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Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

 
Venue: 
FAMES Room 8/9
Event date: 
Thursday, 31 October, 2024 - 14:00
Event organiser: 

China Research Seminar Series talk given by Dr Bingbing Shi University of St Andrews.

This presentation focuses on the adaptation of literature about China’s experiences of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) into various media, including films, TV series, video games, and museums. It explores how these different media influence and adapt from each other, shaping China’s cultural memory of the war. It examines screen-based cultural representations of the war that have been produced since 1946, including the film Spy Number One (1946), the novel Railway Guerrillas (1954), the novel Red Sorghum (1986), and the video game The Invisible Guardian (2019) to discuss common tropes in Chinese war stories. These tropes, including female spies, train narratives, and rural landscapes, are constructed, repeated, and adapted to the extent that they become “historical brands.” This dissertation coins the term “branding history” to probe the ways that historical memory is constructed in China and historical trauma is commercialised and politicised, working as a symbol of personal suffering as well as contributing to the formation of national identity. Literature-to-screen adaptation, as a way of branding history, negotiates the tensions between political demands and economic interests, collectivity and individuality, as well as historical events and current realities in contemporary China. 

Bingbing Shi submitted her PhD dissertation in July 2024 at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. Since August 2024, she has been working as a lecturer in the Department of Chinese Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, media studies, memory studies, and feminist writings.

Contact
Dr Noga Ganany: ng462@cam.ac.uk