Speaker: Professor Matthew H. Sommer, Bowman Family Professor of History, Stanford University
Moderators: Christine Walker, Associate Professor, Department of History, HKU Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Friday, September 5, 2025 Time: 2:00 to 4:00 pm Hong Kong Time Venue: Faculty Lounge (Room 430) 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower Language: English. The legal texts discussed during the seminar are available in Chinese only. In-person event for HKU students.
During this interactive seminar, Professor Sommer will introduce three texts that illustrate different aspects of the Qing judicial system. The texts will be shared prior to the event to encourage questions and discussion.
Matthew H. Sommer (BA Swarthmore, MA U. of Washington, PHD UCLA) is the Bowman Family Professor of History at Stanford University. A social and legal historian of Qing dynasty China (1644–1912), his research uses original legal case records from local and central archives to explore gender, sexuality, and family. He is the author of Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford 2000) and Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China (California 2015), which was the inaugural winner of the American Society for Legal History’s Peter Gonville Stein Book Award. His latest book, The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China (Columbia 2024) won the John Boswell Prize from the LGBTQ+ History Association.
This seminar is co-organised by the Philip K.H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law in the Faculty of Law, and the Department of History and Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC) in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong.
Speaker:Professor Matthew H. Sommer, Bowman Family Professor of History, Stanford University
Discussant: Professor Bin Bin Yang, Associate Professor, School of Chinese, HKU
Chair: Professor Weilin Xiao, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, HKU
Date & Time: September 4, 2025 (Thursday) 16:00-18:00 Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong Language: English (In-person event)
Matthew Sommer’s new book The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China(Columbia UP 2024)considers a range of transgender experiences in Ming-Qing China, illuminating how certain forms of gender transgression were sanctioned in particular contexts and penalized in others. This talk focuses on the crime of “a male masquerading in female attire” (男扮女裝), which was prosecuted by applying the statute against “using deviant ways and heterodox principles to incite and deceive the common people” (左道異端煽惑人民). Anatomical males who presented as women sometimes took a conventionally female occupation such as midwife, faith healer, or even medium to a fox spirit — yet, suspected of sexual predation, they risked death if they came to official attention, even when they had lived peacefully in their communities for years.
Matthew H. Sommer (BA Swarthmore, MA U. of Washington, PHD UCLA) is the Bowman Family Professor of History at Stanford University. A social and legal historian of Qing dynasty China (1644-1912), his research uses original legal case records from local and central archives to explore gender, sexuality, and family. He is the author of Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford 2000) and Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China (California 2015), which was the inaugural winner of the American Society for Legal History’s Peter Gonville Stein Book Award. His latest book, The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China (Columbia 2024) won the Boswell Prize from the LGBTQ+ History Association.
This seminar is co-organised by the Philip K.H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law in the Faculty of Law, and the Department of History and Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC) in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong.
SEP 4 | THU | 4:00 PM (HKT) | LECTURE The Prosecution of Transgender as Heterodoxy in Qing Dynasty China Speaker:Professor Matthew H. Sommer, Bowman Family Professor of History, Stanford University Discussant: Professor Bin Bin Yang, Associate Professor, School of Chinese, HKU Chair: Professor Weilin Xiao, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, HKU
SEP 5 | FRI | 2:00 PM (HKT) | SEMINAR What Three Cases tell us about the Qing Judicial System Speaker: Professor Matthew H. Sommer, Bowman Family Professor of History, Stanford University Moderators: Christine Walker, Associate Professor, Department of History, HKU Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
For updates on future events hosted by the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures, please visit https://csgchku.wordpress.com/
August 4, 5, 6, 2025 Run Run Shaw Tower, The University of Hong Kong
This summer school is co-sponsored by the China, Humanities, and Global Studies research hub at the University of Hong Kong (Faculty of Arts) and the Graduate Program of the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University.
It features lecture-discussions and a roundtable spread over three afternoons and led by Professors Daniel Vukovich (胡德) and Daniel Elam from HKU, and Li Haimo (李海默), Li Yin (李寅), Yin Peiqiu (银培萩), Yin Zhiguang (殷之光), and Zhang Xueying (张雪滢) from Fudan. Together we will examine some of the history, problems, current prospects, and intellectual questions subtending the global south, modernization, development, Bandung, colonialism or empire, and political economy. This HKU event also forms part of the Fudan Graduate School’s ten-year project “China and the World under Great Changes.”
Dates: August 4, 5, 6, 2025 Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU Language: English
Registration is open to all HKU Research Postgraduate students. Please note that this is a non-credit-bearing program. It is simply an opportunity to enhance one’s learning and exchange views about the global south, the current conjuncture (and older, colonial ones), and related theoretical and empirical issues. Readings are available here. All are welcome but space is very limited so please register only if you will actually attend all three days.
Day 1, August 4: 1:45 pm Introduction | coffee and snacks 2:00-3:00 pm Professor Yin Zhiguang (殷之光) Theorising the Future, Global South and the Historical Continuum of World Order Making 3:30-4:30 pm Professor Dan Vukovich (胡德) The New Global Conjuncture?: Problems of Method & Interpretation 4:30-5:30 pm Professor Li Haimo (李海默) The Global South from a Burkean Perspective
Day 2, August 5: 1:45 pm Coffee and snacks 2:00-3:00 pm Professor Zhang Xueying (张雪滢) Will China Take the Leadership Vacuum? 3:30-4:30 pm Professor Yin Peiqiu (银培萩) The Evolution and Constraints of Congressional Power in U.S.–China Tech Competition: Insights from the TikTok Act
Day 3, August 6: 1:45 pm Coffee and snacks 2:00-3:00 pm Professor Daniel Elam Tristes-Tropiques or Global South: Nation-Building, World-Making, and Post-Independence Anticolonial Thought 3:30-4:30 pm Professor Li Yin (李寅) China’s Innovation and Development: Phenomenon, Consequences, and Implications for the Global South 5:00-5:30 pm Discussion
Prof. Dan Vukovich (胡德), HKU, School of Humanities
Dan Vukovich (胡德) is an inter-disciplinary scholar who works on issues of colonialism/imperialism and critical theory in relation to the intellectual and political history of the “China-West” relationship. He has worked in Hong Kong since 2006, after earlier stints at Hocking College and UC Santa Cruz before and after his PhD from the University of Illinois, Urbana. He is currently Chair of the Comp Lit Program at HKU and has been an Advisory Research Fellow at Southeast University (东南大学) in Nanjing and a Visiting Professor of Politics at East China Normal University (华东师范大学). He is the author of three monographs, including China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the PRC (Routledge 2012), Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the P.R.C. (Palgrave 2019) and most recently After Autonomy: A Post-Mortem for Hong Kong’s first Handover, 1997–2019 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). In these three books and in numerous articles he is concerned with the age-old problems of representation, the politics of knowledge (and ‘real’ politics), and the dialectics of difference and universality.
Prof. Daniel Elam, HKU, School of Humanities
Daniel Elam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. He specialises in transnational Asian and African literatures in the twentieth century, modernism, postcolonial theory, and global intellectual history. He is the author of World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth (Fordham University Press, 2020) and Impossible and Necessary (Orient BlackSwan, 2020).
Prof. Li Haimo (李海默), Fudan University
Li Haimo is currently assistant professor in political science at Fudan University, Shanghai. His major research area is American political thought and Contemporary American Politics. His academic works in English have been formally published in top-tier journals such as History of Political Thought (A&HCI, Q1), Law and History Review (SSCI, A&HCI Q1), The European Legacy (A&HCI, Q2), Journal of British Studies (SSCI and A&HCI, Q1), and European Journal of International Law (SSCI, Q1).
Prof. Li Yin (李寅), Fudan University
Li Yin is an Associate Professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, and Associate Director of the Shanghai Center for Innovation and Governance at Fudan University. His research focuses on innovation, industrial policy and economic development. He is the author of China’s Drive for the Technology Frontier: Indigenous Innovation in the High-Tech Industry (Routledge, 2023). His research has been published in journals, such as Research Policy, Technovation, and Issues in Science and Technology. He also writes frequently for Wenhua Zongheng (Beijing Cultural Review).
Prof. Yin Peiqiu (银培萩), Fudan University
Yin Peiqiu is an Assistant Professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University. Her research focuses on U.S. foreign policy, philanthropy, and the intersection of technology, religion, and international relations, with particular emphasis on the role of elite networks—such as philanthropic foundations and think tanks—in shaping global power dynamics. Her work appeared on CSSCI journals such as Contemporary Asia-Pacific Studies, Foreign Affairs Review, and Contemporary World & Socialism, among others. Her book, Dark Money Politics: Philanthropic Foundations and American Hegemony (Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2022), examines the influence of private foundations on U.S. hegemony. Dr. Yin holds a Ph.D. in International Politics from Fudan University and has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University.
Prof. Yin Zhiguang (殷之光), Fudan University
Yin Zhiguang is a Professor in international politics at the Fudan University. His research interest lies mainly in the area of Chinese modern intellectual and legal history, ethnic minority policy, 19-20 century history of international relations, imperial history, and Sino-Middle Eastern relations. His research and teaching centre on a theoretical interests in understanding the making of the modern world order through the dynamic tension between domination and resistance. His current projects include studies of liberal imperialism and Afro-Asian solidarity movements with a particular interests in Sino-African, Sino-Middle Eastern relations and pan-Africanism. His most recent monographs include: A New World: Afro-Asian Solidarity and the PRC’s Imagination of Global Order (Chinese, 2022), and Politics of Art: The Creation Society and the Practice of Theoretical Struggle in Revolutionary China (Brill, 2014). His articles appear in English and Chinese academic journals such as European Journal of International Law, Third World Quarterly, History, Turkish Journal of Sociology, Shehui Kexue (Social Sciences), and Kaifang Shidai (Open Times).
Prof. Zhang Xueying (张雪滢), Fudan University
Zhang Xueying is an Assistant Professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs and a Research Fellow at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University. Her research focuses on international institutions and the foreign policies of the United States and China, with particular emphasis on China’s engagement with the UN system and emerging multilateral frameworks such as the AIIB, BRICS, and SCO. Her work has appeared in The Review of International Organizations, Global Policy, and The Pacific Review, among other journals. Her forthcoming book, The Exit of Hegemony? The Logic of U.S. Withdrawals from Postwar International Institutions, will be published by Shanghai People’s Publishing House in 2025.
The Modern Girl had a ubiquitous presence in early-twentieth-century Chinese literature and visual culture. From popular fiction to revolutionary literature, from movie fanzines to more serious varieties of newspapers and magazines, from advertising images to leftist cinema, the Modern Girl appeared as an iconic figure in a wide range of representations from the late 1920s through the 1940s. Generally speaking, she was depicted as glamorous, alluring, and sexually liberated. She was envied and emulated as much as chastised. She symbolized the contradictions of modernity—its inordinate attraction as well as its threat. Frequently, she was a key character in the modern heteronormative narratives that gained increasing dominance in urban public discourse in Republican China, narratives that promoted the liberalization of cross-sex courtship as a progressive, humane practice that radically departed from restrictive Confucian ritual. At the same time, her reputed promiscuity and materialism provoked criticisms in the media.
What happens when the Modern Girl meets Eileen Chang? How does Chang see the Modern Girl? What literary molds does Chang borrow and what public interventions does she make? What insights can we gain into the Modern Girl by deploying Eileen Chang as a method?
講者簡介 About the Speaker: 桑梓蘭 美國加州大學柏克萊校區比較文學博士，曾任奧勒岡大學東亞語文系系主任，現任密西根州立大學語言學與語言文化系教授。學術著作有專書 The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China (芝加哥大學出版社)（台大出版中心中譯本名《浮現中的女同性戀：現代中國的女同情欲》) 以及學術論文多篇。編有 Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries (Routledge)。目前研究重點包括民國時期摩登女郎話語、當代台灣紀錄片、華語女性電影。著有中文現代詩集《時光膠囊》（秀威出版社）。
Prof. SANG Tze-lan received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She was Department Head of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Oregon before joining the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures at Michigan State University. Author of The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same Sex Desire in Modern China (University of Chicago Press), she has also published numerous articles and book chapters and the coedited volume Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries (Routledge). Her current research focuses on the Modern Girl in Republican China, contemporary Taiwanese documentaries, and Sinophone women’s cinema. In 2021, she published a collection of her poetry under the title Time Capsules (Showwe Press).
This event is held as part of the New Directions in Eileen Chang Studies Lecture Series | 張愛玲研究新方向講座系列 Co-hosted by School of Chinese and Department of Comparative Literature, HKU Co-sponsored by Louis Cha Fund for Chinese studies & East/West studies in the Faculty & Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC)
14th Asian Cinema Studies Society Conference 2025 (May 22-24, 2025) What is Asian Cinema? The University of Hong Kong Website: https://www.acssconference2025.com
Asian Cinema Studies Society (ACSS) Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC) Master of Arts in Literary and Cultural Studies (MALCS) Department of Comparative Literature
1 Keynote 3 Feature Film Screenings 3 Short Film Screenings 3 Workshops 46 Panels on Asian Cinema
Dates: May 22 (Thu), May 23 (Fri), May 24 (Sat) Time: 9:00 am to 9:00 pm Registration venue: 3/F, Run Run Shaw Tower All HKU staff and students are welcome.
Keynote address – May 23, 11:00 am – 12.45 pm Professor Thomas Lamarre Gordon J Laing Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, The University of Chicago The Anime World: How Infrastructures Affect Sovereignty
The Conference is supported by the Louis Cha Fund for Chinese Studies and East/West Studies.
Please note that access to individual sessions is on a first come, first served basis, with priority given to conference presenters.
The private washroom is a key site in Eileen Chang’s fiction where innermost desires and personal secrets are often revealed and staged. Poignant examples abound, including Chang’s early short story “Red Rose and White Rose” and her later novel Little Reunions. Chang’s early descriptions of the intimate space, in particular, are set against the rapid infrastructure building in Republican-era Shanghai, where the concept of everyday hygiene was popularized, and the modernized washroom became a fixture in upscale urban dwellings. This talk uses this intimate space as an entry point to take another look at Chang’s classic narratives on love, marriage, and family life.
講者簡介 About the Speaker: 楊佳嫻，國立台灣大學中國文學博士。現任國立清華大學中文系副教授。曾擔任臺北詩歌節協同策展人多年。著有詩集《金烏》等四部，散文與評論集《以脆弱冶金》等六部，主編或合編有《刺與浪：跨世代台灣同志散文讀本》等文選多部。另有學術著作《懸崖上的花園：太平洋戰爭時期上海文學場域》、《方舟上的日子：台灣眷村文學》。
Dr. YANG Chia-Hsien is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at National Tsing Hua University of Taiwan. As a scholar, she has published works on Shanghai literature of the war era and Taiwanese military-village narratives. As a prolific writer and poet, she has authored four books of poetry and six collections of prose. She was a long-time curator of the annual Taipei poetry festival and has edited several anthologies of contemporary Taiwanese prose and poetry.
This event is held as part of the New Directions in Eileen Chang Studies Lecture Series | 張愛玲研究新方向講座系列 Co-hosted by School of Chinese and Department of Comparative Literature, HKU Co-sponsored by Louis Cha Fund for Chinese studies & East/West studies in the Faculty & Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC)
與談人 Discussants: Prof. Nicole HUANG 黃心村 教授 (Dept. of Comparative Literature, HKU) Prof. LEUNG Mo Ling 梁慕靈 教授 (School of Arts and Social Sciences, HKMU)
日期時間 Date & Time: April 23, 2025 (Wed) 16:30-18:00pm (HKT) 語言 Language: Putonghua 普通話 地點 Venue: CPD-1.24, Central Podium Level 1, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU 授課模式 Delivery Mode: Face-to-face & Online
In 1952, Eileen Chang left Shanghai and returned to Hong Kong, where she had previously lived as a college student. Chang’s second residency in Hong Kong lasted for only three years, but it was a period of high creativity. She translated several classic American works into Chinese and wrote two novels in both English and Chinese—The Rice-Sprout Song and Naked Earth. Writing in diaspora in the early Cold War years, Chang kept a low profile. This chapter of her life remains shrouded in mystery and controversy. This lecture will combine archival research with interviews of the descendants of the real-life figures who had inspired Chang’s 1950s fiction writing. The goal is to reconstruct Chang’s activities in 1950s Hong Kong and to explain how she ended up writing what she did. By exploring her social circle, the lecture will reveal for the first time Chang’s previously unknown connections with Du Yuesheng’s clan and the nature of her work for the United States Information Service in Hong Kong. Retracing Chang’s footprints of the three-year period will also shed light on her various unfinished projects, her future screenwriting career, and her later devoted study of the eighteenth-century fiction classic The Story of the Stone.
講者簡介 About the Speaker: 謝有坤，張愛玲研究者，相關成果刊於《讀庫》、《印刻文學生活誌》、《上海書評》、《南方週末》等。自2016年起開設微博「張迷客廳」，持續分享張愛玲史料與資訊。2020年發掘蘇青以張愛玲為原型的小說佚作《朦朧月》，2023年考證發現張愛玲化名“連雲”的作品《上下其髪》，目前正在撰寫張愛玲與蘇青的雙人合傳。
XIE Youkun is an independent researcher who has published widely on Eileen Chang. He is the creator and host of Chinese microblogging (Weibo) site “The Eileen Chang Fan Club,” where he has been consistently sharing findings from his devoted textual and archival research on Chang since 2016. Dubbed “a walking encyclopedia of Eileen Chang,” Xie has galvanized around his internet presence a fast-growing community of avid Chang readers of several generations and from a diverse range of backgrounds. In 2020, Xie unearthed a novel titled Hazy Moon, penned by Chang’s fellow 1940s Shanghai woman writer Su Qing, in which a character was based on Chang’s life. In 2023, Xie’s archival research led him to the discovery of a previously unknown pseudonym used by Chang—Lianyun. Xie is currently working on a biography that features both Eileen Chang and Su Qing.
This event is held as part of the New Directions in Eileen Chang Studies Lecture Series | 張愛玲研究新方向講座系列 Co-hosted by School of Chinese and Department of Comparative Literature, HKU Co-sponsored by Louis Cha Fund for Chinese studies & East/West studies in the Faculty & Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC)
Speaker: Frederico Vidal, Visiting PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, HKU
Respondent: Hongwei Bao, Associate Professor in Media Studies, University of Nottingham Moderator: Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2025 Time: 4.30 pm Hong Kong Time Venue:Room 436, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU and on Zoom
Despite its heavily explicit content, the sexual episodes within 北京故事 (1996) are not present in mere service of shock value. These erotic descriptions – a trademark of 同志文学, a subversive genre circulated online – advance the plot and hold symbolic significance, laying bare the characters’ motivations and frame of mind. Aside from this, these scenes further advocate for the humanisation of homosexuals, which at the time of writing the novel was still deemed a crime under the Hooliganism Law and a disease under the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders.
By exploring the broader significance of these lurid scenes, it is possible to look beyond the initial disquiet caused by the novel and delve into the elements that perpetuated its characters and narrative beyond the decade of its inception.
Frederico Vidal is a PhD student in Gender Studies at NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal. He has conducted research on Queer China through literature, with a particular focus on 同志文学. He holds a scholarship from the Scientific and Cultural Centre of Macau and the Foundation for Science and Technology. His MA thesis on the sexually explicit novel 北京故事 (1996) earned him the Orient Foundation Award and the Jorge Álvares Foundation Scholarship.
Speaker: Chenshu Zhou, Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Moderator: Zoe Meng Jiang, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Friday, April 11, 2025 Time: 4:00 pm Hong Kong Time Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
This talk expands on the popular notion of “screen time” to think about the time one spends on consuming screen-based media (e.g. cinema, television, digital media) as a crucial interface linking modern everyday life to political economies. How much time should screens take up in people’s lives? How to determine when screen consumption is productive, and when it becomes a waste of time? Through two seemingly unrelated case studies, itinerant film exhibition during the Great Leap Forward Movement (1958-1962) and contemporary online live streaming, I show how the management of screen time negotiates dominant paradigms of productivity across different historical periods.
Chenshu Zhou (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the award-winning book Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China (University of California Press, 2021).
