Book Talk: At the Edges of Sleep
Date: November 23rd,2023 (Thursday)
Time:4:30 pm-6:00 pm
Venue: Digital Scholarship Lab, G/F, University Library, CUHK
Speaker: Prof. Jean Ma, The University of Hong Kong
Moderator: Prof. Pang Laikwan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Abstract:
At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent considers sleep in film and moving image art as both a subject matter to explore onscreen and a state to induce in the audience. It exposes an affinity between cinema, spectatorship, and sleep that dates to the earliest years of filmmaking, while also shedding light on the shifting cultural valences of sleep in the present moment. In recent years, sleep has moved out of the shadows and into an unprecedented cultural visibility in recent years. It figures prominently in practices of self-care, beckons as a promising new field of inquiry, and even emerges as a site of politicization and protest. This talk maps the curious status of sleep as it breaks from its longstanding definition as interruption or absence, shuttling between the position of problem and solution, crisis and cure, alarm and answer. On the one hand, changing conceptions of the relationship between sleep and waking life instantiate a new stage in (bio)technological capacities and techniques of control. On the other hand, as the boundaries between sleep and wake are displaced and reinscribed, we are also presented with an opportunity to question the dominant systems of value that dictate waking existence. What can be preserved by carving out a space for sleep?
Bio:
Jean Ma is the Mr. and Mrs. Hung Hing-Ying Professor in the Arts at the University of Hong Kong. Her books include Melancholy Drift: Marking Time in Chinese Cinema; Sounding the Modern Woman: The Songstress in Chinese Cinema; and Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography. She serves on the editorial board of Film Quarterly and is co-editor of the book series Music, Sound, and Media at the University of California Press. Her recent book At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators is shortlisted for the 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards and a finalist for the ASAP Book Prize.
Organized by the Centre for Cultural Studies, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Venue sponsor: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library
About the Book At the Edges of Sleep: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520384514/at-the-edges-of-sleep
Website: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/crs/ccs
Enquiry: cuccs@cuhk.edu.hk