Day: March 5, 2026

A Book Reading and Conversation

Speaker:
Sean Meighoo, Associate Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature, Emory University

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

Date: Thursday, March 5, 2026
Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU

In Postcolonial Derrida, Sean Meighoo argues that Derrida’s philosophical work offers us an incisive engagement with the issues of colonialism, race, migration, and diaspora that distinguish postcolonial theory as such. Critically reading some of Derrida’s most famous texts in addition to some of his lesser-known ones, Meighoo brings Derrida into conversation with a diverse range of anticolonial and postcolonial thinkers and writers from the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia as well as African American and French feminist thinkers and writers including Toni Morrison, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Hélène Cixous, V.S. Naipaul, Nelson Mandela, M.K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sean Meighoo is Associate Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at Emory University. He is author of The End of the West and Other Cautionary Tales (Columbia UP, 2016) and Postcolonial Derrida (Edinburgh UP, 2026). Meighoo’s work has also appeared in the journals Small Axe, Cultural Critique, Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Humanimalia, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, Journal of World Philosophies, and Derrida Today, as well as in the volumes Nation Dance: Religion, Identity, and Cultural Difference in the Caribbean (Indiana UP, 2001) and Beastly Morality: Animals as Ethical Agents (Columbia UP, 2015).

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

Follow us on:
– Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/csgc.hku
– Instagram: @csgc.hku

Moderator: Crystal Kwok, Department of History, HKU

Date: Thursday, March 5, 2026
Time: 4:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: MB217, 2/F, Main Building, The University of Hong Kong

Emma Pei Yin is an Australian-Chinese writer and editor. Her debut novel, When Sleeping Women Wake, has been published globally, translated into multiple languages. It was longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize (2025) and shortlisted for the Australian Indie Book Awards (2026). The novel follow the lives of three women caught up the turmoil of the Second Sino-Japanese War: the First Wife of the Tang family, Mingzhu, who leads a sheltered and lonely existence in Shanghai, her daughter Qiang, and her devoted maid, Biyu. In 1941, they flee to Hong Kong, but when the Japanese army invade, the three women are scattered.

Emma Pei Yin explores how histories of sex work, sexual coercion and gendered labour are often lived not through clarity or explanation, but through pressure, routine and silence—particularly in wartime contexts. Drawing on her novel When Sleeping Women Wake and the work of writers including Iris Chang, Lisa See, Jing-Jing Lee, and Lynn Bracht, Emma will examine how shifts in daily life and relationships can function as historical clues rather than missing pieces of the record. The workshop will discuss different approaches to representing sexual violence and coerced labour, including the use of restraint, implication and attention to consequence. There will also be a short, low-pressure writing and reflection exercise that invite participants to think carefully about how history first shows up in ordinary life. No prior writing experience is required, and participants are not expected to share their work.

This workshop is held as part of the course HIST2219: History through Sex Work, with the support of the Department of History, the Committee on Gender Equity and Diversity (CGED), and the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC) in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong. Emma Pei Yin appears courtesy of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival.

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

Follow us on:
– Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/csgc.hku
– Instagram: @csgc.hku