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Yue Su

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)

Research Outcomes

  • ‘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>

  • 'Kore-eda Hirokazu: Through the Lens of Liquid Kinship', Nagoya University, Joint-Seminar, June 6th, 2023.
  • ‘Children, Risk Society and Liquid Kinship in Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Cinema’, the 2023 BAFTSS Conference, April 5th, 2023.
  • ‘The Homes of the Elderly in the Cinema of Kore-eda Hirokazu’, the 2023 AAS Annual Conference (Association for Asian Studies), February 19th, 2023.
  • ‘Relocating and Dislocating: Obstructed Liquidity of Motherhood in Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Cinema’, the Conference ‘Motherhoods on Screen: Global Perspectives’, Maynooth University, Ireland, September 24th, 2022.
  • ‘The Thermal Spaces of Kinship in Shoplifters’, the 2022 BAFTSS Conference, April 23rd, 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, University of Warwick, May 18th, 2022.
  • ‘Kinship, Place, and Space in the Cinema of Kore-eda Hirokazu’, Department of Film and Television Studies Research Day, University of Warwick, May 19th, 2021.

Teaching

  • FI111-15 Film and Television Criticism (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

Shoplifters (2018)

Still Walking

Still Walking (2008)