Director's Pick: Words Like Water: Queer Mobilization and Social Change in China

August 8, 2024
Director's Pick
Words Like Water: Queer Mobilization and Social Change in China

In this presentation, Dr. Caterina Fugazzola will discuss her recently published book, Words Like Water: Queer Mobilization and Social Change in China (2023, Temple University Press). The book engages with social movement theory, transnational sociology, and interdisciplinary work focused on queer China and Asia. In her ethnographic work, Dr. Fugazzola looks at tongzhi (LGBT) organizing in the PRC and examines strategies for social change in a context that precludes avenues for direct political engagement. She focuses particularly on queer organizing in the mid-2010s, centering linguistic strategies and tracing the fluid, nonconfrontational discursive approaches that Chinese queer organizers employed in order to walk the fine line between visibility and activism. In so doing, she discusses pathways to change that are not based on a rhetoric of resistance and confrontation, but rather on the cultural impact of discourses emphasizing cultural belonging, social inclusion, and an explicit and conscious avoidance of oppositional practices. 

Speaker
Cate Fugazzola
Assistant Senior Instructional Professor at the University of Chicago

Moderator
Mark Barnekow (MBA’88)
Executive Director
The University of Chicago Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong

▬ Content of the Webinar ▬
Opening - 0:00
Speakers Introduction - 01:06
Speakers' Sharing - 02:51
Q&A session - 1:01:03