XI’AN JIAOTONG-LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY (SUZHOU, CHINA)

21-27th June 2021

Creative industries and media cultures in Japan, South Korea, and China: Histories, Processes, Mutual crossings

OVERVIEW

The Department of Media and Communication at Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University (XJTLU), with the cooperation of Mutual Images Research Association (MIRA, France), invite students to enroll in this exciting International Summer School.

Since the 1980s, and more intensely from the 1990s onwards, a variety of mutual interactions and influences have been at play among the creative industries and popular cultures of Japan, South Korea, and China. Through various stages over the years, formidably successful cultural objects have exerted a continuous appeal among national and regional audiences in Asia: manga, anime, science fiction television series for children and toys from Japan; pop music boy bands, girl bands and television soap operas for women from Japan as well as the Republic of Korea (South Korea or ROK); and dynamic action movies from mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, and the ROK. Such audiences, besides Korean and Japanese viewers/consumers, include two generations of Chinese youths as well as China’s system of the creative industries itself, which has benefited from those cultural forms as sources of technical and aesthetic inspiration, adapting them into more local frameworks and solutions. Since the 2000s — in a growingly more balanced phase of this intraregional circulation of cultural outputs — media and formats of the Chinese creative industries have been receiving attentions in Japan and the ROK, including cinematic storytelling (co-produced films and animations), digital entertainment (a thriving video game industry), as well as new forms of social media (e.g. Douyin).

In the last thirty years, the intersections among these three national markets and their respective cultural and creative industries have become more intense. Such triangulations have entailed a constellation of aspects of political nature which often transcend the role of the creative outputs, but are nonetheless linked to their cultural and economic impacts. Among these dimensions, which form the main thematic paths of this international summer school, students will learn and reflect about the following aspects.

International relations: Relations between these countries in their possible combinations (JP-ROK, CN-JP, ROK-CN);

Role of “soft power”: The growing role of “soft power”, a notion that has become crucial for many national governments’ policy making and cultural diplomacy;

Creative/cultural outputs: The ideas within these three national contexts about the by-design or perceived role of national creative output as vehicles of political philosophies or nation-branding strategies;

Foreign pop-cultural forms and national discourses: The economic advantage from the domestic circulation of foreign pop-cultural forms vis-à-vis the competition with other, local forms of creative output (cinema, comics, video games, and so on);

Fandoms and youth subcultures: The growing relevance of fandoms and youth subcultures, a social subject that has now a transcultural composition that transcends national or gender boundaries.

STRUCTURE

START DATE	21 June 2021 (participants’ check-in)
SCHOOL	School of Humanities and Social Sciences (Department of Media and Communication)
ATTENDANCE	Full time – On-site (participants will be instructed about travelling to Suzhou and sanitary procedures in due time)
DURATION	One week
PROSPECTUS	Digital flyer to be made

Mon, 21 June	arrival and check-in of participants, reception
Tue, 22 June	presentation, 1^stkeynote lecture, 3 lectures (morning/afternoon)
Wed, 23 June	5 lectures (morning/afternoon)
Thu, 24 June	4 lectures (morning/afternoon), 1 workshop (afternoon)
Fri, 25 June	2^nd guest lecture (morning), exam (afternoon), reception
Sat, 26 June	one-day trip to Xishan Island, a beautiful venue on Lake of Tai, westward of Suzhou
Sun, 27 June	check-out of participants