Modern Language Faculty Publishes on East Asian Literature: Martial Arts, Cultural Legacy, and Masculinity

Posted January 23, 2020

School of Modern Languages’ faculty members Paul Foster, associate professor of Chinese, and Amanda Weiss, assistant professor of Japanese, recently published articles on East Asian literature following World War II.

Foster’s research entitled, “Jin Yong and the Kungfu Industrial Complex,” analyzes works written and published by Jin Yong over a period of a decade and a half starting in the late 1950s.

The article is a general introduction to the cultural impact of Jin Yong’s works beyond original serialization as they contribute to the construction of the “kungfu industrial complex”—a complicated, multi-dimensional cultural/business matrix related to the production and consumption of Jin Yong’s (and other martial arts writers’) works and legacy.

Weiss’ article, “A Continuous Retrial,” is an overview of Chinese and Japanese tribunal films created around the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII and how it reflects changing attitudes towards war memory in the Pacific. Focusing on representations of race and memory and drawing from theories of the film as a site of memory, the article reveals how select films attempt to redefine the official history established at the IMTFE (International Military Tribunal for the Far East) and establish a national narrative of perpetrators, heroes, and victims of WWII.

Both articles analyze East Asian literature/media through the perspective of masculinities. Through the lens of martial arts in Foster’s research and nationalist masculinities in Weiss’ research, both articles convey how images of masculinity are received in society (and potentially how their reception influences society). The martial masculinities explored in these two articles reveal a great deal about national discourses on gender, race, and national identity.

 

Articles:

Paul B. Foster (2019) Jin Yong and the Kungfu Industrial Complex, Chinese Literature Today, 8:2, 68-76.

Weiss, A. ‘A Continuous Retrial’: Trans/national Memory in Chinese and Japanese Tribunal Films. Arts 2020, 9, 2.