AAS Call for Proposals

We seek one to two additional papers, plus a chair and/or discussant, for a proposed panel at AAS 2027.

This panel examines cultural authority in the Chinese public sphere as something negotiated among intellectuals and their recipients. Within the public discursive spaces provided by different media, cross-media dialogues, revisions, negotiations, and struggles take place. Under these conditions, we inquire into how speaking subjectivities are established and explore the complex and interrelated relationships among multiple speaking subjects across a century of media development.

We have two papers: the first one is on educated female film stars in 1930s Shanghai who used the periodical press to contest the revolutionary womanhood scripted for them by male leftist intellectual filmmakers; the other is a computational analysis of Douban book reviews tracing how platform users reevaluated liberal "gongzhi"(public intellectual) writers before and after the stigmatization of the label in the early 2010s.

We especially welcome papers bridging these moments: the socialist and reform eras; radio, television, or film publics; Sinophone contexts; editors, critics, fans, or influencers as claimants to cultural authority. Papers from any discipline are welcome. We would be glad to hear from senior scholars interested in serving as discussants.

Please send a 250-word abstract and brief bio to Esther Shen (esther.shen@utexas.edu) by July 20, 2026.