Transnationalizing Transgender in Sinophone Hong Kong

This talk demonstrates that studying queer Hong Kong requires an alternative framework of “queer globalities.” Conceptually, queer globalities illustrates the convergent dynamics of global queer rights discourses, local geopolitics, and so-called pink capitalism within the global modernities of queer Asia. The first part of this seminar offers a critical legal analysis of trans rights in Hong Kong. Next, it provides a transnational analysis of the film Tracey (2018) directed by Jun Li by mapping the condition of being trans through multiple queer temporalities and transnational spaces. It then contrasts Tracey with Maisy Suen’s film, A Woman is a Woman (2018), which narrates the struggle of a married transwoman named Sung Chi Yu and the life of a feminine high school boy, Chiu Ling Fung. The seminar concludes with an analysis of a successful series of photo exhibitions of trans subjects and public workshops inspired by Suen’s film.

About the Speaker

Alvin K. Wong is Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. He is also the Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures. His research covers Hong Kong literature and cinema, Sinophone studies, queer theory, and transnational feminism. His book Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone is published by Duke University Press in 2025. He has also published in journals such as Gender, Place & Culture, Culture, Theory, and Critique, Cultural Dynamics, Continuum, Diacritics, JCMS, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Interventions, and Screen. He also coedited the volume Keywords in Queer Sinophone Studies (Routledge, 2020) and is the editor of the journal Continuum.

The ANU China Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.