Hong Kong

This course examines American politics. It covers key aspects of American political system, the formal (executive, judiciary, and legislative) and informal (bureaucracy, media, interest groups, etc.) branches of government, its creation and development into its present form, the way officials at various branches and levels are selected, the contours of American federalism, how domestic policy is done and some of the main issues that animate its domestic political debates.

This course examines the general principles and techniques related to electromechanical product design and development. Topics include: product design and manufacturing process; methods and tools used for designing and developing electromechanical products; tooling design; design for manufacture and assembly; product costing; and value engineering. 

This course introduces ways of thinking about culture and society in an international frame. “Culture” and “society” are familiar yet difficult terms. The main purpose of this class is to arrive at a sense of why each of them represents something important, something that speaks to everyday, real life and not just the dominant accounts of what is going on. It will introduce students to some of the key terms, techniques, and interpretive strategies that enable them to think about culture and society in complex ways. Thinking in this sense means being familiar with a range of concepts, issues, and “isms” and being able to relate them to other texts and problems. But to think is also to read. Thus we will also study the ways of reading in its broadest and narrowest senses – how we make sense of texts and problems and do “readings” of them. To do this we must place texts into their contexts and analyze them rhetorically. This includes the ability to do “practical criticism” or “close reading” – to make advanced sense of the words on the page, or what people actually say and do.

This course examines the fundamental aspects of the history of art criticism from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, with a strong focus on the contextualisation of the different methodological approaches related to the analysis of works of art. By analyzing art criticism as its own distinctive genre, it will focus specifically on the advantages and dangers of close description, as well as the discussion of the broader questions: What is the nature of criticism and critique? Are critics judges, historians, participants or creative agents in their own right? A wide range of figures that characterized art criticism and defined the practice will be discussed, ranging from Denis Diderot to Susan Sontag and, more recently, Hilton Als. Through a selection of significant examples of their work, the course discusses how the functions and audiences of art criticism have changed, and how its writing has not only helped to criticize, but also simultaneously shape the practice of art.

This course examines the dynamic between music and politics from the Haitian and French Revolution until Black Lives Matter, or, alternately, from Beethoven to Beyoncé. Large thematic topics will include the Enlightenment, liberalism, nationalism, fascism, the Cold War and globalization. Musical case studies will include opera, symphonic tone poems, ballet, film scores, folk and pop songs, hip hop and punk, as well as global genres such as Afrobeat and Tropicalia. 

This course examines the history of Christianity in Asia from the early modern period to the present, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries while covering China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and others. Over a broad chronology, this course highlights how Asian Christianities were shaped and reshaped within specific regional contexts and in parallel with changes in Christianity worldwide. Students will explore the interactions between missionaries and indigenous Christians, the various expressions of Christianity, and context-specific constraints such as imperialism, nationalism, and broader interreligious settings. Using both primary and secondary sources, this course illustrates the shape of Asian Christianity from past to present, the thorny nature of religious encounter, and its surprising outcomes in World History.

This course examines the major issues and sectors of the Hong Kong economy. It combines economic analysis, institutional arrangements, policies, and current public concerns. The course begins with a brief review and highlights of Hong Kong’s economic development. It then goes on to the following areas: the monetary system and exchange rate regime, banking and finance, external trade and investment, the fiscal budget, the labor market, income distribution, and regional integration. 

This course examines the techniques and procedures of evaluating environmental consequences arising from human activities, with focus on their application in Hong Kong as prescribed under the Hong Kong Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance, and its Technical Memorandum.