Interrogating Genre/Culture/Gender: The Cinema of Ang Lee

Dr. Whitney Crothers Dilley will examine the key films throughout Lee’s career, his filming techniques and subject matter, with a particular focus on Lee’s history-making achievements with the cultural milestones of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, and Life of Pi. In his earliest films, Lee investigated cross-cultural and generational themes of tradition/modernity and the father figure in his Chinese-language Father Knows Best trilogy, followed by such diverse choices as Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, and even Hulk. This talk will be a retrospective of Lee’s extraordinary career, twice celebrated in 2021 with both the Legion of Honor award in France, and the BAFTA Fellowship in the UK, which highlights the truly global influence of this world-renowned director.

Guest speaker Whitney Crothers Dilley is a professor of English with a dual appointment in The Graduate Institute of Gender Studies at Shih Hsin University in Taipei, Taiwan. Dilley is best known as the author of The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen, now in its second edition published by Columbia University Press, as well as From Eileen Chang to Ang Lee: Lust/Caution (Routledge).