BOOK TALK
Speaker: Alvin K Wong, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Respondents:
Lucetta Kam, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Creative Writing, Hong Kong Baptist University
Travis Kong, Professor, Department of Sociology, HKU
Marco Wan, Professor of Law and Director of the Programme in Law and Literary Studies, HKU
Harmony Yuen, Assistant Curator, M+
Jamie Zhao, Assistant Professor in Media and Cultural Studies, School of Creative Media, CityU
Moderator: Daniel Elam, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Tuesday, September 2, 2025
Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
In “Unruly Comparison,” Alvin K. Wong examines queerness in Hong Kong through a transdisciplinary analysis of Sinophone literature, cinema, visual culture, and civil society. Moving beyond Eurocentrism in queer theory and China-centrism in area studies, Wong frames Hong Kong as a model for global comparison by theorizing a method of unruly comparison—acknowledging the incommensurability of cultural texts and queer figures across different temporal and spatial locations. Here, unruly comparison positions Hong Kong as an undefinable time-space that troubles historicist, colonial, and China-centric renderings of the city as merely a site of British colonial legacy, Chinese rule, or global capital. By foregrounding the friction, asymmetry, and perverse juxtapositions of unruly comparison of Hong Kong with the Sinophone world, Wong reframes key debates in queer theory and East Asian studies.
Alvin K. Wong is Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. He is also the Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC). His research spans across the fields of queer theory, Hong Kong literature and cinema, Chinese literary and cultural studies, Sinophone studies, transnational feminism, and the environmental humanities. His book “Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone” was published by Duke University Press in Spring 2025.
A 30% discount code E25AKWNG can be used when ordering “Unruly Comparison” directly from the Duke UP website: https://www.dukeupress.edu/unruly-comparison
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
