[Commlist] CFP: Men and masculinities in East Asian Cinema

CALL FOR PAPERS: MEN AND MASCULINITIES IN EAST ASIAN CINEMA

In the past two decades, there has been an increasing number of East 
Asian films at international film festivals. These works – including 
Koreeda Hirokazu’s /Shoplifters/ (2018), Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 
/Monster/ (2023), Chie Hayakawa/’/s/ Renoir /(2025), Diao Yinan’s /Black 
Coal, Thin Ice/ (2014) and Jia Zhangke’s /Caught by the Tides/ (2024) – 
have distinct male characters. Moreover, Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 film 
/Parasite,/ the first East Asian film to win both the Palme d'Or at the 
Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Picture, places 
strong emphases on variously compromised or contested masculine 
identities and spaces. The overall focus on men and their complex lives 
and identities in many of these films is a widely observed yet little 
theorised phenomenon. The focus on men at this historical moment, on 
different types of masculinity that have formed prominent yet 
under-represented or even culturally detailed or defined subcultures, is 
key to understanding how these men have shaped and been shaped by the 
socio-political milieu of their countries in the contemporary globalised 
world. The screen representations of these groups speak to the 
historical and social change in East Asia in the 20^th  and 21st 
century, and the role of cinema and the film industries in shaping such 
representations has been notable. Serious critical engagement with this 
importance is urgently needed. The specific ways that these 
representations and masculinities engage with extant and discursive 
types shed important light on how they are defined, constructed, 
disseminated and performed.

This book examines the representation of men and masculinities in East 
Asian cinema. It looks at screen representations of historically and 
culturally specific expressions of masculinities (such as /bishōnen/ and 
Boys’ Love in Japan, /konminam/ in South Korea and /meinan/ in China – 
all of which tend toward constructions of masculinity in which softness, 
androgyny, physical prettiness, sometimes but not necessarily queerness, 
all find expression) in tandem with the influence of global masculinity 
cultures in the processes of East Asia’s industrialisation and 
commercialisation in the 20^th  and 21^st  centuries. It also 
interrogates the genres, stardom, and creative and affective labour of 
men working in East Asian screen industries, shining light on 
hierarchies, inequalities and exploitations in the industries, as well 
as regimes of physical training, personality crafting and 
celebrity-making and image manufacture required for men by the industries.

This book is designed to expand upon extant work on gender and culture 
in East Asian cinema by focusing on different types of men and 
masculinity being portrayed on screen, such as Herbivore men in Japan, 
conservatism in young South Korean males as a homosocial grouping, and 
so-called /diaosi/ men in Mainland China. It seeks to offer 
contemporary, transnational, critical and media-conscious perspectives 
on East Asian screen cultures and to index these explorations to an 
elucidation of industrial and representational paradigms in the 
contemporary film industries of China, Japan and South Korea. These 
countries all have clearly defined and delineated heteronormative gender 
roles (at least the perception thereof) and socio-political and 
socio-cultural norms, as well as clearly demarcated and specific 
responses or challenges thereto, and this project intends to interrogate 
these groups as a means of exploring men and masculinities as discursive 
constructs.

This book has been proposed to international publishers, with a firm 
interest expressed by Edinburgh University Press. We therefore invite 
proposals for papers that cover all aspects of East Asian screen 
masculinities.

*_Subjects can include but are not limited to:_*

New models of masculine identity

Fatherhood, family and domestic masculinity

Men and masculinity at work

Masculine subcultures

Masculinity and Hegemony

Historical explorations of masculinity

Masculinity, gender and nation

Masculinity and gender fluidity

Queer and trans masculinity

Genre and masculinity

Men in East Asian screen industries

East Asian stardom and celebrity culture

Audience and fandom

Studies of individual films or filmmakers (such as Koreeda Hirokazu and 
Hong Sangsoo)

Comparative studies across regions in Asia

Inter-Asia media and cultural flows

East-West connections

Global North-Global South connections

Cinema/Television comparison/s

Please send your 300-word abstract and 100-word bio to Dr Hongwei Bao 
((_Hongwei.bao /at/ nottingham.ac.uk) <mailto:(Hongwei.bao /at/ nottingham.ac.uk)>_) 
and Dr Adam Bingham 
((adam.bingham /at/ Nottingham.ac.uk)/(adam.bingham01 /at/ btinternet.com)) by Sept 30th.


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