Hong Kong

This course examines study abroad/overseas exchanges, aiming to integrate individual and collective insights for transformative learning. The course draws upon three main student experiences: 1) Pre-Departure (students intending to go on exchange or an equivalent experience) 2) Re-Integration (students returning from exchange or an equivalent experience) and 3) On- Going (incoming exchange students to HKU from overseas). It will first examine the concepts of transformation, experience, and learning, and how they can be integrated from interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g., the metaphor of metamorphosis; the morality of human development; the phenomenology of perception and stereotypes). It will then examine the structures and theories of unfamiliar places, rootedness, mobility, cross-cultural encounters, reciprocity, and service learning in the context of students’ unique identities and experiences. It will conclude with reflections on transformation of the “whole person” as an embodied, transnational process.

Buddhism has been repeatedly highlighted as being a “science of mind” rather than a religion. Puzzled by surprising research results (such as the superposition of quantum states or entanglement), physicists with philosophical questions have turned to Buddhism in search of new models of reality finding striking parallels between a “quantum interconnectedness” and Nāgārjuna’s dependent arising and emptiness. Common ground was also discovered through the constant corrective of repeatable experiments (physics) and first person experience of standardized meditation techniques (Buddhism). Physical and Buddhist models of reality thus share the principle of being valid only until refuted through valid cognition. Neuroscientists also struggle with the problem of correlating the “third-person” data of an experiment to the respective “first-person” experiences, and have also taken an interest in Buddhism. A significant result of the dialogue between Buddhists and neuroscientists are popular applications such as “Healthy Minds,” which largely make use of experiments conducted on meditation practitioners in laboratories. What has eventually been labelled “the Mindful Revolution,” brings meditation beyond traditional Buddhist contexts to benefit people from all walks of life.

This course examines the nature of mathematical concepts and thinking. Students will reflect on their experience as a learner in the process of sense making, reasoning and co-constructing knowledge in mathematics. By examining origins and development of mathematical ideas in historical-cultural context and individual minds, students will understand means and issues in supporting mathematics learning

This course examines the theory and techniques of optimization. It covers unconstrained and constrained optimization; necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for optimality, convexity, duality; and algorithms and numerical examples. 

This course provides an overview of the developments of art in China from the 19th century to the present, relating those developments to the broader changes in Chinese politics and society. It explores art within its political, social, and historical context, searching for the echoes, encounters, and exchanges between artistic trends and politics and society, and investigating the conflicts that underpinned Chinese artistic development and its negotiations with modernity. Topics explored range from artistic identities and the art market to intercultural relations and critical interpretations. The art forms studied range as well, including paintings of various forms and mediums, performance and installation art, graphics, photography, printed illustrations, woodcut prints, and advertisements.