Lecturer

Crystal Kwok

PhD Performance Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa

Advanced Graduate Certificate in Womens Studies, UH Manoa

MA Literary Studies, University of Hong Kong

BA Theater Arts, University of California Los Angeles

kwokthetalk@gmail.com

Crystal is an award winning filmmaker and radio/TV talk show host.  She holds a PhD in Performance Studies and an Advanced Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.  Navigating both in front and behind the camera, Kwok made waves in the Hong Kong film and media industry, pushing boundaries addressing socially sensitive topics around women, sexuality, and the body. Her documentary, Blurring the Color Line has won multiple awards including Best Documentary at the Silicon Valley Asian Pacific Film Festival and the Mira Nair Rising Female Filmmaker Award at the Harlem International Film Festival. Through both creative and scholarly work, Crystal is committed to amplifying voices of women and marginal communities.

RESEARCH

Research Interests

  • Film, Media, Theater, Performance
  • Transpacific feminism
  • Memory and oral history
  • Afro-Asian relations
  • Gender and sexuality

PUBLICATIONS

Kwok, Crystal. “Afro-Asian Intimacies: Cross Pollination and the Persistence of Anti-Blackness in Chinese Culture”. Genealogy 2024, Volume 8 Issue 2, 44

Kwok, Crystal. Director, “Blurring the Color Line” (2022), Documentary distributed by Good Docs www.blurringthecolorline.com

Conference Presentations

4/2024 AAAS Conference Asia: “Misfit Narratives: On (Not) Belonging in Asian American Studies”

3/2023 National Association of Chinese Americans, “It’s Complicated! Asians in Black and White America”, Carter Center, Atlanta, GA

2022-2023 “Blurring the Color Line” screening at the Asia Society Hong Kong, New York, Houston, Southern California 

2021 AAS Conference: “Shame/Shine: Chinese Sluts across Time, Border, and Media”

Interviews:

“Crystal Kwok – Perspectives and racial narratives between Chinese and Black communities”, Noreen Mir on RTHK Radio 3, April 22, 2024 https://www.facebook.com/NoreenMirRTHKradio3/videos/1171491880962985

‘I want people to have uncomfortable conversations’: A new documentary explores Chinese and Black relations in the Jim Crow South, The World with Rebecca Kanthor, July 20, 2022 https://theworld.org/stories/2022/07/18/i-want-people-have-uncomfortable-conversations-new-documentary-explores-chinese

“Director Crystal Kwok on Jackie Chan, sex talk and where Asians fitted into segregated US South”, South China Morning Post, April 11, 2019 https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3005726/director-crystal-kwok-jackie-chan-sex-talk-and

Professional Experience

Director/Producer/Writer

  • “Blurring the Color Line” (2022), documentary feature
  • “The Mistress” (1999), narrative feature

Radio/TV talk show host

“I am Crystal Kwok”, Cable TV Hong Kong (1997-2000)

TEACHING AND COURSES TAUGHT

  • CLIT 7013: Postmodernism, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
  • CCHU 9097: Queering Art, Performance, and Cities, Common Core, HKU
  • WGSS 481: Women and Film, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
  • WGSS 375: Women and the Media, UH Manoa
  • WGSS 176: History of Sexuality, UH Manoa
  • DNCE 659: Gender, Race, and Performance of the Body, UH Manoa