Abstract
How do cultural producers balance local particularity with universal appeal in global creative production? Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in Beijing and Los Angeles and interviews with hard-to-access industry insiders, this talk examines how Chinese and Hollywood studios sought to co-develop movies that could travel across cultural and political boundaries. Executives pursued “organic” stories, but what counted as organic shifted as U.S.–China relations deteriorated. Producers moved from cultural diving, seeking resonance through historically and culturally dense material, to cultural surfing, working through globally recognizable genres and narrative forms. This shift reveals how producers make culturally specific elements feel coherent, resonant, and defensible under changing conditions. “The global,” I argue, is not simply discovered in audience demand but imagined and made plausible in the process of cultural production.
Bio
Dr. Jun Fang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. As a sociologist of culture studying China’s engagement with the West, he explores how nationalism and globalization shape creative production. His current book project, under contract with Princeton University Press, is an ethnography of China–Hollywood coproduction, tracing the interplay of art, markets, and state power. His work has appeared in American Sociological Review, Poetics, and Qualitative Sociology, among other venues. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University.
Location
September 23rd, 2026
Douglas Wright Engineering, Room 3519
1:00 PM - 2;30 PM