Who Owns Chinese History? 
Cultural Representation in Sinophone Videogames

Dr. Michael O’Krent (Vertretungsprofessur Sinologie, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, PhD, Comparative Literature, Harvard University) studies the ideological use of fictional worlds in Chinese literary and cultural history. In this talk, he will position videogames as a medium of cultural analysis by highlighting references to Chinese antiquity as marks of cultural identity in Chinese and Taiwanese videogames. Rather than drawing upon a stable reservoir of Chineseness, such games construct the very positions they seek to represent. This talk undermines existing paradigms for defining Chinese cultural identity and seeks to complicate discussions about the ethical need to represent one’s own culture in a globalized media environment.