Betsy Huang – författare

What will the future look like? To judge from many speculative fiction films and books, from Blade Runner to Cloud Atlas, the future will be full of cities that resemble Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and it will be populated mainly by cold, unfeeling citizens who act like robots. Techno-Orientalism investigates the phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo- or hyper-technological terms in literary, cinematic, and new media representations, while critically examining the stereotype of Asians as both technologically advanced and intellectually primitive, in dire need of Western consciousness-raising.  The collection’s fourteen original essays trace the discourse of techno-orientalism across a wide array of media, from radio serials to cyberpunk novels, from Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu to Firefly.  Applying a variety of theoretical, historical, and interpretive approaches, the contributors consider techno-orientalism a truly global phenomenon. In part, they tackle the key question of how these stereotypes serve to both express and assuage Western anxieties about Asia’s growing cultural influence and economic dominance. Yet the book also examines artists who have appropriated techno-orientalist tropes in order to critique racist and imperialist attitudes.  Techno-Orientalism is the first collection to define and critically analyze a phenomenon that pervades both science fiction and real-world news coverage of Asia. With essays on subjects ranging from wartime rhetoric of race and technology to science fiction by contemporary Asian American writers to the cultural implications of Korean gamers, this volume offers innovative perspectives and broadens conventional discussions in Asian American Cultural studies.

What will the future look like? To judge from many speculative fiction films and books, from Blade Runner to Cloud Atlas, the future will be full of cities that resemble Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and it will be populated mainly by cold, unfeeling citizens who act like robots. Techno-Orientalism investigates the phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo- or hyper-technological terms in literary, cinematic, and new media representations, while critically examining the stereotype of Asians as both technologically advanced and intellectually primitive, in dire need of Western consciousness-raising.  The collection’s fourteen original essays trace the discourse of techno-orientalism across a wide array of media, from radio serials to cyberpunk novels, from Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu to Firefly.  Applying a variety of theoretical, historical, and interpretive approaches, the contributors consider techno-orientalism a truly global phenomenon. In part, they tackle the key question of how these stereotypes serve to both express and assuage Western anxieties about Asia’s growing cultural influence and economic dominance. Yet the book also examines artists who have appropriated techno-orientalist tropes in order to critique racist and imperialist attitudes.  Techno-Orientalism is the first collection to define and critically analyze a phenomenon that pervades both science fiction and real-world news coverage of Asia. With essays on subjects ranging from wartime rhetoric of race and technology to science fiction by contemporary Asian American writers to the cultural implications of Korean gamers, this volume offers innovative perspectives and broadens conventional discussions in Asian American Cultural studies.

This volume examines the concerns of Asian American literature from 1996 to the present. This period was not only marked by civil unrest, terror and militarization, economic depression, and environmental abuse, but also unprecedented growth and visibility of Asian American literature. This volume is divided into four sections that plots the trajectories of, and tensions between, social challenges and literary advances. Part One tracks how Asian American literary productions of this period reckon with the effects of structures and networks of violence. Part Two tracks modes of intimacy - desires, loves, close friendships, romances, sexual relations, erotic contacts - that emerge in the face of neoimperialism, neoliberalism, and necropolitics. Part Three traces the proliferation of genres in Asian American writing of the past quarter century in new and in well-worn terrains. Part Four surveys literary projects that speculate on future states of Asian America in domestic and global contexts.

Building on the groundbreaking Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media, published by Rutgers University Press in 2015, Techno-Orientalism 2.0: New Intersections and Interventions addresses the impact of a volatile post-pandemic present on speculative futures by and about Asians. The backdrop of this highly anticipated follow-up is a world that is radically different than in 2015: COVID-19, threats of a “new cold war” with China, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the reemergence of “strong man” politics around the world. An essential volume for this new critical juncture in Asian American history, Techno-Orientalism 2.0 catalogs intersectional dialogue with discourses such as Afrofuturism, Indigenous futurities, environmentalism, and disability studies. It also engages with recent high-profile and lesser-known works of Asian and Asian American speculative fiction, film, television, anime, art, music, journalism, architecture, state-sponsored policies and infrastructural projects, and the now-dominant China Panic.

Building on the groundbreaking Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media, published by Rutgers University Press in 2015, Techno-Orientalism 2.0: New Intersections and Interventions addresses the impact of a volatile post-pandemic present on speculative futures by and about Asians. The backdrop of this highly anticipated follow-up is a world that is radically different than in 2015: COVID-19, threats of a “new cold war” with China, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the reemergence of “strong man” politics around the world. An essential volume for this new critical juncture in Asian American history, Techno-Orientalism 2.0 catalogs intersectional dialogue with discourses such as Afrofuturism, Indigenous futurities, environmentalism, and disability studies. It also engages with recent high-profile and lesser-known works of Asian and Asian American speculative fiction, film, television, anime, art, music, journalism, architecture, state-sponsored policies and infrastructural projects, and the now-dominant China Panic.

Groundbreaking in its international, interdisciplinary, and multi-professional approach to diversity and inclusion in higher education, this volume puts theory in conversation with practice, articulates problems, and suggests deep-structured strategies from multiple perspectives including performed art, education, dis/ability studies, institutional as well as government policy, health humanities, history, jurisprudence, psychology, race and ethnicity studies, and semiotic theory.  The authors—originating from Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Trinidad, Turkey, and the US— invite readers to join the conversation and sustain the work.