Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

Abstract: 

In this talk, Hongwei Bao will introduce the conception, structure and editing processes of the book Entanglements and Ambivalences: Africa and China Encounters in Media and Culture (co-edited by Hongwei Bao and Daniel H. Mutibwa, Routledge 2025). He will specifically introduce his chapter in the book, titled ‘The Queer Global South: Transnational Video Activism between China and Africa’. The chapter examines grassroots cinematic connections and video activism between China and Africa by taking the Queer University Video Capacity Building Training Programme (2017–2019) as a case study. Drawing on Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih's critical term ‘minor transnationalism’, the case study sheds light on the hopes, frustrations and promises of people-to-people exchanges taking place in the Global South, illustrating the ‘entanglements and ambivalences’ that characterise Africa and China encounters in media and culture today. 

Bio: 

Dr. Hongwei Bao is Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is the author of Queer Comrades (NIAS Press, 2018), Queer China (Routledge, 2020), Queer Media in China (Routledge, 2021), Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance (Routledge, 2022) and Queering Asian Diaspora (Sage, 2024). He is co-editor of Contemporary Queer Chinese Art (Bloomsbury, 2023), Queer Literature in the Sinosphere (Bloomsbury, 2024), Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender and Sexuality (Routledge, 2024), and Entanglements and Ambivalences: Africa and China Encounters in Media and Culture (Routledge, 2025). He coedits the Bloomsbury book series ‘Queering China: Transnational Genders and Sexualities’ and De Gruyter book series ‘Oyster: Feminist and Queer Approaches to Arts, Cultures, and Genders’. 

Comment: John Njenga Karugia, PhD

John Njenga Karugia, PhD, is a scholar of Transregional Memory Studies, Indian Ocean Studies, Africa-China Relations and Area Studies. He is a member of the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform with a focus on memory politics, memory ethics and responsible cosmopolitanism. His current research project analyzes transregional memory politics, memory ethics and the political economy of the Belt and Road Initiative at the De:Link // Re:Link research project sponsored by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), based at the Institute for Asian and African Studies at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. He previously researched and lectured at the Institute of Political Science and at the Institute of English and American Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt and at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Leipzig. He was a visiting scholar at Duke University, Shanghai Maritime University, University of Mumbai and Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad. Kenyatta University (in the proximity of Githurai) was his alma mater.

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Sarah Eaton

Sarah Eaton is Professor of Transregional China Studies at Humboldt University Berlin and co-founder of the Berlin Contemporary China Network (BCCN). She is interested in the study of contemporary Chinese politics and political economy from comparative and transregional perspectives. A major focus of her current research is the politics of standardization governance, for which she has received funding from the German Research Foundation as well as the European Research Council.