Host: Liana Chen (George Washington University), Speaker: Liang Luo (University of Kentucky)

In the Chinese legend of the White Snake, woman is not seduced by the snake but is herself the snake. This talk opens with White Snake’s symbolic travel from a Japan-inspired Korean webtoon to a Korea-inspired Chinese webtoon, which serves as a fitting metaphor for the multidirectional travels of the White Snake legend in an Asian and global context. The body of the talk centers on two Korean “White Snake” films. These Korean films worked together with other case studies to transform the White Snake legend into a story of love and reconciliation, a story full of humor and humanity. The talk ends with references to contemporary Anglophone “White Snake” projects as sites for celebrating Asian American and other minority identities in the United States.

Speaker:
Dr. Liang Luo is an associate professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of The Avant-Garde and the Popular in Modern China (Michigan, 2014) and The Global White Snake (Michigan, 2021).