The Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong invites abstracts for participation in its fourth annual postgraduate student workshop:
Hong Kong, China, and New Orientalisms
14-16 November 2024
Edward Said’s field-defining 1978 book, Orientalism, revealed how Western European scholarship on ‘the East’ created a homogenous and exotic world that legitimised Western European empires in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although Said focused specifically on orientalist scholarship – now called ‘area studies’, of the ‘Middle East’ and ‘South Asia’ — we may productively extend his insights to East Asia, and most notably, China.
Despite China’s status as a global power in the twenty-first century, orientalist discourses have often undermined its position in international relations. At the same time, China has relied on these same orientalist narratives to assert its autonomy and difference from ‘the West’. The persistent binary of ‘East’ and ‘West’, as well as the hierarchies it produces, has been an obstacle to transnational cooperation in the face of the most pressing global challenges: climate change, war, political instability, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Since the nineteenth century, Hong Kong has been the place where ‘the East’ and ‘the West’ — or more accurately, where the two sides of orientalist discourse – meet. Hong Kong has wrestled with its many hybrid identities, colonial histories, and questions of political belonging. Extending the insights of Said’s Orientalism while remaining attentive to significant cultural, political and historical differences, we seek to critically evaluate new orientalisms of the twenty-first century and their various effects in China and Hong Kong. ‘New orientalisms’ might refer to (but is not limited to):
- Postcolonial orientalism
- Anticolonial and decolonial orientalism
- Urban orientalism
- Epidemic orientalism
- Medical orientalism
- Tech orientalism
- World literary orientalism
- Environmental orientalism
- Political orientalism
- Legal orientalism
- Media orientalism
- Sports orientalismEast Asian/Area Studies orientalism
- Self-orientalism
We invite papers that engage with ‘new orientalisms’ (including new orientalisms not listed here) as well as papers that consider narratives beyond orientalism, critical area studies, and re-evaluations of Orientalism in the context of East Asia.
The HKU Comparative Literature postgraduate workshop offers PhD and advanced MPhil students the chance to receive detailed feedback on their work in progress from their peers and senior faculty. The workshop is small (12-15 students) and the atmosphere is collegial. The three-day workshop is held over Zoom and we aim for geographical diversity.
The senior faculty respondents for the Fall 2024 workshop are:
Dan Vukovich 胡德 is Chairperson of the University of Hong Kong’s Comparative Literature department, and the Director of HKU’s China, Humanities, and Global Studies Research Hub. He is an inter-disciplinary scholar, trained in cultural studies and theory, and he specializes in colonialism/imperialism/politics in relation to the China-West problem.
Jini Kim Watson is Associate Professor in Postcolonial and Transpacific Literatures at the University of Melbourne. Her scholarship and teaching lie at the intersection of the following subfields: postcolonial literature and theory; decolonisation and the global Cold War in Asia; city literatures and the urban humanities; transpacific migration; and Marxism and critical theory.
Marco Wan is Professor of Law and Director of the Programme in Law and Literary Studies at the University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the intersections between law and the humanities, especially law and literature, law and film, and the ways in which perspectives from the humanities shed light on the legal regulation of gender and sexuality.
Please submit your abstract (up to 250 words) with a working title, a short bio, and your CV to conf.complit.hku@gmail.com by September 25, 2024. Selected participants will be notified of their acceptance by October 1 and should submit the full paper by October 30. There are no fees to attend the workshop.
The graduate workshop will be held on Zoom from November 14-16, 5-8 pm HKT. Papers will be circulated in advance among all the participants. Attendees are expected to read the papers of their panel before the workshop and give feedback during the panels.
If you have any queries, please kindly email Lory Wong (u3009336@connect.hku.hk) or J. Daniel Elam (jdelam@hku.hk).
J. Daniel Elam
Department of Comparative Literature
University of Hong Kong
www.jdelam.com