Cameron L. White

I study Chinese-language cinema and audio media, with an emphasis on audiovisual translation practices like subtitling and dubbing. My dissertation project offers a critical history of film localization in Taiwan during the martial law period and its immediate aftermath. In contrast to area studies film histories that emphasize locally produced works as a means of locating linguistic subjectivity on the silver screen, I argue that the circulation of works from both home and abroad are critical to understanding the relationship between language and cinema in Taiwan, particularly given the overwhelming popularity of Hong Kong and Hollywood cinema among Taiwanese audiences toward the end of the 20th century. In addition to film theory and critical translation studies, my scholarship is informed by conversations in literary history and sociolinguistics, not to mention an abiding interest in Taiwanese and Hong Kong popular culture.

My writing on film has been published in Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Chinese Films Abroad: Distribution and Translation (Routledge, 2024), Film Quarterly, Film Appreciation (《Fa電影欣賞》), and elsewhere. I am also an active proponent of expanding educational opportunities for learning lesser-taught Sinitic languages in the hopes of equipping the next generation of students in East Asian studies to ask new research questions. In collaboration with Raymond Pai (University of British Columbia), I co-host and co-produce Chatty Cantonese (粵語白白講), a language-learning program that not only covers the basics of Cantonese but also features interviews with people all over the world who have a relationship with the language, with previous guests ranging from comedians to academics to musicians.

Languages (other than English):

• Mandarin
• Cantonese
• Taiwanese Hokkien (Taigi)
• Korean
• Japanese
• German