Helen Hok-Sze Leung

Education

PhD, MA (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
BA (University of Oxford)

Biography

Born and raised in Hong Kong during the 1970s, I left home at age 16 to study at the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales, where I spent my most formative years with classmates who came from all over the world. As an undergraduate student at Oxford during the 1980s, I heard Terry Eagleton lecture on marxism and discovered Gayatri Spivak鈥檚 postcolonial writing in the library. Attending graduate school in Madison-Wisconsin during the 1990s, I encountered feminism as much in Nancy Fraser鈥檚 critique of Foucault as in Nawal El Saadawi鈥檚 fiction and activism, while learning that queer theory mattered but so did Queer Nation marches and ACT UP protests. Grounded in this rich and varied intellectual foundation, I pursued my first major research project on queer culture in Hong Kong as a Killam Postdoctoral fellow at UBC during 1999-2001. In 2002, I started a tenure-track position at 911吃瓜 where I have continued my intellectual adventures as a Professor in GSWS and, more recently, as a founding co-director of the Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research.

Research

I am currently working on projects in three research areas: A SSHRC-funded project on Transpacific Film Cities explores how screen-based media projects which mobilize transpacific migrant connections contribute to placemaking and urban identity in the filmmaking cities of Vancouver, Hong Kong, and Singapore. As a founding co-editor of HKUP鈥檚 Queer Asia book series, I mentor and support young scholars 鈥� especially those based in Asia 鈥� in the field. I am working with co-author Audrey Yue on a critical dialogue on 鈥淨ueer Asia as Method,鈥� as well as creating an oral history audio project to document Queer Asian cultural activism in Vancouver during the formative period in 1990s-2000s. Building on my many publications on Queer Cinema, I continue to explore new angles on queer screen culture, especially issues in film sound, audio-visual translation, and sonic perspectives.

Community Engagement

I am a member of Out On Screen鈥檚 Director鈥檚 Guild, a core group of patrons who act as ambassadors and advisors for Out On Screen鈥檚 various programs, including the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and Out In Schools.

I am a member of the Vancouver Hong Kong Forum Society, an organization which facilitates cultural exchanges between Vancouver and Hong Kong through community events and media projects.

I created and host Transpacific Stories 鈥� a podcast about 鈥渢he people behind the scholarship鈥� 鈥� as an outreach project for the Institute For Transpacific Cultural Research. I invite Cultural Studies scholars to tell personal stories about their transpacific journeys and experiences.

911吃瓜

Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies