This event examines the aesthetic, narrative and institutional relations between cartoons, comics and animation across the Mao and Reform eras. Historically overlooked as entertainment for children or as “low culture”, these visual mediums have in recent years been reassessed by cultural historians as powerful tools for the dissemination of political and educational messages as well as the imagination of new worlds. Scholars have further noted the transnational influences and movements at work within these mediums, such as the ways in which Mao-era animation drew on Soviet, Japanese and even Disney influences while also conceptualising a "national style" that proved popular with international film festivals. This panel focuses on cases of transmedia storytelling and messaging, variously following narratives of class struggle, science education and the supernatural across picture cards, lianhuanhua (picture stories), animation and live-action film.
The event is free to attend and open to all. A Microsoft Teams link will be provided to all those who register via Ticket Tailor.
Chair
Dr Paul Kendall (University of Westminster)
About the speakers
Dr Avital Avina
Dr Avital Avina is a scholar of Chinese politics and visual culture. She specialises in political communication, propaganda, and visual culture in modern China, with a focus on how political imagery shapes everyday life and mediates political meaning across Maoist and contemporary contexts. Drawing on comparative and decolonial approaches to Asian politics, her interdisciplinary work engages debates on nationalism, race, minority identity, and art as activism across East Asia and beyond. She has taught at SOAS, Oxford, Manchester, and York. On this panel, Dr Avina will trace how a Song-dynasty folk hero was mobilised across picture cards, illustrated lianhuanhua, and animation in 1950s Shanghai, examining how state-sponsored visual media remade a popular entertainment figure into a champion of class struggle against the landlord class.
Dr Nick Stember
Dr Nick Stember is a media historian and translator of contemporary Chinese literature and popular culture. In his work he explores the remediation of the past through speculative fiction and graphic narrative, with a focus on how material conditions influence the production and consumption of art and commercial entertainment. For this panel, Dr Stember will discuss the moral panic over martial arts and supernatural-themed lianhuanhua which arose following a massive publishing boom in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, beginning with the short-lived Campaign to Sweep Away Spiritual Pollution (Oct 1983 - Jan 1984) and culminating with a crackdown by the State Publishing Bureau in the summer of 1985, resulting in the almost total collapse of the industry.
Dr Zhuang Muyang
Dr Zhuang Muyang is Assistant Professor in the College of Arts and Media at Tongji University in Shanghai. His research centres on cinema, media, and visual culture, specializing in animation and cartoons. He is now working on a book project on the historical and medial interplays between Chinese cartoons/manhua and animated films. On this panel, Dr. Zhuang will present the use of animation in Chinese science education films (kejiao dianying) from the late 1940s to early 1990s, through which he will demonstrate an alternative path to understanding the history of Chinese animation in the twentieth century.
