This lecture can be attended in-person only. Please be sur e to register using the link below. This lecture is open to everyone.
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Dr. Wendy Sung (Assistant Professor\, Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA) will give a talk on the (mis)recogni tions of the Asian face\, theorizing an alternative history of biometrics. Dr. Sung will be in conversation with Dr. Danielle Wong (Department of Engl ish Language and Literatures\, UBC) after the presentation.
This talk charts how and why the Asia n face functions as a sociotechnical formation\, an origin of bioinformatic control\, and simultaneously\, an evasion of it. The mug shot and modes of phrenological and photographic comparison to legitimate eugenics-based cat egorization have long been acknowledged as precursors to modern facial reco gnition technologies. However\, this presentation traces a pre-history of t hese technologies to different biometric past: the rise of immigration iden tification papers within the US when the Chinese Exclusion laws marked the formal emergence of visual documentation regulation into immigration policy . Through this origin point\, this talk examines how the Asian face can ser ve as an interface that highlights the difference between a face and its ma sks\, between a keeper of technological secrets and the aesthetics of facia l misrecognition\, demonstrating that the hyperscrutiny paid to the Asian f ace and its misrecognitions are not the glitches in these technologies but in fact\, central features.
Dr . Wendy Sung is an assistant professor of race\, visuality\, and digita l culture in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. Her r esearch focuses on race and comparative ethnic studies\, transmedia histori es and digital technologies\, and cultural memory and visuality. She is at work on her first monograph\, Violent Virality: Racial Violence and the Making of New Media which examines the relationships between race\, tec hnology\, and media cultures through the phenomenon of watching racial viol ence in 20th and 21st century American culture. She is a former UC Presiden t’s Fellow\, and her work has been supported by the Institute for Citizens and Scholars and the Society of Hellman Fellows. She has published in So cial Text\, Limn\, The Journal of Cinema and Media Stu dies (formerly Cinema Journal)\, and Feminist Media Histories \, among others.
CATEGORIES:Featured Homepage,Featured Undergraduate LOCATION:SFU Harbour Centre Room 2270 GEO:49.284546;-123.111664 URL;VALUE=URI:https://english.ubc.ca/events/event/the-misrecognitions-of-th e-asian-face-and-an-alternative-critical-history-of-biometrics/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://engl.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2026/02/20260326-Wendy-Sung_FB.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 DTSTART:20260308T100000 TZNAME:PDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR