March 20, 2026

Speaker:
Kirk Sides, Assistant Professor in English, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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

Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Time: 10:00 am Hong Kong Time
Venue: On Zoom
All are welcome. Registration is required.
https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=105791

Reading African literatures as environmental literatures, Environmental Entanglements offers an interventional step back beyond the mid-twentieth-century moment of political independence. Thinking about ‘entanglement’ as a way to represent relations ecologically, the book explores a form that it argues is an ecological imaginary animating many African literary and cultural repertoires. This ecological form gives story to experiences of transversal of (colonial and apartheid) boundaries, the movement of peoples, and the cultural and social relations enacted upon land. Focusing on literary and filmic texts, from the writers such as Thomas Mofolo and Sol Plaatje in the early twentieth century, to contemporary science and speculative fiction producers like Nnedi Okorafor and Wanuri Kahiu, Environmental Entanglements argues that cultural archives from the African continent display a history of ecological awareness that predates the moment of mid-twentieth-century decolonization.

Kirk Sides is an Assistant Professor in English and an Affiliate Faculty Member of African Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kirk has worked at academic institutions in the US, the UK, and South Africa. His book, Environmental Entanglements: African Literature’s Ecological Imaginary (2025) from Oxford University Press, charts a long history of ecological thinking in African literatures from the start of twentieth century up to the present. He has recently begun a new research project, Narrative on the Edge, which looks at the relationship between environmental change and storytelling practices.

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

Discussants:
Georgios Halkias, Glorious Sun Professor in Buddhist Studies & Director, Centre of Buddhist Studies, HKU
Catherine Hardie, Assistant Professor in Buddhist Studies, Centre of Buddhist Studies, HKU
Crystal Kwok, Lecturer and Filmmaker, Department of History, HKU

Moderator: Ji Li, Associate professor, Department of History, HKU

Date: Friday, March 20, 2026
Time: 2:30-5:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: LE1, (Library Extension), Main Campus, The University of Hong Kong

The award-winning 2023 documentary Ani Bond: Choying Drolma follows the inspirational journey of the “rock-star” Nepali nun Ani Choying Drolma. Fleeing an abusive father, the thirteen-year-old Ani sought refuge in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery where the nuns taught her to sing. Her stunning voice captured the attention of a visiting American musician who brought her singing to global attention. Ani Choying Drolma has used her international fame to campaign for girls’ education and, in 2000, she established a modern school for novice nuns, Arya Tara, in Kathmandu. Several of the girls, who come from some of the poorest and most remote areas of Nepal, share their stories in the documentary. Despite her achievements, the trauma of Ani Choying’s past continues to haunt her and, in an effort to confront it, the film sees her fulfill her father’s dying wish and travel to his hometown in Qinghai, China.

Directors Fen Jennifer Lin and Shan Bai spent seven years bringing Ani Choying Drolma’s astounding story to the screen. The documentary won the NETPAC Award for the Best Asian/Pacific Film and the Audience Award for Documentary at the 39th Warsaw International Film Festival, as well as Best Documentary Feature and Best Music and Sound at the 13th China Academy Awards of Documentary Film. Bai Shan is an independent director and producer. Fen Jennifer Lin is a media sociologist and a documentary filmmaker. She is Professor of Media and Communication and serves as Associate Vice President (Global Strategies) and Director of ArtX Hong Kong Institute at the City University of Hong Kong. She has written extensively and bilingually on media and political communication, information governance, state-society relations, China’s technology and innovation system, and social and cultural change. She obtained her BA in Economics from Peking University, MS in Statistics, and PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago. For more on the film, visit https://youtube.com/@f.jenniferlin5671?si=9gMhkL1v_rQN942Q

This event is held as part of the course GLAS2141: Women and Gender in Asia, with the support of the Department of History, the Committee on Gender Equity and Diversity (CGED), the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC), and the Centre of Buddhist Studies in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong.

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

Day: March 20, 2026

Environmental Entanglements: African Literature’s Ecological Imaginary

Ani Bond: Choying Drolma (2023) – Screening and Dialogue with Director Fen Jennifer Lin

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