East Asia by the Book! CEAS Author Talks ft. Julia Alekseyeva

Antifascism and the Avant-Garde: Radical Documentary in the 1960s Score a FREE copy of Julia Alekseyeva's book! The first (5) University of Chicago students (currently enrolled) who register to attend the event will receive their very own copy, compliments of the Center for East Asian Studies! Registrant MUST register using their full name AND UChicago email address and check in on the day of the event. Registrant will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to retrieve their book from CEAS. Leftist filmmakers of the 1960s revolutionized the art of documentary. Often inspired by the radical art of the Soviet 1920s, filmmakers in countries like France and Japan dared to make film form a powerful weapon in the fight against fascism, weaving fiction into nonfiction and surrealism with neorealism to rupture everyday ways of being, seeing, and thinking. Through careful readings of Matsumoto Toshio, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Agnès Varda, Hani Susumu, and others, Julia Alekseyeva shows that avant-garde documentary films of the 1960s did not strive to inoculate the viewer with the ideology of Truth but instead aimed to unveil and estrange, so that viewers might approach capitalist, imperialist, and fascist media with critical awareness. Antifascism and the Avant-Garde thus provides a transnational ecology of antifascist art that resonates profoundly with our current age. To learn more about the book, click here: https://www.semcoop.com/antifascism-and-avant-garde-radical-documentary-1960s Julia Alekseyeva is an Assistant Professor of English and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in 2017 from Harvard University’s Department of Comparative Literature, with a secondary field in Film and Visual Studies, and has taught at Harvard and Brooklyn College. Prior to her appointment at Penn, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. She researches the interactions between global media and radical leftist politics. Her work is fundamentally comparative and transnational, and delves into the film, comics, television, and digital media of Japan, France, and the former Soviet Union. Yoonbin Cho is Assistant Professor of Korean Media, East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Her research explores the intersections of aesthetics, society and technology in modern and contemporary South Korea. She is currently preparing a book manuscript based on her dissertation, "Transnational Affects Reprised: Korean Cinema's Negotiations with Systems of World Cinema." This project examines recent film adaptations, remakes and transmediations in Korea, focusing on cases that cultivate transnational networks among audiences or industries while aesthetically simulating border-crossing. She also argues that the affects arising from the contact between texts, media and cultures have strengthened the transnational essence of Korean film culture and facilitated its navigation of global power systems. By positioning Korea as a critical vantage point from which to rethink world cinema, this project contributes to broader decolonizing efforts. EAST ASIA BY THE BOOK! CEAS AUTHOR TALKS SERIES The East Asia by the Book! CEAS Author Talks series showcases CEAS faculty, alumni, and special guests who provide author talks and book launches as a way to engage the broader community in conversations regarding key scholarship on East Asia. This series features a presentation by the author(s) that is often facilitated through conversation with a discussant, following by a question and answer session with the audience. For more information on the series, follow the link here: https://ceas.uchicago.edu/events/east-asia-the-book-ceas-author-talks This event is presented in partnership with the Seminary Co-op Bookstores. Please note that there may be photography taken during this educational event by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies for archival and publicity purposes. By attending this event, participants are confirming their permission to be photographed and the University of Chicago’s right to use, distribute, copy, and edit the recordings in any form of media for non-commercial, educational purposes, and to grant rights to third parties to do any of the foregoing.