Symposium - 80 Years On: Memory and Legacy of World War II in ESEA Popular Culture

Date: 2 September 2025

Venue: tbc

The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. This global conflict has shaped the modern world and continues influencing international relations, cultural production and historical discourse. In Europe, V-E Day (8 May 1945) is often commemorated as the end of the war, and yet in the Asia-Pacific region, the war continued relentlessly until Japan's unconditional surrender on 15 August 1945, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was on 2 September 1945, when Japan signed the formal surrender document, that World War II officially ended.

The 80th anniversary offers a timely opportunity to examine how World War II is remembered and reimagined in popular culture across East and Southeast Asia (ESEA), and equally important, how these representations have been transmitted and circulated across the globe. From blockbuster films to literary works, television dramas to manga, video games to digital media, the portrayal of World War II in popular culture serves as a lens through which memory, identity and historical legacy are constructed and negotiated. The transmission across different cultural contexts also raises pertinent questions about the meaning and problematics of translating war memory. As a collaboration between Dr Lin Feng (Film Studies) and Dr Yan Ying (Translation Studies), this hybrid symposium invites scholars and researchers from diverse disciplines, including but not limited to film studies, area studies, history, cultural studies, literary studies and translation studies.