a site of knowledge produc... more This article examines the significance of the Hong Kong countryside as a site of knowledge production. By analyzing biologist Geoffrey Herklots' career as a university academic, a naturalist, and a colonial official, I demonstrate the scientific and geopolitical importance of biology in interwar Hong Kong. Drawing on an article in the journal Herklots created (Hong Kong Naturalist), a proposal for a colonial museum, and the connection between biology and wartime experience, I illustrate the role biology plays in the imagination of the British Empire as well as how Hong Kong's countryside can be understood through the lens of science.

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 2020

This paper will examine the ambivalences and contradictions in post-handover Hong Kong cinema thr... more This paper will examine the ambivalences and contradictions in post-handover Hong Kong cinema through the lens of gender, border, and the body politic in three crime films. The first of them, Intruder (恐怖雞 kongbuji, 1997), released when the sovereignty over Hong Kong was just transferred from Britain to China, may evoke a "crisis of masculinity" through its border-crossing female antagonist; in contrast, the portrayal of women, as well as transgender and queer people, in Ming Ming (明明, 2006) and I Come with the Rain (2009) appear to be more nuanced. Reading the three films against one another and against the established narratives about the city, I intend to investigate how these works adopt gendered narratives and the questions of border in the construction of identity politics in post-handover Hong Kong. By juxtaposing the fluid, unstable, and multi-faceted bodies of fictional characters to the city's history, this paper argues that the representation of past and future in these films reflects the struggle to narrate the anxiety and hope in the post-handover Hong Kong.

NATSA 2019 Annual Conference, 2019

Within the field of Taiwan Studies, research on environmental-related issues is still burgeoning;... more Within the field of Taiwan Studies, research on environmental-related issues is still burgeoning; however, the aspects of international relationship, trade, and the roles played by science and technology have so far received little attention. This paper, as a preliminary study on the roles played by Taiwan and British Columbia in the mid-1980s North Pacific driftnet controversy, will investigate the rise of environmentalism in global political arena and its impact on the web of regional relation through a comparative and relational method, and through two "marginal" players in a debate apparently centered on United States and Japan. Divided into three parts, it will provide (1) a general introduction of the controversy and its significance to fisheries in Taiwan, (2) an analysis on the strategies different sectors of North American society adopted to pursue their interests in the convoluted local-federal, transnational, and "East-West" negotiations, and (3) a brief discussion on how the research on legal, scientific, and environmental knowledge may enrich the field of Taiwan Studies, and how this intriguing episode can be further examined in a larger project. Hopefully, this paper can offer critical insights into the power and limitations of knowledge production on the fringe of Empire, and pave the way for better appreciation of Taiwan in a global context. and environmental politics together through the focal point, or rather the tangled web, of the North Pacific driftnet controversy. It would be surprising to notice that there is rather limited academic literature outside the disciplines of marine sciences and policy-making which focuses on fisheries-related topics in Taiwan, despite it being an island with a diverse, well-established fishing industry, including a sizable distant water fishing fleet capable of utilizing the marine resources of most parts of the Earth. 1 On the other hand, although the potential of such a project in Taiwan Studies remains unfulfilled, a renewed interests in the role ocean has played in connecting and complicating the history, culture, and geographical imagination across different societies have gained more interdisciplinary attention in recent years, while the possibility to revise and problematize the many "minor" histories entailed by this method which overcomes the binary opposition of "global" and "local", "marginal" and "central", "East" and "West", can be especially conducive to a research emphasizing the complex and nuanced contexts in which Taiwan is frequently situated. 2 Moreover, the historiography of Taiwan undoubtedly featured various maritime themes, from early trade and settlement/colonization to cold-war era geopolitics; subsequently, through the specific episode examined in the paper, the attempt to extend the multiple, contrapuntal trajectories linked to the contemporary development of Taiwanese fisheries may not only benefit from an "oceanic method" but contribute to the expansion of methodology by introducing certain Taiwanese experience. The relational and global approach may also serve as a constructive critique of our (mis-)conceptualization of economic and political issues, which relies often on immediate, simplified, and largely insulated assumptions about regional history. 3

NeMLA 50th Anniversary Convention, 2019

The development of Hong Kong cinema has always reflected the city's history, a contested locus of... more The development of Hong Kong cinema has always reflected the city's history, a contested locus of capital and state, hegemony and diversity, modernity and its pre-and post-modern counterparts, and versions of British imperialism and Chinese nationalism.

Binocular 2019 Graduate Student Conference, 2019

This paper is an inquiry into how questions of visibility and disciplinary boundary can be elabor... more This paper is an inquiry into how questions of visibility and disciplinary boundary can be elaborated in a planning exercise-the Inter-Institutional Policy Simulator (IIPS) project conducted between 1970 and 1974. A joint venture created by the University of British Columbia, Ford Foundation, and various levels of the government, IIPS aimed to create a computer-based simulation model that would assist laypeople in planning processes. Before focusing on the project itself, however, I would like to first briefly inroduce the development of ecology in the human context.

A working proposal on British Columbia and Taiwan in North Pacific driftnet controversy. Presente... more A working proposal on British Columbia and Taiwan in North Pacific driftnet controversy. Presented in the Yong Scholar Workshop on Taiwan Studies at University of Ottawa.