Asian Visual Cultures
About the Book Series
This series focuses on visual cultures that are produced, distributed and consumed in Asia and by Asian communities worldwide. Visual cultures have been implicated in creative policies of the state and in global cultural networks (such as the art world, film festivals and the Internet), particularly since the emergence of digital technologies. Asia is home to some of the major film, television and video industries in the world, while Asian contemporary artists are selling their works for record prices at the international art markets. Visual communication and innovation is also thriving in transnational networks and communities at the grass-roots level. This series seeks to explore how the texts and contexts of Asian visual cultures shape, express and negotiate new forms of creativity, subjectivity and cultural politics. It specifically aims to probe into the political, commercial and digital contexts in which visual cultures emerge and circulate, and to trace the potential of these cultures for political or social critique.
Internet Vulgarities in China: Cultures, Governance and Politics
1st Edition
Edited
By Jian Xu, Dino Ge Zhang
March 18, 2026
Internet Vulgarities in China is the first comprehensive study to critically examine the cultures, governance and politics of internet vulgarities in Chinese society. Comprising twelve chapters, the authors present empirically rich case studies to explore the nature, regulation and evolution of the...
Film Activism in Contemporary Indonesia: Platforms of Participation and Representation
1st Edition
Edited
By Edwin Jurriëns, Jemma Purdey, Novi Kurnia
March 11, 2026
This edited volume seeks to evaluate the complex tensions between democratic renewal and regression by focusing on the activist efforts by Indonesian filmmakers to maintain and open spaces for creative experimentation, critical reflection, and social diversity. After the fall of the authoritarian ...
Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China
1st Edition
Edited
By Jeroen de Kloet, Yiu Fai Chow, Lena Scheen
January 09, 2026
With its emergence as a global power, China aspires to transform from made in China to created in China. Mobilised as a crucial source for solid growth and soft power, creativity has become part of the new China Dream. Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China engages with ...
Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia
1st Edition
By Ran Ma
January 09, 2026
Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia examines an array of auteur-driven fiction and documentary independent film projects that have emerged since the turn of the millennium from East and Southeast Asia, a strand of transnational filmmaking that converges with Asia’s vibrant ...
Asian Self-Representation at World's Fairs
1st Edition
By William Peterson
December 01, 2025
International expositions or world’s fairs are the largest and most important stage on which millions routinely gather to directly experience, express, and respond to cultural difference. Rather than looking at Asian representation at the hands of colonizing powers, something already much examined,...
Celebrity Activism and Philanthropy in Asia: Toward a Cosmopolitical Imaginary
1st Edition
By Dorothy Lau
December 01, 2025
Recent years have witnessed the increasing visibility of Asian celebrities in activism, advocacy, diplomacy, philanthropy, and ambassadorship but this phenomenon is under-explored. This volume provides a critical intervention in celebrity activism and philanthropy by examining the civic imaginaries...
Erotic Comics in Japan: An Introduction to Eromanga
1st Edition
By Kaoru Nagayama
December 01, 2025
Comics and cartoons from Japan, or manga and anime, are an increasingly common feature of visual and popular culture around the world. While it is often observed that these media forms appeal to broad and diverse demographics, including many adults, eroticism continues to unsettle critics and has ...
Feminisms and Contemporary Art in Indonesia: Defining Experiences
1st Edition
By Wulandani Dirgantoro
December 01, 2025
While Indonesian contemporary art is currently on the rise on the international art scene, there hasn't yet been an in-depth study of the works of Indonesian women artists and the feminist strategies they employ within the art world. This book fills that gap, presenting the first comprehensive ...
Film Production and Consumption in Contemporary Taiwan: Cinema as a Sensory Circuit
1st Edition
By Ya-Feng Mon
December 01, 2025
This book uses the potent case study of contemporary Taiwanese queer romance films to address the question of how capitalism in Taiwan has privileged the film industry at the expense of the audience's freedom to choose and respond to culture on its own terms. Interweaving in-depth interviews with ...
Globalization and Modernity in Asia: Performative Moments
1st Edition
Edited
By Chris Hudson, Bart Barendregt
December 01, 2025
Much has been said regarding the global flows of information that are characteristic of modernity; it has been frequently stressed that these conduits are so deeply embedded that local or national environments may be imagined as having a global span. Thus, while we are now well aware that the ...
Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s: A Decade of Splendour
1st Edition
By Yiu-Wai Chu
December 01, 2025
This book deals with the 1980s – the “golden decade” of Hong Kong pop culture – in which a cosmopolitan lifestyle of pop and chic emerged in the city. Bookended by two major historical incidents, the 1980s will probably enter the annals of Hong Kong history as the decade that defined its future ...
Intimate Visualities and the Politics of Fandom in India
1st Edition
By Roos Gerritsen
December 01, 2025
In Intimate Visualities and the Politics of Fandom in India, Gerritsen explores the circulation of images of a movie star named Rajinikanth. Cities and towns in the south Indian state Tamil Nadu are consistently ornamented with huge billboards, murals and myriad posters featuring political leaders ...