Speaker: Dr. Kevin Guyan, Research Fellow, School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, Scotland
Date: Tuesday, April 25, 2023 Time: 3:00 – 4:30 pm (Hong Kong Time) Venue: Room 4.36, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong
Whether we use surveys or interviews, ethnographies or focus groups – the methods we use as researchers do not arrive with us as some sort of apolitical or ahistorical artefact. They do not collect information about the outside world that is static, fixed and simply waiting to be uncovered. Rather, methods are crafted, tweaked and changed to serve the particular interests of individuals, organisations or ways of thinking.
So what does this mean for projects investigating the lives and experiences of LGBTQ+ communities? Do methods equally convey the experiences of the most marginalised and least marginalised in minority groups? And might the methods we deploy in our research construct ideas about the groups under investigation?
Departing from the idea that we always need to collect more or better data, this interactive workshop applies a queer lens to research methods and poses questions about neutrality, biases, politics and power.
Dr Kevin Guyan is a researcher and writer whose work explores the intersection of data and identity. He is the author of Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic), which examines the collection, analysis and use of gender, sex and sexuality data, particularly as it relates to LGBTQ+ people in the UK. Kevin is a Research Fellow in the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.
Speaker: Kedar A. Kulkarni, Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, FLAME University, Pune, India
Respondent: Rashna Darius Nicholson, Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies, School of English, HKU
Moderator: Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Monday, April 24, 2023 Time: 1:00 pm Hong Kong Time (10:30 am India) Venue: On Zoom
The story of how English literature became central for the civilizing mission is well-known. But vernacular literary cultures? How were they transformed in their colonial settings? In my talk, based on my book, World Literature and the Question of Genre: Poetry, Drama, and Print Culture in Colonial India, 1790-1890 (Bloomsbury 2022), I argue that the concept of “literature” itself underwent a fundamental transformation during the nineteenth century. The outlines of this transformation take us through an intellectual history, book history, through biography and linguistics. They speak to the way colonialism’s transfer of ideas sparked a substantial revolution in literary culture in Marathi as well. Literati such as Vishnushastri Chiplunkar (1850-1882) were nodes enabling the emergence of anthologists, critics, publishers, theatre makers, and translators who refashioned the literary world along global paradigms, some of whose after-effects linger to our present day.
Kedar A. Kulkarni is a literary and performance historian who situates Indian literature and performance within global paradigms, borrowing lenses from colonial and postcolonial studies, comparative literature, and theatre and performance studies. He has written about slavery, gender, and caste, in South Asia, aspects of intellectual history and theory, book history, canonicity, and Marathi theatre and performance. He is an Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at FLAME University, in Pune, India. His first book, World Literature and the Question of Genre in Colonial India: Poetry, Drama, and Print Culture 1790-1890, won the American Comparative Literature Association’s Helen Tartar First Book Subvention Grant, and was published in 2022.
Data has never mattered more. Our lives are increasingly shaped by it and how it is defined, collected and used. But who counts in the collection, analysis and application of data?
Dr Kevin Guyan (University of Glasgow) will discuss key themes from his book Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic) including the relationship between data and visibility, the politics of who and how to count, and how data biases are used to delegitimise the everyday experiences of queer communities.
About the Speaker Dr Kevin Guyan is a researcher and writer whose work explores the intersection of data and identity. He is the author of Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic), which examines the collection, analysis and use of gender, sex and sexuality data, particularly as it relates to LGBTQ people in the UK. Kevin is a Research Fellow in the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.
This event is presented by the Department of Sociology and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures, Department of Comparative Literature, The University of Hong Kong.
Lives of the Deltas, Critical Zones, and Connected Futures
Focusing on transdisciplinarity-in-action, we will explore collaborative learning, contact points for research across disciplines, and innovative examples of institutional programming. How might the transdisciplinary help us enact flourishing and connected futures?
A Panel Discussion with Winnie Yee (Comparative Literature, HKU) Julian Tanner (Director, Common Core, HKU) Rick Dolphijn (Philosophy & Art, Utrecht University) Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (Honorary Professor of Humanities, Comparative Literature, HKU)
Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2023 Time: 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm (Networking & Pizza starts at 6:00 pm) Venue: CPD-3.41, Centennial Campus (The Jockey Club Tower), HKU and on Zoom
Co-sponsors: Common Core, HKU The Humanities Honours Programme, Utrecht University Master of Arts in Literary and Cultural Studies (MALCS), HKU Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC), HKU
Date & Time: April 18, 2023 (Tue) 16:30-18:00pm Language: Putonghua Venue: CPD-2.19, Level 2, Central Podium, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
“They lie quietly in my blood, waiting to die again when I die.”
Images are the boundary of memory, and of life and death, whereas clothing is the boundary of the body, between inside and outside, and between self and others. As the last book compiled by Eileen Chang before her death, An Album of Mutual Reflections exhibits to its readers different kinds of boundaries in life and various possibilities of boundary-crossing.
Huang Ziping is a professor emeritus at Hong Kong Baptist University. His major publications include The Elf of the Pensive Old Tree; Literature of Survivors; Revolution, History, and Fiction; Reading on the Edge, Fear of Writing; Narratives in the Chalked Circle; Historical Fragments and the Journey of Poetry; Text and Its Discontents.
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: Dr. Jamie J. Zhao, Assistant Professor in Media and Cultural Studies, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong
Moderator: Dr. Alvin K. Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Monday, April 17, 2023 Time: 5:00 pm (Hong Kong Time) Venue: On Zoom and Face-to-Face
The 2010s have seen an explosion in popularity of Chinese television featuring same-sex intimacies, LGBTQ-identified celebrities, and explicitly homoerotic storylines even as state regulations on “vulgar” and “immoral” content grow more prominent. Taking “queer” as a verb, an adjective, and a noun, the speaker explores the power of various TV genres and narratives, censorial practices, and fandoms in queer desire-voicing and subject formation within a largely heteropatriarchal society. This talk situates the studies of post-2020 TV China within the sociopolitical contexts and transformations that have contributed to the rise of nonnormative representations on Chinese TV in the twenty-first century. Drawing on a number of recent cases, she highlights the importance of unsettling the dichotomous, categorical logics often employed to understand meanings and official policies associated with today’s Chinese televisual imaginings of gender and sexuality.
Jamie J. Zhao is a global queer media scholar and currently Assistant Professor in Media and Cultural Studies in the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from Chinese University of Hong Kong and another PhD in Film and TV Studies from the University of Warwick. Her research explores East Asian media and public discourses on female gender and sexuality in a globalist age. She is the editor of the forthcoming anthology, Queer TV China (HKUP, 2023) and coedited Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (HKUP, 2017).
Speaker: Professor Allen Chun, Research Fellow Emeritus, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica
Moderator: Dr. Daniel Vukovich, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Thursday, April 6, 2023 Time: 4:30 pm (Hong Kong Time) Venue: On Zoom and Face-to-Face
Beginning as a year-long ethnography of a school in Taiwan in 1991, it provides a concrete point of departure and framework of political-cultural practice for understanding the subtle evolution of a system of socialization that resides at the basis of an ongoing process of national identification. The 1990s is also a crucial juncture for viewing the transition from a sinocentric politicizing regime to a Taiwanizing one. The historical sociology that gave rise to the ethnography of 1991 in the speaker’s opinion offers a different critical perspective on contemporary Taiwan. The overt sinicization of early KMT rule in postwar Taiwan also provides a comparative viewpoint for assessing similar experiences in post-1997 Hong Kong.
Allen Chun is Research Fellow Emeritus in the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. From August 2019, he has been Chair Professor in the Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. His interests involve cultural theory, nation-state formation, transnationalism and identity, and his research has focused mostly on Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. His recent books include Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification (SUNY 2017) and On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification (Berghahn 2019).
Speaker: Professor Sebastian Veg, Centre for Historical Research, EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences), Paris
Moderator: Dr. Alvin K. Wong, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Monday, March 13, 2023 Time: 5:00 pm (Hong Kong Time) Venue: On Zoom and Face-to-Face
The role and place of intellectuals in colonial Hong Kong, while long understudied, has recently come into sharper focus. However, there are still many areas worthy of further and more systematic exploration. One of these is the role played by intellectuals during the Sino-British negotiations on Hong Kong’s future. At a time when many intellectuals advocated “democratic reunification,” how did civil society more broadly engage with a process that was mainly conceived as a diplomatic prerogative? How were issues such as political reform discussed within society as well as in connection with developments in mainland China? What role did intellectuals play in establishing connections across the border?
Sebastian Veg is a professor of intellectual history of modern and contemporary China at EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences), Paris. His latest book is “Minjian: The Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals” (Columbia UP, 2019).
For registrants who select Zoom, we will send you the link prior to the event. For registrants who select Face-to-Face (F2F), we will write to you prior to the event with the venue location. There is a limited quota for F2F and we apologise if we are unable to accommodate all requests.
Date & Time: March 8, 2023 (Wed) 16:30-18:00pm Language: Putonghua Venue: CPD-1.21, Level 1, Central Podium, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Eileen Chang went on to become an active member in the cultural fields of Shanghai and Taiwan. Even after her death in 1995, she still exerted a profound impact on literature today. Since the publication of her early fiction and essays after 1943, she and her subsequent works continued to be imagined by the cultural fields of the two places. An enormous number of reports concerning Eileen Chang appeared in newspapers and magazines, including the author and her writing, her interaction with other intellectuals and scholars, her movies and film promotion, etc. These reports provide a wealth of data that could shed light on the structure of different cultural fields. For example, the reports showed how Eileen Chang and her writing interacted with different members in the cultural fields such as publishers, editors of newspapers and magazines, scholars, readers, etc. This talk discusses how the ‘imagination’ process of Eileen Chang was affected by cultural fields in Shanghai and Taiwan.
Dr. Leung Mo-Ling, Rebecca received her BA, MPhil, and PhD in Chinese from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and obtained Postgraduate Certificate in Education from the University of Hong Kong. She is currently Head of Creative Arts cum Associate Professor of the School of Arts and Social Sciences at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University and the Director of the Tin Ka Ping Centre of Chinese Culture. She has published numerous papers in renowned journals such as Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies and Bulletin of the Department of Chinese Literature National Chengchi University. She also published books titled Chinese Creative Writing and Multimedia in Practice, Imagination and Shaping: The Newspaper Coverage of Eileen Chang in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, Visuality, Gender and Power: The Imaginations in Novels from Liu Na’ou, Mu Shiying to Eileen Chang and The Studies of Chinese Humanities in the Digital Era etc. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of Chinese modern literature, Chinese contemporary literature, cultural & film theory and creative writing. Apart from academic research, she is also enthusiastic about creative writing. She obtained the prestigious “Unitas Award for New Novelists” in Taiwan in 2002. Her new novel A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments 02.21 was published in Taiwan in 2021.
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: Harmony Yuen, MPhil Candidate in Comparative Literature, HKU
Respondent: Dr. Mei Ting Li, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Moderator: Dr. Alvin K. Wong, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Thursday, March 2, 2023 Time: 4:30 pm Hong Kong Time Venue: F2F and On Zoom
Within the discourse of Hong Kong popular culture, queer girlhood has been considered a temporary and transitional phase to outgrow. Queer cinema characterizes same-sex desire as a universal female experience that operates on the temporal logic that lesbian intimacy is “just a phase”. Engaging closely with Jack Halberstam, José Muñoz, and Elizabeth Freeman’s theorization of queer time, this seminar takes a different approach to look at Cantopop as a space for queer expression.
The romantic universe of Joey Yung and Denise Ho’s pair of songs invents an impossible, utopian future that is not fixed within a specific temporal dimension, while Sophy Wong’s discography projects queerness onto the non-human, grotesque bodies of the allegorical lizard and figure of the beast.
Using at17 (Ellen Loo and Eman Lam) as a case, the seminar focuses on the mode of “queer liminality” of the duo: at the threshold of adulthood, they navigate alternative ways of experiencing female friendship, intimacy and growth. Rather than departing completely from the linear and progressive narrative of life, at17 interacts with traditionally heteronormative ideals while while turning sideways to a way of life that does not adhere strictly to reproductive temporality. This in-between space is what I refer to as “queer liminality” projected through the duo’s schoolgirl sonic aesthetic.
Harmony Yuen is a 2nd year MPhil candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong.
