Category: Upcoming Events

蹦蹦戲花旦：張愛玲的「女明星學」

分享嘉賓 Speaker: Ms. LI Qing 李青 (專欄作家)

主持人 Moderator: Prof. Nicole HUANG 黃心村教授 (Department of Comparative Literature, HKU)

日期時間 Date & Time: April 23, 2026 (Thu) 17:00-18:30pm (HKT)
語言 Language: 普通話 Putonghua
地點 Venue: CBA, G/F, Chow Yei Ching Building, Main Campus, HKU
講座模式 Delivery Mode: Face-to-face & Online (via Zoom)
報名 Registration: https://hku.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ddv8GpkQyEH0yZo

摘要 Abstract:
在24歲，張愛玲寫下，「將來的荒原下，斷瓦頹垣裡，只有蹦蹦戲花旦這樣的女人，她能夠夷然地活下去，去任何時代，任何社會裏，到處是她的家」。恰似人生判詞，其後 50 載，她採不同身段、於不同時空「夷然地活下去」。她亦是少數去國後仍將寫作視為畢生志業的女性，早早具備「打造明星 IP」的先鋒意識，與李麗華、林黛等名伶花旦皆有點滴交集，從原鄉到異鄉，離散中，有人「夷然地活下去」，有人沒有。

講座圍繞張愛玲自我經營的「女明星學」，回溯她的粉墨登場與隱入塵煙，並嘗試以之為綫索，鉤沉「花旦們」歷史深處的容顏，也希望藉此度量她與她的時代，似近還遠「孜孜窺視」的距離。

At the age of twenty-four, Eileen Chang wrote what seemed a defining prophecy: “In the wasteland of the future, amid crumbling walls and debris, only a woman like a rustic ‘bengbeng’ opera starlet can survive with poise. She belongs to any age, any society; she is at home wherever she goes.” For the next fifty years, shifting her gesture to fit the changing times, she continued to “survive with poise”. She was a pioneer who possessed an early instinct for “star branding,” her life crossing paths with silver-screen divas like Li Lihua and Lin Dai. In an age of dispersal, some survived with poise; others vanished.

This lecture centers on Chang’s own practice of the “art of the diva”, tracing her grand entrance and her eventual final curtain. Using her as a guiding thread, we seek to unearth the faces of “divas” buried in history, measuring the distance between Eileen Chang and her era: a distance that is “so near, yet so far”—defined by a gaze of perpetual, longing scrutiny.

講者簡介 About the Speaker:
李青  筆名「一把青」，畢業於華東師範大學中文系及香港中文大學性別研究專業。任職財經媒體，業餘專欄評論，文章見諸《新京報書評周刊》、《南方人物周刊》、《文匯報》、《印刻文學生活誌》、香港 01、《香港經濟日報》 等。喜風花雪月與故人故事。

LI Qing  Writing under the pen name “Yi Ba Qing”. Graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at East China Normal University, and later completed a postgraduate programme in Gender Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She works in financial media and writes film criticism and columns as a personal pursuit, with contributions to Beijing News Book Review Weekly, Southern People Weekly, Wen Wei Po, INK Literary Monthly, HK01, Hong Kong Economic Times and other publications. She has a fondness for vintage romance and good old days.

Notice:
1) The seminar will be conducted primarily in face-to-face mode. Those who cannot attend the seminar in-person can apply for online participation (via Zoom) with justification.
2) All those who would like to attend the seminar are required to register online (https://hku.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ddv8GpkQyEH0yZo) on a first-come, first-served basis.
3) A confirmation email will be sent to the registrants’ email addresses and participants have to show the screenshot or print-out version of the email for entry to the seminar venue.
4) Walk-in or latecomers will not be given entry to the seminar venue unless situation allows.

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)

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

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Speaker: Arnika Fuhrmann, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Discussant: Elmo Gonzaga, Associate Professor, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, CUHK

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

Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Faculty Lounge (Room 430), 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
All are welcome. Registration is required.
https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=105970

In the Mood for Texture considers the revival of Chinese pasts and the aesthetics of colonial modernity in contemporary Southeast Asian cultural production, both virtual and material. Examining contemporary Bangkok’s architecture, design, fashion, and nightlife, the book shows how Chinese pasts are redeployed in contemporary film, literature, and hospitality venues to shape present visions of Asia. Attending to the textures of built environments and agentive female subjects, it demonstrates how Southeast Asian imaginations can challenge both domestic and regional narratives of identity and collectivity.

Arnika Fuhrmann is an interdisciplinary scholar of Southeast Asia, working at the intersections of the region’s aesthetic, religious, and political modernities. She is the author of Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema (Duke University Press, 2016), Teardrops of Time:Buddhist Aesthetics in the Poetry of Angkarn Kallayanapong (SUNY Press, 2020), and In the Mood for Texture: The Revival of Bangkok as a Chinese City (Duke University Press, 2026).

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

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Speaker: Winter Jade Werner, Associate Professor of English, Wheaton College

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

Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2026
Time: 4:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Faculty Lounge (Room 430), 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
All are welcome. Registration is required.
https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=105854

How do we see more clearly the non-Western intellectual labor embedded in popular Victorian fiction? This talk proposes “citation chaining” as an archival methodology for that project, tracing how the penanggalan—a Malay vampiric figure—traveled from Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir’s 1819 description in a missionary periodical through colonial print networks to Bram Stoker’s research notes for Dracula, unattributed.

Winter Jade Werner is Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College and Visiting Scholar at Universiti Malaya. She is the author of Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature (Ohio State UP, 2020), and her book in progress traces the entanglements of British missionary print culture and Victorian ideas of “world literature.” Her work is forthcoming or appears in ELH, Victorian Studies, Comparative Literature, and MLQ.

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

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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/

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「你們看了笑，我真高興極了」：張愛玲與喜劇片

分享嘉賓 Speaker: Dr. Miki KAWAMOTO 河本美紀 (華語電影史研究者)

主持人 Moderator: Prof. LIN Pei-yin 林姵吟 教授 (School of Chinese, HKU)

日期時間 Date & Time: POSTPONED TO March 31, 2026 (Tue) 17:00-18:30pm (HKT)
語言 Language: 普通話 Putonghua
地點 Venue: CBA, G/F, Chow Yei Ching Building, Main Campus, HKU
講座模式 Delivery Mode: Face-to-face ONLY (no recording)
報名 Registration: https://hku.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4TULjPFejKD6fgW

摘要 Abstract:
張愛玲的小說以蒼涼為基調，她本人也常給人冷酷、悲觀、孤獨的印象，然而她卻深愛喜劇。從小就迷戀好萊塢電影與卡通，甚至幻想學習動畫製作，將電影視為亂世生活中明亮的慰藉。她為電懋創作了約20部劇本，大多是很輕快的浪漫喜劇，融入好萊塢神經喜劇的元素，這些喜劇片為1950-60年代的香港國語片注入活潑生氣，在華語圈大受歡迎。張愛玲的喜劇劇本刻意避開小說中那種蒼涼感，採用俏皮對白與大團圓結局，充分展現了她內心調皮、樂觀、可愛的一面。她曾在信中對好友宋淇與鄺文美說：「你們看了笑，我真高興極了」，流露出純粹的喜悅。這種出乎意料的一面，不僅來自她個人對電影的熱愛，也挑戰了中國文化中悲劇至上的傳統思維。張愛玲編寫的喜劇片讓我們得以重新認識她多面的魅力。

Eileen Chang’s fiction is often characterized by a tone of bleakness, and she herself frequently gives the impression of being cold, pessimistic, and lonely. Yet she deeply loved comedy. From childhood, she was fascinated by Hollywood feature and animation films, even fantasizing about learning animation production. She regarded the cinematic medium as a luminous solace amidst chaotic era. She wrote about 20 screenplays for MP&GI, mostly romantic comedies, with elements of Hollywood screwball comedy. These works injected lively energy into Hong Kong’s Mandarin films of the 1950s and 1960s, gaining popularity throughout the Chinese-speaking world. Eileen Chang’s comedy scripts deliberately avoided the bleakness found in her fiction, using instead witty dialogues and happy endings that fully revealed the playful, optimistic, and endearing side of her inner self. In a letter to her close friends Stephen and Mae Soong, she wrote: “I’m so glad you laughed at it,” showing pure joy. This unexpected aspect of her work not only comes from her personal passion for cinema, but also challenges the traditional Chinese cultural emphasis on tragedy. The comedies written by Eileen Chang allow us to rediscover her multifaceted charm.

講者簡介 About the Speaker:
河本美紀  日本大阪大學語言文化學博士，現任教於九州大學、福岡大學。主要研究領域為華語文學與華語電影。著有《張愛玲的電影史》（印刻出版社，2025）、《張愛玲的映畫史》（關西學院大學出版會，2023）。學術論文曾收錄於林幸謙主編《張愛玲：傳奇・性別・系譜》、陳子善編《重讀張愛玲》等專書。目前從事香港文學研究，論文包括〈香港中的日本：近年香港文學中的集體記憶〉（刊載於《野草 增刊號 香港文學特集》，2026）。譯有麥樹堅〈千年獸與千年詞〉（收錄於青野繁治監修《擴散的語言：當代華語文學選集》，朋友書店，2025）。

Dr. Miki KAWAMOTO obtained her Ph.D. in Language and Culture, Osaka University, Japan. Currently, she is teaching at Kyushu University and Fukuoka University. Her main research areas include Sinophone literature and film. Her published works include Film History of Eileen Chang (INK, 2025), Film History of Eileen Chang (Japanese edition) (Kwansei Gakuin University Press, 2023). Her academic contributions include papers in Lim Chin Chown (ed.), Eileen Chang: Legend, Gender, Genealogy, and Chen Zishan (ed.), Rereading Eileen Chang, among others. Currently she is engaged with research on Hong Kong literature. Publications in this area include “Japan Inside Hong Kong: Collective Memory in Contemporary Hong Kong Literature” (Yaso, Special Issue: Hong Kong Literature Feature, 2006), and a translation of Mak Shu-kin’s “The 1000 Beasts and the 1000 Words” (in Spreading Words: A Modern Sinophone Literature Anthology, supervised by Shigeharu Aono, Hoyu Shoten, 2025).

Notice:
1) At the request of the speaker, this seminar will be conducted in face-to-face mode only. No recording will be provided after the talk.
2) All those who would like to attend the seminar are required to register online (https://hku.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4TULjPFejKD6fgW) on a first-come, first-served basis.
3) A confirmation email will be sent to the registrants’ email addresses and participants have to show the screenshot or print-out version of the email for entry to the seminar venue.
4) Walk-in or latecomers will not be given entry to the seminar venue unless situation allows.

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)

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

(Speculative Archival Reconstruction of a Latent Film)

Speaker: Pavle Levi, Osgood Hooker Professor of Fine Arts and Chair, Department of Art & Art History, Stanford University

Moderator: Jean Ma, Mr. and Mrs. Hung Hing-Ying Professor in the Arts, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Thursday, April 9, 2026
Time: 4:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
All are welcome. Registration is required.
https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=105447

This presentation, based on recent archival discoveries, will introduce the never-before-seen material pertaining to Dušan Makavejev’s 1990s idea for a film about the war of Yugoslav disintegration. Bringing together visual and written threads pertaining to documentary war-photography, Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries, human-animal relations, techniques of montage, and computer-generated imagery, the talk will aim to reconstruct a peculiar cinematic concept, which encapsulates the late phase of Makavejev’s work and deepens our understanding of socialist Yugoslavia’s break up in unorthodox ways.

Pavle Levi is Osgood Hooker Professor of Fine Arts and chair of the Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University. He is the author of a number of books about film, including: Cinema by Other Means (2012), Jolted Images (2018), Miniatures: On the Politics of Film Form (2021), and Hypnos in Cineland (2022).

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

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Professor Dan Vukovich (胡德)
The New Global Conjuncture After the Rise of China and the Global South: Problems of Method & Interpretation

Professor Li Haimo (李海默)
The Global South from a Burkean Perspective

Speaker: Ani Maitra, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Colgate University

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

Date: Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Time: 4:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Room 1069, 10/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU

This talk examines Priya Sen’s film Yeh Freedom Life (2018) as an experimental ethnography of sexual subalternity in contemporary India. The talk focuses on the film’s grounding of female same-sex desire in postcolonial working-class Delhi, specifically its representation of that desire at a critical distance from the discourse of queer rights and identity politics. Completed the same year that the Indian Supreme Court decriminalized homosexuality emphasizing the individual’s “right to privacy,” Sen’s film captures the complex socioeconomic dynamics shaping the lives of its protagonists and reveals the limits of normative distinctions between the public and the private, straight and queer. The talk argues that it is the film’s “non-liberal” representation of the sexual subaltern–a figure that at once inhabits and subverts North Indian Hindu normativity on the fringes of liberal Anglophone activism–that makes it a timely decolonial feminist and queer intervention.

Ani Maitra is an associate professor of film and media studies at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY. His research and teaching fall at the intersections of postcolonial and diaspora studies, gender and sexuality studies, and global media studies. Maitra is the author of Identity, Mediation, and the Cunning of Capital (Northwestern UP, 2020).

Thinking China and Circulation:
Beyond Borders / In Translation / Across Adaptation

Abstract submission: September 1, 2022
Paper submission: October 3, 2022

Dates of Workshop: October 20-22, 2022 (Thu-Sat)
Venue: Zoom

Circulations are at the core of globalization and speak to all fields, periods, and regions. They can be political, economic, cultural, geographical, social, communal, familial, or personal. They may involve the relocation of objects and images; translation, adaptation, and appropriation of texts; or trajectories of individuals. They may be influenced by diverse forms of media. They may be imposed and experienced by individuals, groups, or institutions. They may take place on an equal footing or reinforce power relationships. They may bring about understanding, transformations, creativities, or else misunderstanding, prejudice, and defiance. Circulations also entail a historical process of images, texts, and ideas changing over time.

This historical moment – global pandemic, changing geopolitics, the threat of economic sanctions, and renewed racism against the Chinese diaspora – is a good time to reflect on real-life and virtual circulations in the context of China.

The Department of Comparative Literature and the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Cultures at the University of Hong Kong invite graduate students working on China and the Sinophone world of the twentieth century to submit paper abstracts on the theme of “CIRCULATION”. We encourage people to interpret the theme in the broadest possible terms. We particularly welcome proposals that discuss circulations in relation to China in/and the world (in any language or across multiple languages). We hope to bring together early-career scholars working across disciplines, including literature, history, philosophy, film and media studies, etc.

Please submit your abstract (up to 250 words) with a working title, and your CV to conf.complit.hku@gmail.com by September 1, 2022. Selected participants will be notified of their acceptance by September 5 and should submit the full paper by October 3. There are no fees to attend the workshop.

The graduate workshop will be held on Zoom October 20-22 HKT. Papers will be circulated in advance among all the participants. Attendees are expected to read the papers of their panel before the workshop and give feedback during the panels. Participants in Hong Kong are welcome for a dinner after the workshop.

Three faculty members will also give advice on each paper during the three-day workshop:

David Der-wei Wang is Edward C. Henderson Professor in Chinese Literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Wang’s specialties are Modern and Contemporary Chinese and Sinophone Literature, Late Qing fiction and drama, and Comparative Literary Theory.

Alvin K. Wong is Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. His research spans across the fields of Hong Kong literature and cinema, Chinese literary and cultural studies, Sinophone studies, queer theory, transnational feminism, and the environmental humanities.

Peng Hsiao-yen is research fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica. Her publications include Dandyism and Transcultural Modernity: The Dandy, the Flâneur, and the Translator in 1930s Shanghai, Tokyo, and Paris (Routledge, 2010).

If you have any queries, please kindly email Junlin Ma (jlma@connect.hku.hk), Ying Xing (yingxing@connect.hku.hk), or J. Daniel Elam (jdelam@hku.hk).

This conference is organized by Junlin Ma, Ying Xing, and J. Daniel Elam under the auspices of the Department of Comparative Literature and the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Cultures at HKU.