Speaker: Sheldon Lu, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis
Moderator: Beth Harper, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Thursday, December 11, 2025
Time: 2:30 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Faculty Lounge (Room 430), 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
This lecture offers a survey of the evolution of East-West comparative literary studies in the past decades. It begins with comparative poetics, schools of comparative literature, methods of parallel study. We pay attention to the subsequent rise of third-world literature and postcolonial study. In the twenty-first century, world literature and world-systems theory present new opportunities for innovative comparative studies. This lecture gives an account of such changes, continuity, and innovation. At the same time, it points out some possible strengths and blind spots associated with each of these trends.
Sheldon Lu is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California at Davis. He has served as the Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature and Founding Director of Film Studies Program at UC Davis. His scholarship and teaching lie at the intersection of literary studies, visual studies, film studies, China studies, and cultural theory. He is the author and editor of some 15 books in English and Chinese. His recent monographs include Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Visual Culture: Envisioning the Nation (2021) and Lyric Poetry and Solidarity Society in Hong Kong in the 1950s 一九五〇年代香港詞壇與堅社 (2022).
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