csgchku Past Events

Film Screening and Post-Screening Discussion “Dream Home”

Film Screening & Post-Screening Discussion “Dream Home”

Film: Dream Home 維多利亞壹號
Date: 22 January 2026 (Thursday)
Time: 18:30 – 21:30 Hong Kong Time
Venue: Rayson Huang Theatre, Main Campus, HKU 香港大學黃麗松講堂
Guest Speakers: Josie Ho 何超儀, Conroy Chan 陳子聰

Moderators: Dr. Derek Lam 林瀚光博士， Dr. Fiona Law 羅玉華博士

Language (Post-Screening Discussion): Cantonese 廣東話

Please note: This film is classified as Category III and is restricted to persons aged 18 or above.

About the Film
Cheng Lai-sheung (played by Josie Ho), who comes from a poor family, dreams of one day living in a luxurious high-end residence. The upscale development “Victoria One” is her ideal home. To afford an apartment there, she works multiple jobs and even risks selling her company’s confidential information. After great effort, she finally manages to pay the deposit, but the seller withdraws the property from the market after prices rise again. When she sees her lifelong dream of home ownership shattered, Lai-sheung snaps and embarks on a brutal, bloody campaign of revenge…
Trailer: https://youtu.be/s0GyWR0XxNo?si=tR0vnHrD79-AqhNZ

The event is co-organized by the Department of Comparative Literature, the MA in Literary and Cultural Studies (MALCS), the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC) at the University of Hong Kong, and MOViE MOViE.

For updates on future events hosted by the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures, please visit https://www.csgc.hku.hk/

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csgchku Past Events

The Globalization of a Wonder Potion

Speaker:
Alex K. Gearin, Assistant Professor, Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit, HKUMed

Discussants:
Teresa Kuan, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, CUHK
Gordon Mathews, Emeritus Professor, Department of Anthropology, CUHK

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

Date: Monday, January 19, 2026
Time: 4:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU

Wonder is naturally elusive. Part thought, part emotion, it unsettles our understanding. While scientists frame “psychedelic wonder” as a universal therapeutic mechanism, the experiences these substances inspire are neither culturally uniform nor universally understood as healing. Drawing on his book Global Ayahuasca (Stanford University Press, 2024), Alex K. Gearin challenges the romanticized view of ayahuasca as simply an Indigenous remedy for modern life. Instead, fieldwork reveals that its wonder is mobilized for diverse ends, from strengthening decolonial identity and facilitating urbanization in the Peruvian Amazon to improving entrepreneurial mastery in metropolitan China. These variations suggest that for many, the mystery of psychedelic wonder lies not in a critical escape from modernity but in a greater mastery over it.

Alex K. Gearin is a medical anthropologist specializing in the intersections of mental health, cultural beliefs, and psychedelic medicine. He serves as Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit, School of Clinical Medicine, The University of Hong Kong.

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csgchku Upcoming Events

Anticolonial Urbanism: From South Asia to the Indian Ocean Arena

Speaker: Stephen Legg, Professor of Historical Geography, University of Nottingham

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

Date: Friday, January 30, 2026
Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Faculty Lounge (Room 430), 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
All are welcome. Registration is required.
https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=104784

In this presentation, I will reflect on my past, recent, and future work exploring the geographies of colonialism and anticolonialism. I will open with a summary of my 2007 book, Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities, which explored three landscapes of ordering which united New and Old Delhi as the capital of British rule in colonial India. I will also reflect on the intellectual moment from which this work emerged (geographer’s engagement with the latter-Foucault, postcolonial theory, and urban studies). Second, I will summarise my 2025 book, Spaces of Anticolonialism, which complements and supplements the first work, by exploring spaces of anticolonial struggle in Delhi in periods of protest mass-movement but also in everyday spaces of political mobilisation. Here, I reflect on ongoing debates regarding geographies of “resistance,” the decolonial, and the nature of the city. Finally, I will share ongoing research regarding the synergies between global urban history and global urban studies, and ask what “anticolonial urbanism” might be, what it could contribute, and how we might explore it comparatively between South, Southeast and East Asia.

Stephen Legg is Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Nottingham. His research centres on the geographies of late-colonialism, with a particular focus on British-Indian relations in the interwar period. His monographs include Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities (2007); Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities and Interwar India (2014); Round Table Conference Geographies: Constituting Colonial India in Interwar London (2023); and Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities (2025). He is currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Historical Geography.

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