Talk by Tian (Esther) Li, Assistant Professor at Korea University.
Thursday, January 29, 2026
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Bunche Hall 10383
Chinese affinity for and engagement with Korean screen media since the end of the Cold War, offers a fascinating window onto the ways in which screen culture shapes and is reshaped by the people who produce and consume it. This dynamic illustrates how screen culture transcends borders, overcoming language and ideological divides, while often serving to advance national interests alongside transnational desires. This project explored the impact of the rise of Korean screen culture from the vantage point of the receiving countries, and none as yet from the land of its first and largest audience—the People’s Republic of China. Mainland China was, in fact, the first stop on the path of the Korean Wave, and the term Hallyu was first coined in the Chinese context. This project investigates the Korean Wave as it has played out in China, the world’s biggest audience, using the concept of “screen capitalism” as a framework for understanding the contemporary world of screens, and the audiovisual relations that form and function within it. By demonstrating how screen capitalism is cultivated within both capitalist and postsocialist societies, I contend that this audiovisual mechanism, insofar as it is fluidly transplantable, ideologically permeable, and transnationally gendered, circulates a shifting cultural paradigm both on and off screen.
Tian (Esther) Li is currently an Assistant Professor of Media and Communication at Korea University. Prior to that, she taught in the Program of Film and Media Studies at Yale University, where she was also a lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and a Postdoctoral Associate at the Council on East Asian Studies. Previously, she was a lecturer and Korea Foundation–Korea Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, as well as a lecturer teaching Asian Screen Cultures at Stanford University. She is the recipient of a Korea Foundation Fellowship and the ACLS Yvette and William Kirby Centennial Award in Chinese Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. Her academic work has appeared in journals including positions: asia critique, Telos, The Journal of Asian Studies, China Perspectives, and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies, Asia Pacific Center, Center for Korean Studies - “Koreans in the World” Project, sponsored by the Academy of Korean Studies.