Date: Monday, 22 June 2020
Time: 8 PM HK Time (GMT +8)
Speakers: Patricia Zimmermann, Mercedes Vazquez, Ria Sinha

This panel addresses the impact of the current COVID-19 crisis on arts and humanities research with specific emphasis on the challenges facing women and minorities in academic life.  Initial research, for example, shows a precipitous drop in journal submissions from women since the lockdown.  The crisis also adds fuel to debates surrounding the relevance of the arts and humanities in the twenty-first century.  Our panelists cover a range of disciplines and geographic regions to provide a multidimensional conversation and widen our perspective on gender, diversity, and democracy during the pandemic.

SPEAKER AND MODERATOR BIOS
Ria Sinha
Ria Sinha trained as an infectious disease scientist at Imperial College London and Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands, and is currently senior research fellow in the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. Her interdisciplinary research considers the complex and dynamic sociocultural, ecological, technological, and scientific determinants of infectious disease emergence and management.

Mercedes Vazquez
Mercedes Vázquez is a Lecturer and Honorary Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts of The University of Hong Kong where she leads the research subcommittee of the Committee on Gender, Equality and Diversity. Her most important recent publications include a monograph on contemporary cinematic representations of class in the cinemas of Latin America—The Question of Class in Contemporary Latin American Cinema (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018)—, a book chapter comparing diverse figurations of precariousness in Venezuelan cinema, and the Oxford Bibliography on Latin American Cinema (OUP).  At HKU, she teaches undergraduate research skills applied to the study of Latin American and European cinemas, Spanish language and Hispanic Cultures, with a focus on gender and sexuality. She has shared her teaching approaches in journals such as Cinegogía and Tinta China, and is currently preparing a webminar comparing pedagogies during COVID in Hong Kong and Mainland China and conducting research on women filmmakers and Latsploitation cinema.

Patricia Zimmermann
Patricia R. Zimmermann is Professor of Screen Studies in the Roy H. Park School School of Communications and codirector of the Finger Lakes Environment Film Festival at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York. Her most recent book is Documentary Across Platforms: Reverse Engineering Media, Place, and Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019). She is the author of Open Space Collaborative New Media: A Toolkit for Theory and Practice, with Helen De Michiel (London and New York: Routledge Press, 2018); The Flaherty: Fifty Years in the Cause of Independent Cinema, with Scott MacDonald (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2017); Open Spaces: Openings, Closings, and Thresholds in International Public Media (St. Andrews, Scotland: University of St. Andrews Press, 2016); Thinking through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places with Dale Hudson (New York and London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015); States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); and Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). She is coeditor with Karen Ishizuka of Mining the Home Movie: Excavations into Historical and Cultural Memories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). Her new book, Flash Flaherty: Tales from a Film Seminar, with Scott MacDonald, will be published in early 2021 by Indiana University Press.

Moderator: Gina Marchetti
Gina Marchetti teaches courses in film, gender and sexuality, critical theory and cultural studies at the University of Hong Kong.  She is the author of Romance and the "Yellow Peril": Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley:  University of California, 1993), From Tian’anmen to Times Square:  Transnational China and the Chinese Diaspora on Global Screens  (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 2006), and The Chinese Diaspora on American Screens:  Race, Sex, and Cinema (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 2012), Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s INFERNAL AFFAIRS—The Trilogy (Hong Kong:  Hong Kong University Press, 2007), and Citing China:  Politics, Postmodernism, and World Cinema (Hawai’i, 2018), among other publications.

Please register below. The zoom link will be sent to you a day before the event.