University of Hong Kong

This course is a comprehensive introduction to first-order logic. It begins with sentential logic, covering its syntax and semantics, and covering truth-table and natural deduction methods for evaluating validity for arguments in that language. It then cover the same topics for the more advanced language of first-order predicate calculus.

Men have been historically the focus of study or the ‘default' for criminological inquiry. It has only been in the last several decades that women have gained the attention of criminological scholars. This course examines gender through the experiences and treatment of women in the media, the law, and the criminal justice system. The course explores the construction and treatment of gendered bodies as well as gendered forms of work, institutions and social processes. It also analyzes the gendered dimensions of central criminological processes, such as criminalization, victimization, policing and the criminal justice system.

This seminar course examines the history of American Antistatism stemming from the American Revolution to the present. Examining historical sources and events for American thought. Seminar courses involve more advanced study of special topics in history and a higher level of training in the use of primary documents or historiography.

The course introduces the fundamental concepts of fluid flow, and examples of engineering fluid mechanics. The course helps students to develop a sound understanding of control volume analysis, and its use with mass, momentum, and energy conservation principles. The course prepares students for dimensional analysis for the use of scale models in wind tunnel and hydraulic model testing.

This course is an introduction to the field of linguistics, starting with a brief history of the ideas that lead to current theories of language. It introduces the main areas of inquiry in the field, including language variation and change over time, language and the brain, language acquisition and linguistic diversity. The course examines what have been traditionally regarded as "core" areas in linguistics, i.e. the foundations required for the theory and analysis of human language: these include the study of sound patterns (phonetics and phonology), word and sentence structure (morphology and syntax), and meaning (semantics). These are some of the more fundamental tools that linguists use to analyze language.

This course examines key questions and debates about crime, order and disorder in city landscapes. It focuses on three broad issues: competing meanings and practices of the city (the what and the who questions); the relationship between crime, space and place (the where and the how questions); and the complex mix of informal and formal social controls that influence different types and levels of crime and the urban imagination. Its overall objective is to provide the criminological knowledge and conceptual tools to think critically and comparatively about crime, social order and social harm in an increasingly globalizing and polarizing world.

This course offers an overview of the broad field of leisure and recreation. It introduces the concepts of leisure and explains modern people's need to recreate. Leisure and recreation are understood to be as vital to individual growth and community well being as work. As such, this course examines these issues: nature and scope of leisure and recreation; cross-disciplinary studies of leisure and recreation in relation to geographical, sociological and psychological inquiries on place, time, play, work, family, education, ethnicity, gender and environment; economic significance of leisure and the consumer culture of modern society; and leisure services provision and the associated management issues. Assessment: projects and term paper.

This course places a normative emphasis on how social policy, planning and practice are a force for progressive transformation and sustainable, equitable, gender-aware and socially-just development. The study of long-term structural and macro dimensions is combined with attention to the local and the specific, within Hong Kong and the wider world. Diverse areas of social development practice including planning and intervention, asset building, community action, employment and decent work, microfinance and microenterprise are explored using case study and experiential learning to develop analytical skill and allow practical application of classroom based learning.

This course introduces the literature of Africa by way of its Nobel Prize-winning authors and their work, and examines the major issues surrounding it. It begins by questioning the very meaning of the term “African literature,” before examining some of its most salient features and issues such as its complex relationship with colonialism that made languages of Europe become the literary languages of Africa; the various forms of narration in Africa; colonialism and resistance; the tension between traditionalism and the African novel; as well as the complex relationship between African continental and diasporic literature. It also looks at major contemporary African literary Movements and their historical significance.