Month: November 2023

Speaker:
Feng-Mei Heberer, Assistant Professor in Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

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

Date: Thursday, November 30, 2023
Time: 9:00 am Hong Kong Time (8:00 pm/Nov 29, New York)
Venue: On Zoom

Drawing on a multilingual archive of contemporary queer and feminist videos by Asian diasporans in North America, Europe, and East Asia, Asians on Demand: Mediating Race in Video Art and Activism (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) grapples with the pressing question of how media representation can advance racial justice in the wake of today’s unprecedented rise of onscreen diversity. Through an engagement with grassroots activist documentaries and experimental videos by migrants, undocumented workers, and high-profile media artists, the book showcases video productions that sabotage popular and state demands for Asian visibility to fulfill ostensibly progressive projects of multicultural and postracial inclusion.

Feng-Mei Heberer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at NYU. Her research interests lie at the junctures of labor, transnational migration, and Asian diaspora, and her work draws heavily on the insights of ethnic studies, queer studies, feminist studies, and critical area studies. In addition, she researches and works in film curation and community arts and culture organizing.

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彼岸花：1950年代後張愛玲的跨界文藝實踐

分享嘉賓 Speaker: 趙家琦 博士 Dr. CHAO Chia-chi 
主持人 Moderator: 林姵吟 博士 Dr. LIN Pei-yin

日期時間 Date & Time: November 30, 2023 (Thu) 16:30-18:00pm
語言 Language: Putonghua
地點 Venue: CPD-LG.07, Central Podium LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU

摘要 Abstract:
張愛玲1950年後的文藝表現，多被視為無法媲及其戰時創作的高峰，並尚未獲得充分的關注。本次演講因此以「跨」為視角，來觀察、並闡論張愛玲的後期寫作在跨媒介、語際與文類的多元文藝成就。演講分三部分，首先以張愛玲改編自英國劇作的電懋劇本《六月新娘》為對象，耙梳該作與改編電影就羅曼史的跨媒介衍繹，並勾勒其折射的冷戰通俗文化。其次探討張愛玲對晚清吳語小說《海上花列傳》的愛情譯寫，並追蹤張與海外學術菁英的翻譯合作，打造出中國人情文學的衍播系譜。最後關注張愛玲的中文遺稿〈重訪邊城〉，論證她在冷戰下的台灣行與對當地廟宇的興趣，既展現了對漢族身世的南方想像，她對台灣的述寫也蘊含著與台灣鄉土藝術的交會。

Eileen Chang’s literary practice from the 1950s onwards is often deemed inferior to her wartime creations and has not received sufficient attention. Therefore, this talk aims to explore the richness and border-crossing nature of Chang’s later works, spanning various media, languages and genres. This three-part talk begins by analysing how Chang’s adaptation of the British play “While the Sun Shines” into a screenplay “June Bride” for the MP&GI company, offers valuable insights into the interplay between the play and its film adaptation as a romance, while tracing its reflection of Cold War popular culture. It then discusses how Chang transformed the late Qing Wu-dialect novel Sing-song Girls of Shanghai into a love classic through her Chinese translation. It also highlights Chang’s collaborative translation efforts with academic circles in Hong Kong and beyond. Finally, the talk turns to Chang’s posthumously discovered Chinese essay “A Return to the Frontier.” It posits that her visit to Taiwan during the Cold War and her fascination with local temples not only reveal an imagination of Han-ethnic heritage but also signify intriguing intertextuality with Taiwan’s folk arts.

講者簡介 About the Speaker:
趙家琦  臺灣中興大學中國文學系副教授。研究與教學範圍為近現代中國小說、上海文學與文化、小說與影像改編等。目前主要研究論題為1950年代後張愛玲的文藝實踐，已發表多篇論文於《漢學研究》、《清華中文學報》、與《翻譯史研究》等學術期刊與書籍。

Chia-chi Chao is an associate professor in the Department of Chinese Literature at National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan. Her research interests include 20^th century Chinese fiction, modern Shanghai literature, and the adaptation of novels into films in the Chinese language. She has published several articles on Eileen Chang’s later literature in academic journals such as Chinese Studies, Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, Studies in Translation History as well as in various edited books.

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:
Pang Laikwan, Choh-Ming Li Professor of Cultural Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Moderator:
Jean Ma, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: CBC, Chow Yei Ching Building, Main Campus, HKU

The concept of sovereignty is a crucial foundation of the current world order. Regardless of their political ideologies no states can operate without claiming and justifying their sovereign power. The People’s Republic of China (PRC)—one of the most powerful states in contemporary global politics—has been resorting to the logic of sovereignty to respond to many external and internal challenges, from territorial rights disputes to the Covid-19 pandemic. In her forthcoming book, One and All: The Logic of Chinese Sovereignty (Stanford University Press, 2024), Pang Laikwan analyzes the historical roots of Chinese sovereignty. Surveying the four different political structures of modern China—imperial, republican, socialist, and post-socialist—and the dramatic ruptures between them, Pang argues that the ruling regime’s sovereign anxiety cuts across the long twentieth century in China, providing a strong throughline for the state–society relations during moments of intense political instability.

Pang Laikwan is the Choh-Ming Li Professor of Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research spans the wide spectrum of culture in modern and contemporary China and Hong Kong. She is the author of several books, including The Appearing Demos: Hong Kong During and After the Umbrella Movement (2021), The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China’s Cultural Revolution (2017) and Creativity and Its Discontents: China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses (2012).

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Speaker:
Jon Solomon, Professor, Department of Chinese Literature, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3

Moderator:
Daniel Vukovich, Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Thursday, November 9, 2023
Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time (10:00 am, Paris)
Venue: On Zoom

This book constitutes a timely intervention into debates over the status of Taiwan, at a moment when discussions of democracy and autocracy, imperialism and agency, unipolarity and multipolarity, dominate the intellectual agenda of the day. Pursuing a parallel trajectory that is both epistemic and historical, and that is traced out in relation both to Taiwan’s recent history and to the disparate forms of knowledge production about that history, this work engages in scholarly debates about some of the burning issues of our time, including transitional justice, hegemony and conspiracy in the digital age, debt regimes, cultural difference, national language, and the traumatic legacies of war, colonialism, anticommunism, antiblackness, and neoliberalism. Providing trenchant analyses of the fundamental bipolarity that persists amidst both unipolar and multipolar conceptions of the world schema inherited from the colonial-imperial modernity, this book will be of interest to scholars in many fields, including translation studies, postcolonial studies, Marxism studies, trauma studies, media studies, poststructural theory, gender studies, cold war studies, area studies, and American studies, black studies, among others.

Jon Solomon is a professor in the Department of Chinese Literature at Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and a researcher attached to the Centre de Recherches Plurilingues et Multidisciplinaires, Université Paris Nanterre. Recent publications include The Taiwan Consensus and the Ethos of Area Studies in Pax Americana: Spectral Transitions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023); The Genealogy of Defeat of the Left: Translation, Transition, and Bordering in the Hong Kong Anti-ELAB Movement (Tonsan Books, Taipei, 2022; in Chinese); and “Wynter is Coming: Black Communism, Translation, and Technics” in the exhibition catalog for Ceremony: Burial of an Undead World, Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

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Speaker:
Dr. Tatu-Ilari Laukkanen, Tampere University, Finland

Moderator:
Dr. Daniel Elam, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Wednesday, November 1, 2023
Time: 5:00 pm (Hong Kong Time)
Venue: Room 1069, 10/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU & on Zoom

In the last two decades both Chinese and Russian “blockbusterized” films about war have become some of the biggest box-office successes of all time in these countries. This presentation analyzes these Russian and Chinese nationalist blockbusters comparatively through close textual readings and pointing out industrial and politico-economic needs and practices that have given rise to these films. The dual nature of these productions as being a mimicry of and antidote to Hollywood will be discussed. Dealing mostly with films depicting the World War II era, this lecture discusses the cinematic revival of “The Great Patriotic War” under Putin, and its uses in screen culture and propaganda after Russia’s attack on Ukraine. In addition, a few recent co-productions between China and Russia will briefly be discussed in light of the two countries’ geopolitical relations.

Dr. Tatu-Ilari Laukkanen obtained his PhD in Comparative Literature at HKU and now teaches film at Tampere University and the Finnish University Network for Asian Studies (Asianet). A member of the Tampere Research Centre for Russian and Chinese Media (TaRC), he has written on film in China, Russia, and the other BRICS countries. His most recent work on Sino-Russian cinema is the upcoming book chapter, ”A Double-Edged Sword? Nationalist Blockbusters of China and Russia,” in Eastern Europe and Eurasia in the Global Age: Narrating Geopolitics and Culture,Kaasik-Krogerus et al., eds. (Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming).

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