University of Hong Kong

This course explores moving image works and related media forms through the lens of migration and diaspora. It will look at the role of aesthetics, affect, gender, race, temporality, and intimacy in the stories that historically marginalized makers tell, and the kinds of narrative and formal experimentation they develop to critically revisit notions of home, memory, and community across different geographies. Readings from film and media scholarship, transnational cultural and ethnic studies, queer and gender studies as well as short creative and personal writings will guide our theoretical framework and help us articulate the various ways in which media are deeply imbricated with both the violent and reparative realities of border-crossing.

This course examines water as a resource. It covers the hydrologic cycle and quantification of the water balance, water use and supplies and the human impact upon water including runoff amount and quality.

This course examines representative texts, problems, and concepts central to the study of colonialism and postcolonialism. Topics include: definitions of colonialism, imperialism and the post-colonial condition; orientalism and occidentalism; colonial discourse and sexuality and gender; race; the nation and nationalism as imagined community; identities and mentalities of the colonized and colonizer.  Representative areas might include the mainland and greater China, but will certainly include some texts from and places within South and South East Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas. 

This course examines the emergence of cities from the urban revolution around 5,000 BC to 4,000 BC first in Western Asia, through the key milestones of our urban evolution, to the current era of megacities and megaregions. The issues covered in this course include the birth of cities as a part of urban lifecycles; the projection of power; order and governance; disruption and reconfiguration; humanistic cities; building cities for mass populations; conflict, community, and faith; trends and competitions; unprecedented societal changes and urban growth; contemporary urbanism and our planetary future. We will focus on the development of a particular urbanism with its constituent cities as we expound each of these issues, while seeking to bring comparative case studies to illustrate how these issues have been unravelled in similar and diverse ways in other urbanisms and historical periods.

FinTech (Financial Technology) has revolutionized how traditional financial services can be provided to the general public and prompted financial service providers to re-consider how they should do business across an expansive, and expanding, range of commercial enterprises. This course will trigger students to think about how FinTech can tackle important global issues, both social and financial, and open up new and emerging markets.

This course examines the history of Daoist art from its pre-Daoist origin to its popularization in Late Imperial period. Students will be introduced to the visual and iconographic features of the Daoist pantheon and the rich material culture associated with Daoist rituals. Emphasis is also placed on considering Daoist art’s cultural and political contexts.

This course examines major theories of the aesthetic and aesthetic value. Commonly defined as a philosophy of Art and the way in which we judge and appreciate artistic productions, the discourse of aesthetics raises a set of compelling questions about the fraught relationship between beauty, pleasure, judgment, and value. Students will explore a range of theories on the aesthetic and aesthetic judgment, and think more broadly about the purpose of the literary in broader society. Writers considered may include Plato on Mimesis; Aristotle on Catharsis; Burke on the sublime; Kant on Hedonism; Marx on art and value; as well as more recent debates on aesthetic affects coming out of contemporary queer theory.