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Habib Institute for Asian Studies

Habib Institute for Asian Studies

Physical Address:
AD 204, Administration Building
Mon. - Fri., 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
851 Campus Drive
Moscow, ID 83844

Mailing Address:
875 Perimeter Drive
MS 3179
Moscow, ID 83844-3179

Phone: 208-885-7110

Email: class-asia@uidaho.edu

East Asian Ecocinema Symposium

Schedule of Events


Thursday, February 22 – Friday, February 23, 2024
University of Idaho, Moscow, ID
All sessions are in the Clearwater Room, Idaho Student Union Building, unless otherwise noted.


Thursday, Feb. 22

  • 1:15 p.m. – Welcome
    Dean Sean Quinlan, University of Idaho
  • 1:30 p.m. – Keynote Address
    “Between Nation and Planet: Ecocinema and the New Wave of Chinese Science Fiction”
    Kiu-wai Chu, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • 3 p.m. – Sci-fi Imagination
    • Chair and Discussant
      Russell Meeuf, University of Idaho
    • “Thoughts in the Aughts: From Zeronendai to Kawaguchi Kaiji’s A Spirit of the Sun
      Ai-Ting Chung, University of Oregon
    • “Falling, Haunting, and Recycling: Reimagining Rural Wasteland in Chinese ‘UFO’ Narratives”
      Xie Rui, Hong Kong Baptist University
    • “Encompassing a Hybridity of Science Fiction: On Journey to the West (2021) and its Ecological Implications”
      Shuwen Yang, Stanford University
  • 7 p.m. – Okja
    (Bong Joon-ho, 2017), Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, Free admission

Friday, Feb. 23

  • 10:15 a.m. – Documenting Ecology
    • Chair and Discussant
      Dilshani Sarathchandra, University of Idaho
    • “Extractive Violence and Energy Transition in Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart and Smog Journeys
      Xingming Wang, Rutgers University
    • “Connected by Vulnerability: Under the Dome by Chai Jing”
      Donghui He,Whitman College
    • “The Landscape of Diasporic Memories: Iriomote Coal Mine in Green Jail
      Yuta Kaminishi, University of Idaho
  • 1:30 p.m. – Keynote Address
    “Netflix The Days and Ecocinematic Nuclear Disaster”
    Rachel DiNitto, University of Oregon
  • 3 p.m. – The Tourist Gaze in Asian Ecocinema
    • Chair and Discussant
      Erin James, University of Idaho
    • “Representing native landscapes in Vietnamese cinema: from the picturesque in commercial films to the aesthetics of ugliness in independent films”
      Hoang Cam Giang, University of Social Sciences and Humanities—Vietnam National University, Hanoi
    • “Cognitive Ambience and the Tourist Gaze: Visual Perception in When Ruoma Was Seventeen and Okja
      Xinmin Liu, Washington State University

Keynote speaker bios:

Kiu-wai Chu is an assistant professor of environmental humanities at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research centers on environmental humanities, ecocriticism, and cinema and visual art in East and Southeast Asian contexts. He is co-editor of Living Lexicon for Environmental Humanities (Duke University Press), and formerly an executive councillor of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (2021-23), and a luce east Asia fellow at the National Humanities Center (2022-23). He is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies, and his articles have appeared in numerous outlets, including the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Asian Cinema, photographies, Screen, ASAP/J, Transnational Ecocinema, Ecomedia, and Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing.

Kiu-wai Chu

Rachel DiNitto is a professor of Japanese literature at the University of Oregon with a focus on the nuclear environmental humanities. She researches contemporary cultural production (literature, film, manga) about the 2011 triple disaster in Japan. Her book, Fukushima Fiction: The Literary Landscape of Japan’s Triple Disaster (University of Hawaii Press), won the Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title in 2020. She is working on two new environmental humanities projects: a monograph titled “Environmental Echoes and Nuclear Traces” that pairs post-Fukushima fiction with novels and short stories from earlier eras of environmental and nuclear harm, and an edited volume, Eco-Disasters in Japanese Cinema.

Rachel DiNitto

Symposium Co-organizers:
Yuta Kaminishi, postdoctoral fellow in Asian cinema and media studies, University of Idaho
Jeff Kyong-McClain, director of the Habib Institute for Asian Studies and associate professor of modern Chinese history, University of Idaho

Habib Institute for Asian Studies

Habib Institute for Asian Studies

Physical Address:
AD 204, Administration Building
Mon. - Fri., 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
851 Campus Drive
Moscow, ID 83844

Mailing Address:
875 Perimeter Drive
MS 3179
Moscow, ID 83844-3179

Phone: 208-885-7110

Email: class-asia@uidaho.edu