Elizabeth Wijaya

Undergraduate Appointment, Department of Visual Studies, UTM
Graduate Appointment: Cinema Studies, St. George
Director, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Asian Institute

Education
PhD, Comparative Literature, Cornell University
MA, Comparative Literature, Cornell University
MA, Literary Arts, National University of Singapore
BA (1^st), English Literature, National University of Singapore

Biography

Elizabeth Wijaya is working on a book manuscript titled “Luminous Flesh: The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Contemporary Trans-Chinese Cinema.” The work examines post-2008 films from Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong, paying attention to how the political and philosophical stakes of how the past is transmitted, corporeally and temporally. From the haunted sites and transmedia possibilities of multi-dialect transnational cinemas, the work shows that the understanding of "Chineseness" as ideological, ethnic or linguistic unity is without essence, though not without force. She is also developing two other projects, "Cinematic Waves: Emerging Communities in Contemporary Southeast Asia Cinema" for which she was awarded a Connaught New Researcher Award and “Migratory Encounters across Past and Present: A Cinematic Research-Creation Collaboration” for which she was given support by the UTM RSAF. She is curating an Asian short film collection for the UTM library. She is the convenor of "Mediating Race, Reimagining Geopolitics," JHI-UTM Seminar for 2020-2021. https://humanities.utoronto.ca/announcements/jhi-utm-seminar-2020-2021

Teaching

Elizabeth Wijaya teaches undergraduate courses on East Asian cinema, Taiwan New Cinema (Taiwan New Wave in Our Time) and queer Asian cinema (Queerscapes, Screenscapes, Escapes).  For her East Asian Cinema class, she initiated a filmmaker-in-residence component with a visiting filmmaker from Asia to give a series of workshops, talks and film screenings in order to acquaint students with contemporary changes and concerns in filmmaking today. Across her classes, besides feature-length films, she includes relevant short cinema in the syllabi for a broader perspective of the diversity and depth of cinema. In her teaching, she emphasizes a non-essentialist approach to thinking about the cinema of a nation or region and emphasizes the transnational aspect of cinema as well as the possibilities of philosophical inquiry into cinema.

Current Research Projects

Elizabeth Wijaya is working on a book manuscript titled Luminous Flesh: The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Trans-Chinese Cinema. The work examines post-2008 films from Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong, paying attention to how the political and philosophical stakes of how the past is transmitted, corporeally and temporally. From the haunted sites and transmedia possibilities of multi-dialect transnational cinemas, the work shows that the understanding of "Chineseness" as ideological, ethnic, or linguistic unity is without essence, though not without force.

She is also developing a second book project, "Cinematic Waves: Emerging Communities in Contemporary Southeast Asia Cinema" for which she was awarded a Connaught New Researcher Award.

She is the convenor of "Mediating Race, Reimagining Geopolitics," JHI-UTM Seminar for 2020-2021. https://humanities.utoronto.ca/announcements/jhi-utm-seminar-2020-2021

Links

Graduate Department
https://www.cinema.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/elizabeth-wijaya

Film Company
https://www.ewfilms.com.sg/