Project Origin
This developing "Digital Intimacy Syllabus" project aims to document and share resources about interpersonal intimacies in the digital age while bridging East Asian contexts with global digital intimacy discourse. It originated from an independent study titled "Feminism, Social Media, Digital Cultures" with Dr. Anastasia Todd in Fall 2024. Our shared interest in social media studies led us to explore the TikTok Syllabus as our primary reading list. Unlike Dr. Todd's focus on celebrity studies, I found myself drawn more to analyzing comment sections, owing to my background in fan studies and my positionality as what Henry Jenkins terms an “aca-fan” (academic-fan).
To be clear, fan studies wasn't my initial academic focus in higher education, but emerged gradually through my scholarly journey, which has shaped my approach to this project. Starting with undergraduate work in pre-20th-century Chinese sexuality culture, my research evolved through master's and doctoral studies to examine contemporary Chinese queer fan culture practices, particularly focusing on female audiences. Throughout this journey, I have contemplated how to articulate my research interests that transcend both historical periods and disciplinary boundaries beyond the labels of "cultural studies" and "gender studies."
A moment of revelation occurred during the ninth week of the semester when I titled my self-selected reading list for the fall break as "intimacy." I remembered declaring to Anastasia in the meeting afterward how this concept crystallized not just my semester project but my broader research interests. During my master's study, my theoretical foundation, built on works by Haiyan Lee, Giddens, Yunxiang Yan, and Illouz, took on new dimensions when I discovered Berlant's perspective on intimacy. Her definition and vision had an extraordinarily liberating quality, capturing the subtle intricacies of queer fan culture that both transcends and retains traditional, existing, and hegemonic sex/gender systems. Discovering Dobson, Robards, and Carah's (2018) Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media during my first year of doctoral studies felt like coming home—it helps bridge cultural specificities with global patterns, providing a clear direction for my research.
I now have the confidence to say that, my research examines interpersonal intimacies in the digital age, encompassing various forms regardless of their sexual connotations, intensity, origins, or structures. While my primary focus is mainland China, with a gradual expansion to East Asia and the broader Asian context, I find myself in dialogue with scholars across historical, geographical, and disciplinary boundaries who share this concern. This cross-cultural perspective distinguishes the project, offering insights into how traditional concepts of intimacy evolve in digital spaces while identifying patterns that transcend cultural boundaries.
The “Digital Intimacy Syllabus” thus emerges as a developing project that seeks resonance and collaboration. It serves both to document my evolving research and pedagogical journey, and to share these resources and reflections with fellow researchers. Acknowledging the inevitable limitations of such an endeavor—the bibliography will always be incomplete, the pedagogical approaches always under scrutiny—I earnestly invite readers' feedback, suggestions, and critiques to collectively enhance our understanding of digital intimacy across cultural contexts.