[Book Talk] Wang Yiman: To Be an Actress. Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong’s Cross-Media World

Time: Wednesday, 24.  July, 11—13 (German time) / 17—19 (Chinese time)
Venue: Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (University of Heidelberg), Room 010.00.01, Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg

This event is organized by the Heidelberg sub-project “Epochal Lifeworlds—Narratives of Crisis and Upheaval” of the Joint Center “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective: A Dialogue with China”, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). If you are interested in participating online, please send a short message to register with sara.landa[at]zo.uni-heidelberg.de and we will share the link with you before the session.

Chinese American actress Anna May Wong (1905-1961) is one of the most intriguing and complex personalities of the early to mid-20th century media landscape. As a “defiant misfit”, Yiman Wang claims, she “innovated nuanced performances to subvert the racism and sexism that beset her life and career”.

Wang, Professor of Film & Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and former fellow of the Heidelberg “Worldmaking” project “Epochal Lifeworlds: Narratives of Crisis and Change”, offers a new perspective on Wong beyond that of a controversial star. In her multifocal and transmedial study based on extensive archival work, she focuses on Anna May Wong’s actual performance and labor, offering the reader a new perspective on Wong’s career and her challenging of the racialized and gendered framings of her times.

The book is available for free on: https://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/m/10.1525/luminos.189/