Date: Thursday, 28 October 2021
Time: 4:00 – 5:30 pm (GMT +8) on Zoom
Speaker: Lou Rich, PhD Candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature
Supervisor: Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature
Respondent: Harmony Yuen
Abstract: While Ancient Greece is well-renowned as a time and place in which ‘bisexuality’ was ‘in fashion’, could the same be said about Ancient China? Can we call bisexuality ‘bisexuality’ in a time when identity politics did not exist? This seminar examines and compares the sexual systems of two of the most influential cultures in terms of historical literature and culture: Ancient Greece and Dynastic China. Through the use of the term ‘bieroticism’ rather than bisexuality, this seminar looks at how sexual and social systems at the time allowed for a more diverse representation of non-binary sexual expressions – such as the Greek pederastic system, or the Chinese male-favourite tradition, and the literature and works that arose from this. Therefore, in light of research that consistently boxes historical cultures such as these into hetero or homoerotic, a lens of bieroticism hopes to shed fresh light and allows for nuance and the breaking of the hetero-homo binary, and lends new ways of thinking about premodern and modern sexuality and literature.
Bio: Lou Rich is a 3rd year PhD candidate In the Department of Comparative Literature of the University of Hong Kong. They received their BA in Film and Media Production at Sheffield Hallam University in 2016, and their MA in English Studies at the University of Nottingham in 2017. Their work focuses specifically on representations of bisexuality in literatures and visual media spanning different cultures and countries.
Respondent: Harmony Yuen
Organized by the Department of Comparative Literature and Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC), HKU
For enquiries, please feel free to contact Lou Rich by email at slrich@connect.hku.hk
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