Speaker: Lynda Ng, Lecturer in World Literature, University of Melbourne
Moderator: Daniel Elam, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Time: 11:30am – 2:30pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Faculty Lounge (Room 430), 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=109699
Please join us for an informal lunch seminar with Dr. Lynda Ng (University of Melbourne) as she discusses her recent work on racialising fictions in world literature. Lunch will be provided for all registered participants.
Having witnessed the end-point of eugenics in the violent, state-sanctioned genocide of Nazi Germany, it is impossible to discuss racial categories today without the knowledge that racialization is a dehumanising process that can lead to devastating consequences. Yet in spite of a willingness to acknowledge that race is a social construction, it often continues to be treated in everyday life as a real categorical difference. We will explore the modern dynamic between whiteness and racialization, highlighting a relationship between the studied objectivity of the scientific gaze and the supposed neutrality or non-racialised identity of whiteness. The way in which race functions as a technology of control becomes evident through the analysis of two key novels: “Passing” (1929) by Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen and “The White Girl” (2019) by Australian First Nations author Tony Birch. With their depiction of racial passing, both novels challenge received ideas about race and skin colour, exposing the face as an important site where the sumptuary codes of race play out. We will consider the racial masks that people wear and the relational implications of ancestry on people’s faces.
Dr. Lynda Ng is a Lecturer in World Literature (including Australian literature) at the University of Melbourne. She is the editor of Indigenous Transnationalism: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2018) and her research interests lie in the fields of postcolonialism, neoliberalism and literatures of the Global South. She is currently completing a project on Chinese diasporic writing.
*Please note that this lunchtime seminar will centre around a recent paper by Dr. Lynda Ng. Participants are encouraged to read the article in advance to prepare for the discussion. The reading material will be emailed to you upon successful registration.
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