(What is Hong Kong? Ideas That Matter): Sinophone Studies and Hong Kong Studies

Professor Shu-mei Shih (UCLA) has pioneered the field of "Sinophone Studies" as a critical intervention to rethink "China Studies." In this seminar, we will read Professor Shih's article "What is Sinophone Studies?" and discuss its implications for "Global Hong Kong Studies." Professor Chun Chun Ting (Nanyang Technological University) will serve as our commentator to kick off the discussion.

Shu-mei Shih is the inaugural Edward W. Said Professor of Comparative Literature, the President of the American Comparative Literature Association and a Professor of both Asian Languages and Cultures and Asian American Studies at UCLA. 
Among other works, her book, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific (2007), has been attributed as having inaugurated a new field of study called Sinophone Studies. Her latest work in this field is Against Diaspora: Discourses on Sinophone Studies (2017; second printing, 2018). She is currently editing a new anthology of Sinophone studies, tentatively entitled Sinophone Studies: Interdisciplinary Engagements.

Chun Chun Ting is Assistant Professor at the School of Humanities in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She teaches Chinese literature, cinema, and cultural studies. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2015 and is currently working on a manuscript on artistic activism in post-Handover Hong Kong, focusing on the politicization of urban planning and place-making to address the Hong Kong people’s re-imagination and reclaiming of the city through political actions as well as popular and artistic representations.

Cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies and the Pomona College Asian Studies Program

Sponsor(s): Asia Pacific Center, Center for Chinese Studies