The inaugural conference of the Association for Chinese Animation Studies will be held at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on May 11-14, 2020. The official language is English. The conference will be held every 3-4 years. There will be two keynote speakers for each conference: one from China studies, and one from other fields. The two keynote speakers for the inaugural conference will be: Professors Yingjin Zhang from the University of California-San Diego and Thomas Lamarre from Duke University.

There will be around 50 speakers, including Professors Zhen Zhang (New York University), Yomi Braester (University of Washington-Seattle), Wendy Larson (University of Oregon), Sharalyn Orbaugh (University of British Columbia), Jason McGrath (University of Minnesota), Alex Zahlten (Harvard), Jie Li (Harvard), Yiman Wang (University of California-Santa Cruz), Stephanie Donald (University of Sydney), Paola Voci (University of Otago), John Lent (Temple University), Sean Macdonald (SUNY at Buffalo), Jinying Li (Brown University), Teri Silvio (Academia Sinica), Jeremy Taylor (University  of Edinburg), Ling Zhang (SUNY at Purchase), Liang Luo (Kentucky University), Hua Li (Montana State University), Xiao Liu (McGill University), Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto (Waseda), Weihua Wu (Communication University of China), and many others.            

Night screenings are scheduled. The China Film Archive will screen its collection of animated shorts made in the 1930s and 1940s. Professor Zhen Zhang will chair the screening session. Mr. Lo Wing Keung, the “father” of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, will deliver a screening talk and then premier his studio’s CGI ink-painting animated feature film titled Red Squirrel Mai.   

After the conference, an opportunity will arise to publish the first handbook on Chinese animation studies.