CfP: Queer Pop Media in Global Asias: A Special Issue of Television & New Media

Co-editors: Jamie J. Zhao (CityU HK) and Alvin K. Wong (HKU)

While caught in the interregnum of war and global medical biopolitics in the post-2020 years, we have witnessed the continuing, perhaps also unforeseen, popularity of diverse forms of Asian popular mediated cultures that feature nonnormative imaginaries of identity and desire on the inter-Asian, intra-Asian, cross-regional, transnational, transpacific, and global levels. Take, for example, Thai boys’ love (BL) media, web-based Taiwanese lesbian film and TV, trans images popularized by South Asian YouTubers, K-pop cover dances, Japanese cross-gender cosplay practices, Singapore- and Philippine-based tomboy bands, Korean queer webtoons, Chinese danmei dramas and masculine women-dominated reality shows, and the queer stardom and fandom of East Asian idols and artists in Asia and the Anglophone world.

Focusing on these emerging phenomena, this special issue of Television & New Media proposes that queer Asian pop media has been serving as the driving force for recent media and cultural globalizations. Our approach is built on existing global queering theories and queer media studies on the one hand, while drawing on the continually evolving praxis of “Global Asias,” which emphasizes Asia as both fragmented global imaginations and an interlinked set of formations that trespass geopolitical boundaries, on the other. We aim to curate relevant case studies to demonstrate the analytical potential of “queer pop media in global Asias,” which unveils the role of queer Asian pop media in (re)negotiating, (re)positioning, and (re)formulating socio-culturally marginalized identities, subjectivities, and desire in a global cultural landscape and media industry that was once saturated by Euro-American embodiments, visions, and voices. Meanwhile, we hope to interrogate the peril and promise of queer pop media in cultivating global imaginaries of Asia. In doing so, we examine how certain media genres, narrative maneuvers, digital streaming and social platforms, and inter-Asian-derived emerging media as either historically queer-saturated or intrinsically queer-enabling. By exploring how certain queer Asian media and pop culture are appropriated and even manipulated in global fan productions, media industries, and social activism, we also probe how these media-based images and practices have complicated the transcultural and transnational imaginaries of global Asias.

This special issue is particularly interested in the most recent cases of queer Asian pop media, revealing the diverse ways it dialogues with, contests, or refashions normative ideals and imaginaries across the globe and in different locales of the world.

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• The queerness of certain media genres, formats, and generic elements that have dominated Asia and facilitated Asian globalization, such as reality singing competitions and melodramas
• The digitization or platformization of queer pop media in global Asias, such as web-based queer Asian TV and its streaming sites, webtoons, and mobile gaming
• Informal practices for queer-centered information exchange and knowledge sharing enabled by globalized, digital Asias, such as gossip and bullet screen
• The transnational feminist and queer movements facilitated by, or across, the spectrum of Asian commercial media venues, social networking platforms, video-sharing and -streaming sites, dating apps, and theatrical stages.  
• The queering of transnationally circulated pop music genres in Asia, such as punk, rock, and rap
• Transcultural and cross-gender dance practices, such as cover dance, voguing, and drag, as well as their relation to local operas and transgender traditions
• Misogyny, racism, nationalism, transphobia, and femme-phobia in the transnational circulation and interpretation of queer Asian pop media
• Issues related to metronormativity, homonormativity, homonationalism, cosmopolitanism, neoliberalism, (neo)imperialism, and gentrification in the Asian and global dimensions of queer pop media

Potential contributors should submit 500-word abstracts as well as a short (2-page) CV by June 30, 2024 to both editors: Dr. Jamie J. Zhao (jingjamiezhao[at]gmail.com) and Dr. Alvin K. Wong (akhwong[at]hku.hk). Authors whose abstracts are selected will be notified by August 2024 and asked to submit complete manuscripts by December 31, 2024. Please note that the journal ONLY allows authors to publish research articles with it once every 3 years. Acceptance of the abstracts does not guarantee publication of the papers, which will be subject to peer review. Final papers should be approximately 7500 words (all-inclusive).