Radio in the Global 1980s: from Amateur Writing to Labor Organizing

For non-Columbia affiliates, registration is required to access the Morningside campus. After registering you will receive an email with a QR code that must be presented along with a government-issued ID (your name must match exactly the name registered for the event) at either the 116th Street & Broadway or 116th Street & Amsterdam gates for entry. Please register using a unique email address (one email address per registrant) by 4:00pm on Oct. 23 for campus access.

Names will be submitted for QR codes 1-2 days prior to the event. Registrants will receive an email from CU Guest Access with the QR code before or on the day of the event. NOTE: You cannot access campus using the QR code from Eventbrite.

Speakers:

Paola Iovene, Associate Professor in Chinese Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Kaitlin Hao, PhD student, EALAC, Columbia University

Moderator:

Ying Qian, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, East Asian Languages & Cultures, Columbia University

Together, two speakers will present their research on radio, the culture of work, and labor organizing in the global 1980s. Paola Iovene discusses how radio in China’s “reform and opening” era cultivated an amateur writing culture among listening publics, thereby negotiating changing relationships between mental and menial labor, and the collective and the personal. Kaitlin Hao draws from archival research at the Museum of Chinese in America to discuss how the radio helped Chinese immigrants navigate American labor politics in the Chinatown garment industry.

Speakers' Bios:

Paola Iovene is associate professor of modern Chinese literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends of Literature in Contemporary China (2014), coeditor of Sound Alignments: Popular Music in Asia’s Cold Wars (with Michael Bourdaghs and Kaley Mason, 2021), and guest editor of a special issue of positions titled “Cultures of Labor in Contemporary China” (2023). Her current research focuses on concepts of work, division of labor, and amateurism in contemporary Chinese literature and media.

Kaitlin Hao is a PhD student in the East Asian Languages and Cultures Department at Columbia University. She holds an MA from Columbia and BA in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard. Her research concerns the overseas Chinese-run garment industry (1980s-2000s), and has received support from the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Columbia Center for Political Economy. Kaitlin pursues projects in public education and social media-based pedagogy featured by the Asian Art Museum and Museum of Chinese in America.

This event is hosted by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

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