The field of Asian feminist media studies is inchoate and under-defined. Despite increasing archival endeavors to excavate women's work in early to mid-twentieth-century film and media cultures in Asia and continuous scholarly attention to the accomplishments of contemporary Asian women film and media makers, a concerted, in-depth reexamination of women's media work in different parts of Asia has been lacking. This has to do with fundamental difficulties in cognitively mapping the field—difficulties stemming from multifarious modes of practice that resist generalization, limited availability of primary and archival materials, and continuous anxiety with universalized Western critical discourses. These are further compounded by the complex and shifting parameters of what counts as “Asia,” given its mind-boggling linguistic, religious, historical, and regional diversity, and its constantly shifting gender and ethnic politics—all unfolding in relation to divergent yet more or less shared colonial experiences and postcolonial participation in (or resistance to) globalization.
That is...
University of California Press