- Gaoheng Zhang is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is a humanities sch... moreGaoheng Zhang is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is a humanities scholar of migration, mobilities, multiculturalism, media, rhetoric, ethics, and masculinity. His most recent research seeks to provide a road map for analyzing how movements and communications created networks with enough cultural resources to frame non-fiction and fiction narratives about entrepreneurship, politics, and gender regimes. Most of his case studies pertain to Italy’s global networks through migration, colonialism, and travel during the 19th-21th centuries.
Gaoheng is a leading cultural critic of Chinese migration to Italy, which has generated considerable debate in the Italian and international media because of migrants’ economic clout. This is the subject of his book, titled Migration and the Media: Debating Chinese Migration to Italy, 1992-2012 (University of Toronto Press, 2019), which is the first detailed media and cultural study of the Chinese migration from both Italian and Chinese migrant perspectives, as well as one of the few book-length analyses of migration and culture. Previously he has published several key articles on gender and ethics in cinematic and literary depictions of migrants, and of men, in Italy.
His new book project (under contract with University of Toronto Press in 2020), titled “Migration and Culture: Mobility between China and Italy via USA,” will offer an innovative critical framework to examine recent Chinese migration to Italy and Italian migration to China in novels, films, photography, the media, and archives, as well as their intersections in American culture. Through analyzing food, architecture, gender, race, and ethics, the book aims to refine theorizing about the dynamics between migration and culture.
Gaoheng serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies (2014-Present) and on the Publications Committee of the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program for Canada’s Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2017-20).Before joining UBC, Gaoheng held positions as Assistant Professor of Italian Cinema at the University of Toronto and as a Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Humanities (now the USC Society of Fellows) at the University of Southern California. He was educated at Beijing Foreign Studies University (B.A.) and at New York University (M.A., Ph.D.).edit
I examine the Chinaman, the cinesina [literally, 'a petite Chinese woman'], and competing discourses in recent Italian novels to pinpoint their gender meanings and politics. While the Chinaman-Fu Manchu figures are usually successful at... more
I examine the Chinaman, the cinesina [literally, 'a petite Chinese woman'], and competing discourses in recent Italian novels to pinpoint their gender meanings and politics. While the Chinaman-Fu Manchu figures are usually successful at dominating Italian men in business, they are often morally or sexually inferior. As such, Chinese migrants help the Italians achieve their hegemonic masculine potential. The dominant story about the cinesina figure posits her as a signifier of several pressing social and cultural issues concerning Italy's Chinese women today, who are often depicted as victims receiving help from the Italians and as using Italian culture to attain self-fulfilment. Pro-Chinese Italian and migrant authors challenge these discourses from various perspectives.
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In this essay, I suggest that the association of Chinese migrants in Italy with the " Chinese mafia " in Italian cultural texts is indicative of, and perpetuates, the ten-dency—which is characteristic of Italian media accounts of the... more
In this essay, I suggest that the association of Chinese migrants in Italy with the " Chinese mafia " in Italian cultural texts is indicative of, and perpetuates, the ten-dency—which is characteristic of Italian media accounts of the country's initial contacts with mass immigration in the early 1990s—to relate an ethnic group to a specific set of bounded traits. How did contemporary Italian cultural practitioners make use of the association of Chinese migrants in Italy with the presumed " Chinese mafia " in their works? And to what specific rhetorical use is this association deployed in these texts? How did Chinese migrants respond to these depictions, and what in turn were the Italian creators' justifications? In order to answer these questions, I analyze two broad categories of cultural texts in which, since the 2000s, the aforementioned association has become meaningful for cultural practitioners in Italy—namely, the realist and postmodern varieties. Both approaches draw on, or ultimately manifest, an Orientalist discourse that uses the depiction of Chinese migrants living in Italy as a foil against which to investigate issues relating to Italy and Italians.
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Call for articles to include in the special issue for Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies