Dr Kheen Sum(Dean) CHAN

• Asian Australian and Asian American cultural production, especially visual arts, comics, and graphic novels
• East Asian game industries and cultures, incorporating console, MMO, and mobile gaming
• Game art practices
• Critical and cultural theory, particularly in relation to diaspora and cultural hybridity, critical race theory, transnationalism, cultural geography, and popular geopolitics

DP0880038 Australian Research Council (Discovery Project), 2007, [$175,000; 2008-2010]
Project Title: Being Asian in Australia and the United States: Analysing Ethnic Representations in Visual Arts, Popular Culture, Academia and Community Festivals
Chief Investigators: Dr Jacqueline Lo (ANU), Dr Tseen Khoo (Monash U), and Dr Dean Chan (ECU)

BOOK
• Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific. New York: Routledge, 2009. Co-edited with Larissa Hjorth.

BOOK CHAPTERS
• “Locating Play: The Situated Localities of Portable and Online Gaming in East Asia.” Asian Popular Culture. Ed. John A. Lent and Lorna Fitzsimmons. (Forthcoming).
• “Dead-in-Iraq: The Spatial Politics of Game Art Activism and the In-Game Protest.” Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games. Ed. Nina Huntemann and Matthew Payne. New York: Routledge. (In-Press, 2009).
• “Beyond the 'Great Firewall': The Case of In-Game Protests in China.” Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific. Ed. Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan. New York: Routledge, 2009. 141-157.
• “Locating the Game: Gaming Cultures in/and the Asia-Pacific.” Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific. Ed. Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan. New York: Routledge, 2009. 1-14. Co-written with Larissa Hjorth.
• “Negotiating Online Computer Games in East Asia: Manufacturing Asian MMORPGs and Marketing ‘Asianness’.” Computer Games as a Sociocultural Phenomenon: Games Without Frontiers, War Without Tears. Ed. Andreas Jahn-Sudmann and Ralf Stockmann. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 186-196.
• “Dark Chronicle.” Space Time Play – Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Ed. Friedrich von Borries, Steffen P. Walz and Matthias Böttger. Basel, Boston, and Berlin: Birkhäuser, 2007. 190-191.
• “Exhibiting (Provisional) ‘Chineseness’: Staging Hybridity in the Chinese-Australian Visual Arts Context.” Beyond Good and Evil? Essays on the Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific Region. Ed. Dennis Haskell, Megan McKinlay, and Pamina Rich. Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2005. 107-119.
• “Transforming the Study of Visual Culture: Postcolonial Theory and the Ethically Reflexive Student.” Disrupting Preconceptions: Postcolonialism and Education. Ed. Anne Hickling-Hudson, Julie Matthews, and Annette Woods. Brisbane: Post Pressed, 2004. 77-89. Co-written with Christopher Crouch and Nicola Kaye.
• “The Dim Sum vs the Meat Pie: On the Rhetoric of Becoming an In-between Asian-Australian Artist.” Alter/Asians: Asian-Australian Identities in Art, Media and Popular Culture. Ed. Ien Ang, Sharon Chalmers, Lisa Law, and Mandy Thomas. Sydney: Pluto Press, 2000. 141-151.
• “The Poetics of Cultural Theory: On Hybridity and the New Hierarchies.” Diaspora: Negotiating Asian-Australia. Ed. Helen Gilbert, Tseen Khoo, and Jacqueline Lo. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2000. 52-57.

REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES
• “Being Played: Games Culture and Asian American Dis/identifications.” Refractory: Journal of Entertainment Media. Guest Ed. Thomas H. Apperley and Julian Clemens. (Forthcoming, 2009).
• “Convergence, Connectivity, and the Case of Japanese Mobile Gaming.” Games and Culture. Guest Ed. Larissa Hjorth. “Gaming in the Asia-Pacific” Special Issue, 3.1 (2008, January): 13-25.
• “Playing With Indexical Chineseness: The Transnational Cultural Politics of Wuxia in Digital Games.” EnterText. Guest Ed. Leon Hunt, “Wuxia Fictions: Chinese Martial Arts in Film, Literature and Beyond” Special Issue, 6.1 (2006): 182-202.
• “Negotiating Intra-Asian Games Networks: On Cultural Proximity, East Asian Games Design and Chinese Farmers.” Fibreculture Journal. Guest Ed. Chris Chesher, Alice Crawford, and Julian Kücklich, “Gaming Networks” Special Issue, 8 (2006). [http://journal.fibreculture.org/ issue8/issue8_chan.html]
• “Playing With Race: The Ethics of Racialized Representations in E-Games.” International Review of Information Ethics. Guest Ed. Elizabeth A. Buchanan and Charles Ess, “The Ethics of E-Games” Special Issue, 4 (2005): 24-30.
• “The Ethically Reflexive Student and the Study of Visual Culture.” Journal of Australian Art Education 24.1 (2001): 4-9. Co-written with Christopher Crouch and Nicola Kaye.

REFEREED CONFERENCE PAPERS
• “Towards a Socio-Cultural Cartography of In-Game Protests.” Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory — Proceedings of DiGRA 2009. London: Digital Games Research Association, 2009. (Forthcoming, 2009).
• “Dead-in-Iraq and the Spatial Politics of Digital Game Art Activism.” Communication, Civics, Industry: Proceedings of ANZCA 2007. Ed. John Tebbutt. Melbourne: Australia and New Zealand Communications Association & La Trobe University, 2008.
• “The Cultural Economy of Ludic Superflatness.” Situated Play: Proceedings of DiGRA 2007 Conference. Tokyo: Digital Games Research Association, 2007. 783-788.
• “The Institutionalisation of Hybridity.” The Body Politic: Racialised Political Cultures in Australia (Refereed Proceedings from the UQ Australian Studies Centre Conference, Brisbane, 24-26 November 2004). Ed. Tseen Khoo. Brisbane and Melbourne: University of Queensland Australian Studies Centre (ASC) and Monash University National Centre for Australian Studies (NCAS), 2005. ISBN 0-646-44730-0. [http://asc.uq.edu.au/bodypolitic/ chan.pdf] [Keynote Paper]
• “Representing ‘Asian-ness’ in Video Games.” Asia Examined: Proceedings of the15th Biennial Conference of the ASAA, 2004, Canberra, Australia. Ed. Robert Cribb. Canberra: Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) and Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS), The Australian National University, 2004. ISBN 0-9580837-1-1. [http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ASAA/conference/proceedings/Chan-D-ASAA2004.pdf]

OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Edited Journal Special Issue
• Amerasia. Guest Ed. Jacqueline Lo, Tseen Khoo, and Dean Chan. "Asian Australia & Asian America: Reconceptualizing Transnational Geographies" Special Issue. (Forthcoming, 2010).

Edited Monograph:
• Asia-Pacific Art(iculations). Perth: Western Australian School of Visual Arts, 1997.

Monograph Essay:
• “The Art and Cultural Politics of Imperfect Connections.” Les Morgan: Illegal Action [Monograph on Les Morgan’s paintings, 1995-2005, with essays by Phillip Adams, Timothy Morrell, and Dean Chan], Brisbane, 2005. 11-15. [Commissioned]

Edited Exhibition Catalogue:
• No Place Like Home. Perth: Multicultural Arts Centre of Western Australia, 1996.

Exhibition Catalogue Essays:
• “Visualising Diaspora.” Layli Rakhsha: Each Moment a New Tale is Shouting to be Told in Silence. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre, 2006. [Invited]
• “Between Good and Evil: Two Episodic Reflections on Social Control and the Politics of Difference.” Australiens. Perth: Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2003. 2-6. [Invited]
• “Mapping Cultural Incommensurability.” Clive Barstow: 2000 Years. Melbourne & Fremantle: Span Gallery & Fremantle Arts Centre, 2002. n.p. [Invited]

Periodical Articles:
• “Blame and Other ‘Subtle Political Ends’.” [Review Article on the Exhibition “Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India”]. Art Monthly Australia 176 (November 2004 – February 2005): 38-41. [Invited]
• “Asian Games.” Meanjin, “Austral/asian” Special Issue, 63.2 (2004): 186-191.
• “Starfish Bread, Happy Corners and One Golden Dinosaur.” [Review Article on the Exhibition “Very Fun Park: Contemporary Art from Taiwan”]. Art Monthly Australia 141 (July 2001): 21-23. [Invited]
• “The Lessons of Censorship and Collaboration.” RealTime 31 (September 1999): 39. [Invited]
• “Desiring the Lover: Notes on the Contingencies of Cultural Interpretation.” W/Edge 4&5 (1998): 81-86. [Invited]
• “Ned Kelly and the Bandit Queen.” RealTime 21 (October-November 1997): 41. [Invited]
• “Panic (at) Hatched.” RealTime 20 (August-September 1997): 41. [Invited]
• “The Racialisation of Politics.” The Western Review 35 (February 1997): 6.
• “‘Gobble’isation and Contemporary Art in the Asia-Pacific.” The Western Review 34 (December 1996 – January 1997): 8-9.

Online Resource:
• Tracking Echoes, An AASRN online resource in association with Echoes of Home touring exhibition, 2007-8. [http://asianaustralianstudies.org/echoes.html]

INVITED PRESENTATIONS
• Invited Roundtable Speaker, "Transcolonial Articulations of Indigeneity, Diaspora, and Settler Colonialism", Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Annual Conference, Honolulu, USA, April 2009.
• Invited Participant, "The Game of Being Mobile: Mobile Technologies, Gaming Cultures and the Haptic", ARC Cultural Research Network Workshop, RMIT, Melbourne, July 2008.
• Invited Speaker, “Superflat Beauty.” Arc Biennial Symposium on Art, Design and Craft. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, October 2007.
• Invited Respondent. The Asian Australian Identities 2 Postgraduate Workshop. ANU House, Melbourne, June 2007.
• Invited Keynote Speaker, “The Institutionalisation of Hybridity.” The Body Politic: Racialised Political Cultures in Australia. Australian Studies Centre, University of Queensland, Brisbane, November 2004.
• Invited Speaker, “Can One Say No to Chineseness? (or, A Meditation on the Function of Theoretical Studies as Critical Practice).” Hatched National Graduate Show Symposium. Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth, May 2003.
• Invited Speaker, “Imagining Asia from an Asian-Australian Perspective.” Asia & Australia: Trading in Imagination. Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, August 2001.
• Invited Masterclass Speaker & Respondent, “Asian-Australian Cultural Production.” Art Across Cultures: Aboriginal Australia to Asia-Pacific. Visiting Scholars Program, Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University, Canberra, November 2000.
• Invited Speaker, “The Interpretive Gap: Notes on (Mis)interpreting ‘Difference’ in the Visual Arts.” Hatched National Graduate Show Symposium. Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth, May 1999.
• Invited Speaker, “Desiring the Lover: Notes on the Contingencies of Cultural Interpretation.” Found in Translation: Language at the Cultural Borders. Playworks, Sydney, in association with PICA, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth, July 1997.

AWARDS
• Award for Excellence for Outstanding Research Leadership, Presented by the Postgraduate and Honours Student Association, ECU, 2004.
• ECU Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, 2004-2007.
• Award for Excellence for Postgraduate Supervision, Presented by the Postgraduate and Honours Student Association, ECU, 2003.
• Award for Excellence for Postgraduate Supervision, Presented by the Postgraduate and Honours Student Association, ECU, 2001.
• Award for Excellence for Postgraduate Support Person of the Year for the WA Academy of Performing Arts, Presented by the Postgraduate and Honours Student Association, ECU, 2001.

JOURNAL EDITORSHIP
Associate Editor, Studies in Comics
Book Reviews Editor (Diasporic Asia), Asian Studies Review

JOURNAL EDITORIAL BOARD
Digital Culture and Education

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
Founding Convenor, International Network for Diasporic Asian Art Research (INDAAR)
Executive Committee Member and Convenor of Visual Arts and New Media Cluster: Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN)

Member:
Association of Asian American Studies
Games, Location, Art and Mobile Media Research Group (GLAMM)

PREVIOUS AFFILIATIONS
• Board of Directors, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
• Deputy Chair, Management Committee, Artists' Regional Exchange (ARX)
• Executive, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ)

 http://asianaustralianstudies.org/

CCA5103 Seminar Series

Postgraduate Supervision:
Dean’s postgraduate supervision interests include Asian and Asian Australian cultural production (especially in relation to visual art and digital games), contemporary visual culture, and cultural history and theory. He is also experienced in supervising postgraduate projects with creative practice components.

Recent postgraduate thesis topics he has either supervised to completion, or been invited to examine, include: Asian Australian visual culture; Asian Australian literature; diasporic Chinese artists in Australia; Korean-American contemporary dance choreography; Aboriginal female artist-photographers; industrial waste and urban detritus in art practice; the abyss as historical and contemporary cultural metaphor.

In addition, he has supervised over 30 Honours and Masters (Coursework) dissertations.

Dean has acted as an external examiner for Monash University, Curtin University of Technology, Central Queensland University, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and Le Harve University, France.

Current honours and postgraduate research students:

Emma Dowdell, PhD (Photomedia)
Donna Franklin, PhD (Contemporary Arts)
Andrea Wood, PhD (Contemporary Arts)
Duncan Barnes, Master of Communications (Photomedia)
Stella Andrews, Master of Arts (Visual Arts)
Bess Williams, Honours (Contemporary Arts)
Janet Carter, Honours (Contemporary Arts)

Dr Dean Chan teaches in the postgraduate and honours programmes at the School of Communications and Arts, Edith Cowan University, in Perth, Western Australia. His current research interests focus on diasporic Asian cultural production (especially visual arts, comics, and graphic novels), East Asian digital games, and game art practices. Dean is co-editor of "Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific" (Routledge, 2009). At present, he is working on a major project on diasporic Asian cultural production in Australia and the United States that is funded by the Australian Research Council. In addition, he is Associate Editor of a new international scholarly journal Studies in Comics which will be published by Intellect (UK) and launched in 2010.

Dean’s research is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing from cultural studies, critical theory, visual culture, as well as games and new media studies. His publications are widely cited internationally in books, scholarly journals, and online research databases. His book chapters on cultural hybridity and Asian Australian cultural production are taught in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Australia. His journal articles on gaming have been used as set texts in courses taught at several American universities, including the University of Calfornia, Berkeley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Michigan State University.

Dean has been invited to speak at numerous national conferences and arts symposia including the 2007 Arc Biennial Symposium; and he is regularly commissioned to write for art journals, monographs, and exhibition catalogues.

Over the past decade, Dean has held leadership and advisory positions within associated arts industry sectors. He has previously served on the boards of Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Artists Regional Exchange (ARX), and Art Association of Australia and New Zealand. Since 2006, he has been an Executive committee member and Cluster Convenor of visual arts and new media in the Asian Australian Studies Research Network.

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