The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will host Dr. Chee-Hann Wu and her talk "Haunted Play: Memory and Resistance in Taiwanese Horror Games" on March 17.
Taiwanese horror is a rising genre that has claimed an important space in Taiwanese popular culture, particularly in the video game industry since the debut of Detention in 2017. Video games associated with such aesthetics often incorporate elements of Taiwan's local religions, cultures, and mythologies. Furthermore, such horror is evoked not only by fear of the unknown, but also by the unsettling feeling of being forced to live under duress. Although mostly implicit, many Taiwanese horror games contain hints of historical references to the 228 Incident and the White Terror under Martial Law. Malevolent monsters and ghosts become physical incarnations of state-sanctioned violence perpetrated by perpetrators, dehumanized accomplices, and those who were arrested, executed, or silenced.
Chee-Hann Wu is an assistant professor faculty fellow in Theatre Studies at New York University. She received her Ph.D. in Drama and Theatre from the University of California, Irvine. Chee-Hann is drawn to the performance of, by, and with nonhumans, including but not limited to objects, puppets, ecology, and technology. Her current book project, provisionally titled The Unfinished Gesture: Puppetry, Memory, and the Becoming of Taiwan, considers puppetry a mediated means to narrate Taiwan’s cultural and sociopolitical development, colonial and postcolonial experiences, as well as Indigenous histories. Chee-Hann’s work has appeared in Puppetry International, Asian Theatre Journal, International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, and other places. Her most recent research explores video games, VR, and artificial intelligence through the lens of theatre and performance. In addition to her scholarly work, Chee-Hann is the editor and a frequent contributor to Taiwan Insight, an online academic magazine of the University of Nottingham’s Taiwan Research Hub.
The talk runs from 3:00 to 4:30 pm in 4130 Posvar Hall (map).
