Speaker 
Prof. Volker Henning Drecoll
Chair of Church History (Early Church)
Faculty of Protestant Theology
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

Australia is one of the major immigration nations in the world, with close to one-third of the population reported as being from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds. In a multicultural community like Australia, it is not hard to understand the important roles interpreters play in enabling people from CALD communities to access crucial public services. It is also important to understand the role interpreters play and address the unique challenges interpreters face in the community setting compared to business, conference, or political settings. This presentation will provide an overview of opportunities and challenges of community interpreting in Australia, specifically, the role of community interpreters, abiding by the Code of Ethics as set by the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT), as well as managing clients’ inappropriate expectations.

 

Speaker 
Ms Xiaoxing (Amy) Wang
Ms Xiaoxing (Amy) Wang is a NAATI Certified Conference Interpreter (Mandarin/English), and NAATI Certified Interpreter (Mandarin/English). NAATI stands for The National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreter in Australia. Amy started her journey as a community interpreter after obtaining a master’s degree in Interpreting and Translation from the University of Western Sydney in 2011. She has been regularly involved in organising and delivering training for both aspiring and practising interpreters and translators since 2015. Being an active member of Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT), Amy is passionate about elevating the professional image of interpreters and translations as well as educating clients on how to work with interpreters.

In this presentation, I offer to explore some of the ways in which these maps of conquest can be mined for information on the perspective of the would-be destroyed adversaries and the traces they leave behind. The examples on which I will base my analysis are derived from the first experience of major English overseas explorations in mid-16th century, as their venture for a north-east passage to China took them to the Russia of Ivan IV. Journeying down the Volga in their enterprises of diplomacy and trade towards the Caspian Sea and Central Asia, the agents of the English Muscovy Company found themselves in the midst of the Tsar’s empire-building projects at the expense of the Tatar populations forcibly assimilated or displaced out of the newly conquered khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. Reporting as the observing third party from that unstable frontier zone, the English in their textual and visual testimonies record as their main narrative the conquering perspective of the Muscovites methodically razing wooden Tatar towns and mosques to build Russian-style kremlins and churches, while traces of the past are visible at every bend of the river and dutifully noted by them as well.

As archives of both geographical and historical margins of the Muscovite-Tatar interactions, the English agents’ travel narratives and their accompanying maps of the Volga area offer, I will argue, both a fascinating case study of resistance to obliteration, and elements of method for addressing the superimposition of maps and countermaps within a same corpus.
 

Speaker 講者
Prof. Ladan NIAYESH
Department of English and American Studies
Université Paris Cité
Ladan NIAYESH is Professor of early modern English studies at Université Paris Cité and a member of the LARCA research centre (UMR 8225, CNRS). Her research focuses on 16th- and 17th-century travel writing and travel drama, especially to Muscovy and Persia. Some of her past publications include Three Romances of Eastern Conquest (MUP, 2018) and the collective Eastern Resonances (Routledge, 2019). Among various current projects, she coedits a collective volume on Writing Distant Travels and Linguistic Otherness in Early Modern England, to be published by Brepols in 2023.

ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183
Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

There is an existing narrative the rich countries got rich by liberalizing market forces and entrepreneurs. History shows, however, that while this happened at various stages of economic growth, it was not the founding principle of building modern capitalist economies. Indeed, with the rise of China and other Asian economies, we have seen that state industrial strategy has been key in building markets and creating wealth. This is not some new thing. In fact, emulating Holland and France, Louis XIV’s famous finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (in power 1661-1683) believed that the state had to build a market to that commerce could be free. While he is synonymous with state-run economies, my research shows that he was, in fact, the greatest single pioneer of market building in early modern Europe. His plan to build market structures to encourage industrial growth and trade look more like what we have seen in reality, from early American, Germany, and Japan, to late-20th century China, South Korea, and Singapore.

Speaker 
Prof. Jacob SOLL 
Professor of Philosophy, History and Accounting
University of Southern California

Meter is such a key concept in so many of what is culturally familiar to us that we might be guilty of seeing it where it may not be there. Three themes are given in this talk to exemplify such traps. I urge caution and readiness to discard metricality when there is no ostensible reason to assume its presence. The first is with regard to foot structure in Hong Kong English when studying its tonal patterns. Here, I respond to Köhnlein et al’s (2019) call for an analysis that is more parsimonious with the metrical assumptions of other Englishes. An empirical test would probably better serve their purposes. The second theme is on the tedious attempts over the last two decades to demonstrate stress in Chinese languages. These had led to rather weakly-grounded claims of metricality even if they have now come to be widely-accepted. I offer a Hsieh’s (2021) superbly executed research as an instance of how prosodic phonology has given us a framework that may sometimes detrimentally constrain clear thinking. The third theme looks at the non-metricality of guqin music. The guqin is the erstwhile musical instrument of the traditional Chinese literati. Guqin musical notation has been critiqued for lacking timing rhythmic marks, triggering scholars eager to explain the absence. Of them, Tse & Wong (2020) may have made the best case. This takes us full circle to Bernstein’s (1961) observation on how the prosody of a language correlates to its music. Ergo, must we not check ourselves for such an obsession on “meter”?
 

Speaker 
Prof. Lian-Hee Wee
Hong Kong Baptist University

Prof. Lian-Hee Wee is a phonologist and a maker of the gǔqín and xiāo he plays. His research covers tonology in Chinese languages and new varieties of Englishes such as Singapore’s and Hong Kong’s, extending them where possible into creating poetry that represents the sounds of the poet’s community. Among more than 10 (co-)authored/edited volumes, and numerous papers, Wee’s notable publications include Phonological Tone (Cambridge University Press, 2019), some minor editorial collaboration with Cha: an Asian Literary Journal in celebration of Asian Englishes’ voices, and “Hong Kong Food Runes” (World Literature Today, spring 2019). His forthcoming work Complexity in the Phonology of Tone (with Mingxing Li, Cambridge University Press) is expected this year.


References
Bernstein, Leonard (1961) Folk Music in the Concert Hall, Young People’s Concerts original broadcast April 9, 1961. Accessed 22 Aug 2023, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1kyhQHyuGg.
Hsieh, Feng-fan (2021) Lun Hanyu You Cizhongyin [On the existence of word stress in Mandarin Chinese]. Studies in Prosodic Grammar 7.1: 27-58. [謝豐帆 2021 論漢語有詞重音 ⟪韻律語法研究⟫ 7.1: 27-58. ]
Köhnlein, Björn, Carly Dickerson, James Leow and Paloma P Chávez (2019) Lexical tone or foot structure in Hong Kong English? A response to Lian-Hee Wee. Language, vol. 95.3:e394-405.
Tse, Chun-yan and Chung-fung Wong (2020) Metrical structure and freedom in Qin music of the Chinese literati. Analytical Approaches to World Music, vol.8.2:164-194.

Keywords: Meter, Hong Kong English, Chinese, Guqin, Prosody, Linguistics, Music

Since our establishment in 1963, we have served as an epicenter for intellectual growth, creativity and critical thinking. From humble beginnings to now becoming one of the world’s leading institutions for arts and humanities, CUHK Arts has been home to thousands of students who have left their indelible marks around the globe.

The continuous support and commitment from our esteemed professors, dedicated staff, accomplished alumni and brilliant current students has been critical to the Faculty’s every single achievement and milestone over the last sixty years of remarkable journey.

We take pride in being a breeding ground for young minds that are not only academically sound but also socially aware. Our goal remains intact - to foster thinkers who will lead the next generation.

The Faculty is grateful to cherish past accomplishments and ready to gear up for future endeavours. Let us celebrate this extraordinary milestone together!

Current research on Pelagianism has revealed that the term “Pelagians” was coined in 419, after the disappearance (presumably death) of Pelagius. This raises questions regarding Augustine's introduction of the category and its distinction from Manichaeism. One theory suggests that Pelagianism originated from ascetic circles aiming to emphasize free will and attribute their ascetic lifestyle to personal effort. This lecture will explore the contrasting perspectives on human nature between Augustine and Pelagius within the ascetic framework. Additionally, it will shed light on Augustine's paradoxical rejection of fatalism and his development of the concept of predestination in his City of God, providing insights into the Roman Empire and the church in their respective contexts.
 

Speaker 
Prof. Volker Henning Drecoll
Chair of Church History (Early Church)
Faculty of Protestant Theology
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

Organizers: 
Divinity School of Chung Chi College, 
Centre for Christian Studies, 
Centre for Catholic Studies

The Lecture will be conducted in English. 
Zoom link will be provided to participants outside of Hong Kong.

Despite their enormous potential in fostering the well-being of immigrants, diaspora festivals have received little attention in tourism and event scholarship. This study aims to bridge this gap by exploring the well-being experiences of Ethiopian diaspora community members through their participation in four festivals. Using constructivist grounded theory, five domains of eudemonic well-being outcomes applicable to diaspora festivals are identified: identity maintenance, homeland attachment, homeland memories, meaningful participation, and relationship with homeland people. Each domain is found to correlate with various established eudemonic well-being elements, including a sense of purpose, achievement, positive relationships, personal growth, and engagement. The findings of this study contribute to enhancing our understanding of eudemonic well-being, guide future well-being studies in this context, and lay the foundation for further research in event scholarship. Moreover, The practical and policy implications of this study are substantial. The findings can provide valuable insights for event management and development, improve tourism and event marketing strategies in both countries hosting migrants and countries of origin, and enable the effective utilization of migrants' skills and talents in the host nation. In the end, this study can also be beneficial for migrants who are seeking to enhance their well-being.

Speaker

Ermias Kifle Gedecho (School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Dr. Ermias Kifle Gedecho is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He obtained his Doctoral degree from the same university in 2022 and has since been actively involved in research and academia. With over ten years of experience in higher educational institutions in Ethiopia, Dr. Gedecho has held various academic positions, gaining a diverse range of knowledge and skills. His research interests lie in the field of tourism, event, and hospitality management, and he has contributed to the field through publishing papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Until the early 2000s, doctors in Japan routinely kept diagnoses of cancer from their patients. The widespread rationale was that the severity of a cancer diagnosis was too traumatic and patients would simply give up. Over the last two decades, however, legal precedents and practices have changed. Informed consent for cancer diagnoses has become standard in the Japanese medical system. Nevertheless, doctors occasionally withhold information from patients. This talk examines the circumstances and choices that keep patients ignorant of their conditions. Despite legal shifts, I contend, the practice of informed consent in Japan may privilege the views of family. Doctors and family members understand the patient as part of a family rather than an indivisible entity with autonomy.
 

Speaker 
Prof. Aaron Hames (Research Assistant Professor, The University of Hong Kong)

Aaron Hames is a medical anthropologist and a Research Assistant Professor in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. His research examines how the elderly in Japan encounter an ageing society and work through cooperative medical organizations to meet their social and health needs.

In this presentation, I attempt to elucidate the nominal structure in Japanese. Special attention is paid to plural markers (PLs) of this language, which are known to have some intriguing properties, both syntactically and semantically. I will argue that additive and associative readings involve dierent merging sites of PLs within the nominal structure: the additive reading is obtained when PL is merged low in the nominal structure and the associative reading is obtained when PL occurs much higher, merged with the entire nominal phrase. Further, adopting the idea that PLs in Japanese
are modifying plurals (and not head plurals) in the sense of Wiltschko (2008), I will pursue the idea that Japanese PLs are anti-labeling devices (Saito 2016, 2018) and discuss how this hypothesis helps us analyze a wide range of data in which PLs interact with other elements in the nominal domain, especially numeral classiers and nominal pro-forms. Time permitting, I will also compare Japanese PLs and Chinese PLs.
 

Speaker 
Professor Masao Ochi 
Osaka University
Masao Ochi received his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Connecticut and is now a professor at the Graduate School of Humanities, Osaka University, Japan. His research has focused on various aspects of theoretical syntax, including case alternation phenomena, noun phrase structure, and wh-dependencies. His publications include articles in journals such as English Linguistics, Iberia, Journal of East Asian Linguistics, Lingua, Studia inguistica, and Syntax.