Vince Ha (PHD in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies) – the intersection of transnational media and queer studies

Vince looks at queer sociality through the Boys Love media, a genre that portrays homoerotic relationships between two men by straight female creators for often assumed straight female readers. This genre was developed in Japan after WWII and was argued to liberate women from gender constraints. Since then, the genre has gained tremendous popularity in other parts of Asia and eventually in Europe and North America. Vince traces this East-to-West media flow to present alternative views of queerness, inspecting the engagement of queer Asian diasporic communities with BL and how it can complicate our Western-centric view of individual and communal identities. 

For upcoming interviews check out the Grad Chat webpage on Queen’s University School of Graduate Studies & Postdoctoral Affairs website – https://www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc/research/share/grad-chat