University of Hong Kong

This course examines health communication from patient-doctor interactions and inter-professional encounters to media campaigns and patient-patient interactions on social media. Topics include authentic data from a variety of healthcare sites (from primary care encounters to specialist clinics to genetic counseling) to examine some critical issues of health communication such as patient-centeredness and shared decision-making between healthcare professionals and patients; delivery of accurate and accessible healthcare information; and communicating health risk and uncertainty. 

This course examines the dominant socio-cultural framework and literary and critical practices that define postmodernism in the twentieth century. Students will explore the major debates, key ideas and texts that enable an understanding of the postmodern turn and continue to define contemporary literature in the present.

This course examines various arts and themes from a region now called Asia, from the past to the present. Rather than providing a chronological or regional survey, it is designed to introduce students to the similarities and differences among cultures, their histories, and the skills needed to critically analyze visual materials from these regions. The primary focus will be on China, allowing students to utilize external resources such as museums and art galleries in Hong Kong. The course aims to highlight key ideas and themes in Asian art history, including how these concepts are transmitted, adapted, and transformed across different regions. Students will gain insights into fundamental aspects of Asian art, such as Buddhism, the Confucian code of authority, the significance of ink and brush painting, and contemporary art discussions that have global impact. 

This course examines representative novels of twenty-first-century literature in English and in English translation. In what ways have these literary works of the twenty-first century reshaped the novel form in order to respond to the crises that define our present
moment? How is the distribution and circulation of these works influenced by developments in technology and social media? What are the dominant criteria of success for literary works? We will look to answer these crucial questions and many more by focusing on the form and content of several novels published between 2013 and 2023. 

This course examines the ways in which meanings are discursively constructed in the news. It will also critically reflect and debate on issues of power relations and ideologies of the news media: the influence they exert both on our governments and major institutions as well as their ability to shape our ideas, beliefs and behaviors through the news discourse that we immerse ourselves in. Adopting a linguistic/semiotic perspective, this course offers detailed insights into the language of the news by discussing the main characteristics of news discourse and exploring theoretical frameworks to research and analyze the use of text and image in the construction of news and the manifestations of power, control and ideology in the press. 

The course is designed around the principles of reflexive practice for personal leadership development, and includes strategic planning and vision formation, leadership communication and professionalism, mindfulness and compassionate leadership approaches and feedback for through individual and group coaching. 

The Cold War is never dead. It’s not even the Cold War, to paraphrase Faulkner. We are told that we are about to enter Cold War 2.0, or that we might already be living in it. We are often confronted in the media with Cold War parallels: the language of liberty, rivalry and other Cold War neologisms are everywhere on the rise. Not least, Cold War historians themselves are among the most vocal in reminding the public of the contemporary relevance of their expertise. On the face of it, this makes the historical category of analysis we call “the Cold War” a rather flexible one. What is being analogized here? Why can we not see the present day as something new under the sun, and therefore call it something new? And ultimately, what politics is this historical thinking answering to? And of course, the very fact of that plasticity calls into question not just the current usage of the historical term in its second reincarnation, but in its first incarnation as well. What, ultimately, was the Cold War? Can it be both the old traditional era, as well as the new one at the same time? Should it demarcate the whole of the history of the second half of the 20th century? Or should it be used as a rather more discreet term delimited to the bilateral relationship between two nations, as the term was initially used?

This course will concern itself mostly with those analytical questions. In other words, rather than reviewing a history of crises and high political stakes we unquestioningly term the Cold War, the course, while delivering the bare bones of this history, will concern itself with the analytical category itself. Historians are a fractious bunch, but historians of the Cold War have been especially quarrelsome. What were their arguments with one another about? Can we read history politically? How about culturally? Does using the “Cold War” as the encompassing historical category it has become illuminate more than it obscures? And what ultimately was the Cold War?

This course examines the evolving cultural dimensions of the digital domain. It examines moral issues, including privacy, surveillance, and hacking, as well as the political implications of our online lives. It also examines the aesthetic potential of the digital and investigates key concepts such as “virtuality,” “interactivity,” “hypertexts,” “simulation,” “cyborgs,” and “cyber-subcultures.” Media synergy and depictions of cyberculture in the cinema, literature, and other art forms will also be considered. 

This course examines behavioral economics, which incorporates insights from psychology and neuroscience into economic analysis. It covers decision-making under uncertainty, decision-making over time, social preferences, and non-standard beliefs. It will relate theories to empirical evidence and applications, including procrastination, labor supply, finance, and policymaking. 

This course examines sensation and perception, with an emphasis on the psychology of seeing. Specific topics include the following: examination of the functional properties of sensory systems (e.g., auditory system, color vision, vestibular system, touch and kinaesthesia); phenomenology of sensation and perception; psychophysical limits of perceptual systems; goals of sensory coding; structure and evolution of sensory systems; theories of perception.