The Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender hosts Shirley Lim, associate professor of history and affiliate faculty in Women and Gender Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, and Africana Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, for a free, public discussion on pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong on Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. in the Elaine Langone Center’s Forum.
The author of A Feeling of Belonging: Asian American Women’s Public Culture, 1930-1960 (NYU 2006), Lim’s second book, Anna May Wong: Performing the Modern, was just published by Temple University Press. Wong made more than 60 films, headlined theater and vaudeville productions, and even starred in her own television show. Her work helped shape racial modernity as she embodied the dominant image of Chinese and, more generally, “Oriental” women between 1925 and 1940.
In Anna May Wong, Lim re-evaluates Wong’s life and work as a consummate artist by mining an historical archive of her efforts outside of Hollywood cinema. By considering the salient moments of Wong’s career and cultural output, Lim’s analysis explores the deeper meanings, and positions the actress as an historical and cultural entrepreneur who rewrote categories of representation.