Ka Lee’s research examines Chinese-language media and sound cultures from a transregional perspective, with particular interests in Cantonese media, Sinophone studies, media history, and the politics of listening. Drawing on film, television, radio, oral storytelling, and popular music, she investigates how vernacular languages circulate across China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore, and how media infrastructures shape the ways languages are heard, remembered, and transformed.
She is currently completing her first book project, which develops listening as a method for writing media history, tracing how Cantonese sound travels across oral traditions, broadcasting, cinema, and television to illuminate the uneven conditions through which vernacular cultures become audible, marginalized, and reimagined across Asia. Her broader research interests include Sinophone studies, sound studies, and the cultural histories of Global Asia.
Select Publications
“Sonic Familiarity and Unfamiliarity: The Politics of Sounds and Transregional Survival of Cantonese Cinema in the Early to Mid-twentieth Century" Journal of Chinese Film Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 2026, pp. 5-25. https://doi.org/10.1515/jcfs-
2025-0036 “Recovering the Lost Cantonese Sounds in Pre-handover Hong Kong: Sinophone Politics in Dung Kai-cheung’s ‘The Rise and Fall of Wing Shing Street’”. Asian SoundCultures. Edited by Martyn Smith and Iris Haukamp. London: Routledge, 2022, p. 162-178.
“Textualizing YouTube: Cultivating Bonds of Community via an Online Collaborative Platform in Hong Kong”. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 63 no. 1, 2022, p. 25-36.
Education
PhD, East Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Southern CaliforniaMPhil, English
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Research Interests
Global Chinese diaspora
Transnational Chinese media and literature
East and Southeast Asian popular culture
Language and identity
Ocean and island studies