Chinese University of Hong Kong

This course provides an overview of the development of art in Hong Kong from the colonial days to the early 21st century, including traditional Chinese painting, calligraphy and seal carving, modern ink painting, and various art forms in western media. It examines the uniqueness of Hong Kong’s art in the context of its economic growth, cultural integration of east and west, and freedom in artistic creation, towards an evaluation of the achievements of Hong Kong’s art in the twentieth century.

The course focuses on two major themes, namely media and social development in Mainland China since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. Using key concepts and theories from the political economy of media and developmental communication studies, it introduces students to different periods of media reform and social change from the era of Chairman Mao to the period of "harmonious society". Emphasis is attached to post-1989 media regulatory systems, media industrialization, and their influence on the meeting of such developmental goals as poverty alleviation, democratization, and communication empowerment. The course examines Mainland China's key media sectors including the printing press (newspapers and magazines), film and broadcasting media (radio and TV), and new networked communication tools (Internet and mobile phone) as well as alternative social formations through Internet activism, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and transnational developmental projects. The course identifies and discusses several ongoing debates, and the ensuing actions, held by different stakeholders, including governmental officials, media producers, educators, activists, international agencies, and the general audiences. Wider implications to public policy are identified. The course includes discussions of current affairs related to media and social development in the country. It describes the key characteristics of contemporary Mainland Chinese media and their roles in facilitating or obstructing development towards the ideals of a "new China".

This course introduces the field of natural language processing. This course focuses on introducing what natural language processing is, the main concepts in natural language processing research, and the algorithm design of major natural language processing tasks. The setting of this course includes three parts. The first part is an introduction to the basic tasks and concepts in the field of natural language processing, such as parsers, language modeling, etc. The second part is about the main research methods of natural language processing, such as statistical learning methods and deep learning algorithms. The third part is an introduction to the research directions of natural language processing, such as the development of technologies of large language models.

This is an introductory level course on digital literacy and its applications - P indicates a python focus. The course covers basic information technology skills and spreadsheet usage, basic statistics and data science concepts for working with data from digital sources, and computational thinking techniques for solving problems with data (e.g., automation, textual analysis, data visualization, etc.). The course includes demonstrations on solving real-life problems creatively. Case studies in social media usage are included to illustrate how to interpret data properly and identify false information. The course focuses on hands-on practices using relevant software toolboxes, without covering the inner-working details. The course ENGG1003 DIG LIT THKNG - R is similar in content but comes from R language focus.

This course examines the many roles of the media in the web of modern life. It equips students with basic concepts of the operation, information of the landscape and ecology of media and social media. An experiential learning model is implemented where outings are arranged for students to understand what is news or information content, how news or information content is produced, presented, delivered on different platforms to consumers. Students experience how what happens in the real world is transformed into content which they read or watch in the virtual world. Being informed consumers and content producers, students have the real life experience of having the two roles and in this course they learn how their lives, study, work and their health physically and mentally are affected by the media and social media. Concepts such as news reporting, information gathering, news writing, feature writing, preparing materials in different forms for social media posts as professional journalists and social media account operators are introduced. The course also covers concepts such as media ownership, credibility, and how to construct and deconstruct news products in various forms including text, video, visual and audio as content consumers. 

This course introduces Hong Kong popular music and the basic operations of the music industry. It covers a wide range of practical operation of record companies, including Artist and Repertoire Management, production of music and lyrics, marketing and sales, promotion and distribution. Besides the practical and management aspects, it also covers history and issues of popular music in Hong Kong, music commentary and the board theoretical, legal and social implications of the industry.

This course enhances the knowledge and skills related to business process management and improvement, with an emphasis on the applications of analysis and simulation tools. A simulation package is introduced and used to evaluate business process performance and identify possibility of process improvement. The course helps improve scientific competence to deal with practical problems in process improvement and innovation.

This course provides an outline of developments in children’s literature in England and parts of Europe through the study of some essential, central texts as well as recent books for children. The uses of fantasy and the educational aspects of books for children is discussed, along with notions of childhood and the nature of children. Through close reading of set texts students engage in critical techniques applicable to most literature, for the best texts for children satisfy sensitive adult readers too.

This course gives an overview of the status, features, and use of Hong Kong English (HKE), the variety of English commonly used in Hong Kong. It introduces to the concept of ‘world Englishes’ and examines different theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing the evolution of new varieties of English. The course also examines the relationship between Hong Kong English and Hong Kong culture from cultural, social, historical, and educational perspectives, particularly in relation to and juxtaposition from Cantonese and Putonghua. The second part of the course examines both spoken and written features of HKE, including grammar, discourse particles, vocabulary, and pronunciation, as well as the practices of code-mixing and code-switching. This section of the course also focuses on the social impact of the use of these features in Hong Kong culture. In the third part of the course, language attitudes and ideologies towards ‘standard’ language varieties (for example American and British English) in relation to HKE are explored. The course also examines the relationship between the use of HKE and social identity as well as gender in Hong Kong culture.