Background

I received my Bachelor of Arts in Chinese Language and Literature from Beijing Normal University in 2011. After graduation, I became a secondary school teacher in Xi’an, China for seven years, while completing my Master of Education (part-time) from Beijing Normal University in 2015. With a passion for films, I began my studies in Film & Television Studies (for Research) at the University of Warwick in 2018 and graduated with a Distinction. Since 2020, I have further pursued my research by becoming a PhD student in the Co-Tutelle PhD Programme in Global Screen Studies between the University of Warwick and Nagoya University in Japan. My research interests lie in the cinematic representation of kinship, East-Asian cinema, queer cinema and world cinema.

Doctoral Research

My project examines the idea of ‘liquid kinship’ that is represented throughout the films of Kore-eda Hirokazu, the world-renowned Japanese director. Liquid kinship, i.e. kinship beyond a solid structure embedded in social norms, suggests a plural, porous, and precarious form and a self-creating and constantly evolving practice. To articulate this understanding of kinship in Kore-eda’s films, I first inquire about the mobilised social roles of children, mothers, fathers, the elderly, and the deceased, in dialogue with Japanese social contexts regarding declining fertility, gender inequality, rapid ageing, isolated death, etc. Secondly, in light of the theoretical framework of place and space, I observe how liquid kinship flows and converges spatially through the relations between humans and the environment from an anthropological perspective. I look into the practices of kinship, including eating, bathing and moving, via several recurring cinematic places and spaces, from dining–kitchen areas to convenience shops (konbini), from bathrooms (furo) to the seaside and from entryways (genkan) to railways. Thirdly, I further address the liquid form of kinship through multiple sensations. I argue that kinship is a felt phenomenon that can be sensed visibly, audibly, haptically and kinetically. Speaking to the phenomenological turn in film studies, I deploy Kore-eda’s cinema as a case through which to explore how films as a medium can facilitate the lens of liquid kinship through sound, touch, temperature and rhythms.

Supervisors: Professor Alastair Philips and Professor Hideaki Fujiki (Nagoya University)

Publications

‘Liquidity and Stillness: The Sea and Shore and the Furo in Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Cinema’, Somatechnics 13.2 (2023), pp. 73-90. <https://www.euppublishing.com/toc/soma/13/2Link opens in a new window>

This article was granted an honourable mention for the ‘Best Published Essay by a Doctoral Student’ in the 2024 BAFTSS publication awards.

Conference Papers

• Kinema Club conference ‘Borders, Boundaries, Edges, and Fringes in Japanese Film (Studies)’, University of Sheffield, 12 June 2024, ‘Kore-eda Hirokazu: Through the Lens of Liquid Kinship’.
• Mediating Kinship Salon (organised by the editors of ‘Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference’), online, 22 February 2024, ‘Liquid Kinship: Through the Cinema of Kore-eda Hirokazu’.
• Joint Seminar, Nagoya University, 7 November 2023, ‘Performative Remembering and Forgetting: The Deceased in Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Cinema’.
• Joint Seminar, Nagoya University, 6 June 2023, ‘Liquid Kinship: The Cinema of Kore-eda Hirokazu (Introduction)’.
• British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Conference, University of Lincoln, 5 April 2023, ‘Children, Risk Society and Liquid Kinship in Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Cinema’.
• Association for Asian Studies Conference, online, 19 February 2023, ‘The Homes of the Elderly in the Cinema of Kore-eda Hirokazu’.
• ‘Motherhoods on Screen: Global Perspectives’ Conference, online, 24 September 2022, ‘Relocating and Dislocating: Obstructed Liquidity of Motherhood in Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Cinema’.
• British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Conference, online, 23 April 2022, ‘The Thermal Spaces of Kinship in Shoplifters’.
• Department of Film and Television Studies Research Day, University of Warwick, 18 May 2022, ‘From Solid to Liquid Kinship: The Becoming of Fatherhood in Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Like Father, Like Son’.
• Department of Film and Television Studies Research Day, online, 19 May 2021 ‘Kinship, Place and Space in the Cinema of Kore-eda Hirokazu’.

Conference Organisation

• ‘Forms and Feelings of Kinship in the Contemporary World’ (University of Warwick, 27 April 2024). Doctoral Fellowship Competition winner. Funded by Humanities Research Centre. See more details at the conference website.

• Film and Television Studies Departmental Research Day 2024 (University of Warwick, 15 May 2024). Co-organised with Dr. Hande Çayır.

Teaching

• FI111-15 Film and Television Criticism (GTA, leading three seminar groups, Term 2, 2023/24)
• FI204 World Cinema (GTA, leading three seminar groups, Term 1, 2022/23)
• FI360 Postwar Japanese Cinema (GTA, leading two seminar groups, giving a guest lecture on kinship and Kore-eda Hirokazu, Term 2, 2022/23)

Contact: yue.su@warwick.ac.uk

 

Shoplifters (2018)

Still Walking (2008)