Month: April 2023

Speaker:
Jing Peng, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, HKU

Respondent:
Sangjoon Lee, Associate Professor and Head, Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries (DA+CI), Lingnan University

Moderator:
Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Friday, April 28, 2023
Time: 6:00-7:30 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Room 1069, 10/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, and on Zoom

As the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953, the Korean peninsula was doomed to the most confrontational years of the Cold War, and the divided Korea cast eyes abroad respectively to culturally define and show a promising Korea vis-à-vis the foredoomed other. Hong Kong, a site of coexistent but opposing ideologies on the one hand, and an influential pioneer in the Asian film industry on the other, became a “silver battlefield” of the cultural Cold War between the two Koreas.

This talk is an introduction to my chapter on South Korea-Hong Kong film co-production, which is part of my bigger thesis focusing on the ideological battle between North Korea and South Korea through the Hong Kong film industry during the height of the cultural Cold War. It will first introduce the brief history of South Korea-Hong Kong film co-production, then discuss the Hong Kong film industry as the “Hollywood of the East”, and finally politicize the favored pattern of both storytelling and casting in these co-productions that I originally term as “한남홍녀 / 韓男港女 / South Korean Man, Hong Kong Woman.”

Jing Peng is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are broadly on Korean and Hong Kong cinema during the Cold War.

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Speaker:
Junlin Ma, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, HKU

Respondent:
Dr. Linshan Jiang, Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University

Moderator:
Professor Nicole Huang, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Time: 10:00 am Hong Kong Time
Venue: F2F and On Zoom

This seminar contextualizes and analyzes two Mandarin films in Li Xianglan’s (1920-2014) brief period in 1950s Hong Kong. A former actress, singer, and cultural icon of Manchukuo, Li Xianglan iterated in 1950s Hong Kong as both a reflection of the nostalgia for the prosperous wartime cultural production and a key feature in the narratives and self-justifications of those who came to Hong Kong from Japanese-occupied areas. I argue that her career and stardom reincarnated in 1950s Hong Kong through a deliberate process of adaptation, revision, and rewriting of her 1933-1945 Manchurian story. Through this process, Li Xianglan ensured her reinvented persona adhered to political norms while maintaining its commercial appeal among a postwar audience. Close reading selected works in 1950s Hong Kong, I examine Li Xianglan’s incarnations in and beyond characters and their reliance on the re-narration of wartime Manchukuo. Furthermore, I explore Hong Kong as a site accommodating contested creative and ideological impulses and a renewed cultural sphere sheltering the ongoing reincarnation of the Li Xianglan legend.

Junlin Ma is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese fiction and film, Sinophone studies, and cultural studies. She is currently working on transcultural figures and their literary and cinematic works in 1950s Hong Kong.

For registrants who select Zoom, we will send you the link prior to the event. For registrants who select Face-to-Face (F2F), we will write to you prior to the event with the venue location. There is a limited quota for F2F and we apologise if we are unable to accommodate all requests.

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Speaker:
Dr. Kevin Guyan, Research Fellow, School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, Scotland

Date: Tuesday, April 25, 2023
Time: 3:00 – 4:30 pm (Hong Kong Time)
Venue: Room 4.36, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong

Whether we use surveys or interviews, ethnographies or focus groups – the methods we use as researchers do not arrive with us as some sort of apolitical or ahistorical artefact. They do not collect information about the outside world that is static, fixed and simply waiting to be uncovered. Rather, methods are crafted, tweaked and changed to serve the particular interests of individuals, organisations or ways of thinking.

So what does this mean for projects investigating the lives and experiences of LGBTQ+ communities? Do methods equally convey the experiences of the most marginalised and least marginalised in minority groups? And might the methods we deploy in our research construct ideas about the groups under investigation?

Departing from the idea that we always need to collect more or better data, this interactive workshop applies a queer lens to research methods and poses questions about neutrality, biases, politics and power.

Dr Kevin Guyan is a researcher and writer whose work explores the intersection of data and identity. He is the author of Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic), which examines the collection, analysis and use of gender, sex and sexuality data, particularly as it relates to LGBTQ+ people in the UK. Kevin is a Research Fellow in the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

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Speaker:
Kedar A. Kulkarni, Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, FLAME University, Pune, India

Respondent:
Rashna Darius Nicholson, Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies, School of English, HKU

Moderator:
Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Monday, April 24, 2023
Time: 1:00 pm Hong Kong Time (10:30 am India)
Venue: On Zoom

The story of how English literature became central for the civilizing mission is well-known. But vernacular literary cultures? How were they transformed in their colonial settings? In my talk, based on my book, World Literature and the Question of Genre: Poetry, Drama, and Print Culture in Colonial India, 1790-1890 (Bloomsbury 2022), I argue that the concept of “literature” itself underwent a fundamental transformation during the nineteenth century. The outlines of this transformation take us through an intellectual history, book history, through biography and linguistics. They speak to the way colonialism’s transfer of ideas sparked a substantial revolution in literary culture in Marathi as well. Literati such as Vishnushastri Chiplunkar (1850-1882) were nodes enabling the emergence of anthologists, critics, publishers, theatre makers, and translators who refashioned the literary world along global paradigms, some of whose after-effects linger to our present day.

Kedar A. Kulkarni is a literary and performance historian who situates Indian literature and performance within global paradigms, borrowing lenses from colonial and postcolonial studies, comparative literature, and theatre and performance studies. He has written about slavery, gender, and caste, in South Asia, aspects of intellectual history and theory, book history, canonicity, and Marathi theatre and performance. He is an Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at FLAME University, in Pune, India. His first book, World Literature and the Question of Genre in Colonial India: Poetry, Drama, and Print Culture 1790-1890, won the American Comparative Literature Association’s Helen Tartar First Book Subvention Grant, and was published in 2022.

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Speaker: 
Dr. Kevin Guyan, University of Glasgow

Date: April 19, 2023 (Wed)
Time: 5:00PM – 6:00PM
Venue: CPD-1.21, Centennial Campus, HKU
Registration: https://bit.ly/QueerData

Data has never mattered more. Our lives are increasingly shaped by it and how it is defined, collected and used. But who counts in the collection, analysis and application of data?

Dr Kevin Guyan (University of Glasgow) will discuss key themes from his book Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic) including the relationship between data and visibility, the politics of who and how to count, and how data biases are used to delegitimise the everyday experiences of queer communities.

About the Speaker
Dr Kevin Guyan is a researcher and writer whose work explores the intersection of data and identity. He is the author of Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic), which examines the collection, analysis and use of gender, sex and sexuality data, particularly as it relates to LGBTQ people in the UK. Kevin is a Research Fellow in the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

This event is presented by the Department of Sociology and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures, Department of Comparative Literature, The University of Hong Kong.

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Lives of the Deltas, Critical Zones, and Connected Futures

Focusing on transdisciplinarity-in-action, we will explore collaborative learning, contact points for research across disciplines, and innovative examples of institutional programming. How might the transdisciplinary help us enact flourishing and connected futures?

A Panel Discussion with
Winnie Yee (Comparative Literature, HKU)
Julian Tanner (Director, Common Core, HKU)
Rick Dolphijn (Philosophy & Art, Utrecht University)
Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (Honorary Professor of Humanities, Comparative Literature, HKU)

Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Time: 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm (Networking & Pizza starts at 6:00 pm)
Venue: CPD-3.41, Centennial Campus (The Jockey Club Tower), HKU and on Zoom

Co-sponsors:
Common Core, HKU
The Humanities Honours Programme, Utrecht University
Master of Arts in Literary and Cultural Studies (MALCS), HKU
Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC), HKU

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影像、衣飾和邊界——張愛玲的《對照記》及其他

分享嘉賓 Speaker: 黃子平 教授  Prof. HUANG Ziping

主持人 Moderator: 黃心村 Prof. Nicole HUANG

Date & Time: April 18, 2023 (Tue) 16:30-18:00pm
Language: Putonghua
Venue: CPD-2.19, Level 2, Central Podium, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

摘要：

“他們靜靜地躺在我的血液裡，等我死的時候再死一次。”

影像是記憶的邊界、生死的邊界，衣飾是身體的邊界，內外的邊界、自我與他人的邊界。張愛玲生前編定的最後一本書，《對照記》，為世人展示了人生的種種邊界，以及越界的種種可能。

“They lie quietly in my blood, waiting to die again when I die.” 

Images are the boundary of memory, and of life and death, whereas clothing is the boundary of the body, between inside and outside, and between self and others. As the last book compiled by Eileen Chang before her death, An Album of Mutual Reflections exhibits to its readers different kinds of boundaries in life and various possibilities of boundary-crossing.

簡介：

黃子平，香港浸會大學榮休教授。主要著作有《沉思的老樹的精靈》、《倖存者的文學》、《革命·歷史·小說》、《邊緣閱讀》、《害怕寫作》、《灰闌中的敘述》、《歷史碎片和詩的行程》、《文本及其不滿》等。

Huang Ziping is a professor emeritus at Hong Kong Baptist University. His major publications include The Elf of the Pensive Old Tree; Literature of Survivors; Revolution, History, and Fiction; Reading on the Edge, Fear of Writing; Narratives in the Chalked Circle; Historical Fragments and the Journey of Poetry; Text and Its Discontents.

This event is held as part of the New Directions in Eileen Chang Studies Lecture Series |
張愛玲研究新方向講座系列 
Co-hosted by School of Chinese and Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Co-sponsored by Louis Cha Fund for Chinese studies & East/West studies in the Faculty
& Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC)

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Speaker:
Dr. Jamie J. Zhao, Assistant Professor in Media and Cultural Studies, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

Moderator:
Dr. Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Monday, April 17, 2023
Time: 5:00 pm (Hong Kong Time)
Venue: On Zoom and Face-to-Face

The 2010s have seen an explosion in popularity of Chinese television featuring same-sex intimacies, LGBTQ-identified celebrities, and explicitly homoerotic storylines even as state regulations on “vulgar” and “immoral” content grow more prominent. Taking “queer” as a verb, an adjective, and a noun, the speaker explores the power of various TV genres and narratives, censorial practices, and fandoms in queer desire-voicing and subject formation within a largely heteropatriarchal society. This talk situates the studies of post-2020 TV China within the sociopolitical contexts and transformations that have contributed to the rise of nonnormative representations on Chinese TV in the twenty-first century. Drawing on a number of recent cases, she highlights the importance of unsettling the dichotomous, categorical logics often employed to understand meanings and official policies associated with today’s Chinese televisual imaginings of gender and sexuality.

Jamie J. Zhao is a global queer media scholar and currently Assistant Professor in Media and Cultural Studies in the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from Chinese University of Hong Kong and another PhD in Film and TV Studies from the University of Warwick. Her research explores East Asian media and public discourses on female gender and sexuality in a globalist age. She is the editor of the forthcoming anthology, Queer TV China (HKUP, 2023) and coedited Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (HKUP, 2017). 

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Speaker:
Professor Allen Chun, Research Fellow Emeritus, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica

Moderator:
Dr. Daniel Vukovich, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Thursday, April 6, 2023
Time: 4:30 pm (Hong Kong Time)
Venue: On Zoom and Face-to-Face

Beginning as a year-long ethnography of a school in Taiwan in 1991, it provides a concrete point of departure and framework of political-cultural practice for understanding the subtle evolution of a system of socialization that resides at the basis of an ongoing process of national identification. The 1990s is also a crucial juncture for viewing the transition from a sinocentric politicizing regime to a Taiwanizing one. The historical sociology that gave rise to the ethnography of 1991 in the speaker’s opinion offers a different critical perspective on contemporary Taiwan. The overt sinicization of early KMT rule in postwar Taiwan also provides a comparative viewpoint for assessing similar experiences in post-1997 Hong Kong.

Allen Chun is Research Fellow Emeritus in the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. From August 2019, he has been Chair Professor in the Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. His interests involve cultural theory, nation-state formation, transnationalism and identity, and his research has focused mostly on Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. His recent books include Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification (SUNY 2017) and On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification (Berghahn 2019).

For registrants who select Zoom, we will send you the link prior to the event. For registrants who select Face-to-Face (F2F), we will write to you prior to the event with the venue location. There is a limited quota for F2F and we apologise if we are unable to accommodate all requests.

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