World History Seminar (2021-22) Lecture 2: Geography is Destiny: Britain’s Place in the World, a 10,000-year History
Ever since rising sea levels created the British Isles more than 8,000 years ago, geography has played the greatest part in determining their place in the world. However, the meaning of Britain’s geography has itself been determined largely by two other forces: technology (especially the branches involved in maritime travel) and organization (especially the branches affecting the ability to apply technology). The result has been that the British Isles’ place in the world has gone through three very different stages since 6000 BCE. Understanding this long-term history helps explain many of the peculiarities of the British Isles’ recent experience, including Brexit, as well as giving some sense of how the Isles’ position in the world will change across the coming century. Further, the geographical approach I describe also tells us much about the strategic challenges facing other regions of the world, including Hong Kong.
Speaker
Prof. Ian MORRIS
Department of Classics, Stanford University
Conducted online via ZOOM (Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183) https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183
How (Some) Scholars Think about Globalization of (Japanese) Popular Culture
The major purpose of this talk is to critically review some key concepts/ideas widely used to understand the globalization of popular culture especially Japanese popular culture.
The key concepts reviewed here include ‘cultural regionalism’, ‘localization’ by ‘resistance’, ‘creolization’, ‘cultural hybridization’, ‘cultural proximity’, ‘soft power’ and ‘cultural supermarket’. This talk examines how these concepts are used to understand transnational circulation of popular culture. I argue that most of these concepts share one common element: the historical agency of local people is always neglected. Therefore, I propose an approach which emphasizes agency and complexity involved in the spread of (Japanese) popular culture.
Speaker
Prof. Heung Wah WONG (The University of Hong Kong)
Prof. Heung Wah WONG is Associate Professor of Global Creative Industries Program at The University of Hong Kong. He obtained his PhD in Social Anthropology from Oxford University in 1996. His research interest lies in the globalization of Japanese popular culture, anthropology of business, and cultural policies in East Asia.
Enquiry
Misaki Nagaoka (mnagaoka@cuhk.edu.hk)
Revisiting the Elements of Grammar in 2022
This talk will re-examine the status of roots and of formal features in linguistic theory. It will reaffirm the claim that roots as abstract indices — as opposed to them being meaningful ’small words’ — are the one element the Faculty of Language manipulates, with the other one being formal features, to the exclusion of so-called ’semantic features’. Some thoughts on the different evolutionary origins of roots and formal features will be offered.
Speaker
Professor E. Phoevos PANAGIOTIDIS
Phoevos Panagiotidis is Professor of Theoretical Linguistics at the University of Cyprus. He is the author of two monographs: Pronouns, Clitics and empty nouns (Benjamins, 2002) and Categorial Features: a generative theory of word class categories (Cambridge University Press, 2015); he is also the author of two successful Greek-language popular science introductions to Linguistics. He has presented over 190 papers and talks and has published extensively in international journals and in jointly authored volumes. His research interests include lexical categories, adjectives, roots, pronouns, the nominal domain, mixed projections, and the syntax of Greek and Balkan languages.
Fai Chun Writing for the Chinese New Year 2022
The instructor and students from the "ICS Chinese Culture Series: Chinese Calligraphy Workshop" are invited to write Fai Chun for the participants at the event. Participants are encouraged to write Fai Chun too. Join us to celebrate the Year of the Tiger!
Enquiry
3943 7394 / ics-general-office@cuhk.edu.hk
Yau Shing Yue Lecture in Translation - Distance Interpreting
A Yau Shing Yue Lecture in Translation will be held in early February by Prof. Kilian Seeber. The topic is “Distance Interpreting”.
Speaker: Prof. Kilian Seeber
Kilian G. Seeber is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Translationand Interpreting of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, where heis the Director of the Interpreting Department and the ProgramDirector of the MA in Conference Interpreting as well as the Masters ofAdvanced Studies in Interpreter Training. Kilian is PrincipalInvestigator at LaborInt, a laboratory dedicated to cognitive research into multilingualism and interpreting, as well as InTTech, a research laboratory dedicated to re-purposing existing or developing new technologies for interpreter training and practice.His main research interests include cognitive load and integration during multilingual andmultimodal language processing.
Break Out S2 (5): Maxim Amelin(Russia), Liu Wenfei (China) and Xu Manlin (China)
With the Faculty of Arts of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) as one of its sponsors, the Hong Kong Poetry Festival Foundation (HKPFF) has launched Season 2 of Break Out: IPNHK Reading & Dialogue Series in November 2021.
In the latest event of the series, Russia poet Maxim AMELIN, Professor Liu Wenfei and Professor Xu Manlin will engage to explore Russian poetry and share their insights via the internet from their respective locations. The program will be broadcast on 22 January 2022 at 8:00pm via Ifeng, Facebook and YouTube.
Poet and Translator
Maxim AMELIN
Russian Poet
Maxim AMELIN (Russia) is a poet, scholar of poetry, essayist, translator and publisher. He graduated from the Commercial College in Kursk, served in the Soviet Army and studied at the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. He has published four books of poetry and a collection of poems, articles and essays. He has translated Greek and Latin classics (Pindar, Catullus and Carmina Priapea) and contemporary Georgian, Italian and Ukrainian poets. Amelin edited and annotated editions of Russian poets from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, as well as numerous poetry anthologies of Russian and Georgian poetry. He was the initiator and curator of the Anthology of Contemporary Poetry of the Peoples of Russia in 57 languages. Amelin is a member of the Russian PEN-Club and the Guild of Literary Translators. He serves as editor-in-chief of OGI Publishing House.
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Liu Wenfei
Scholar and Translator
Liu Wenfei, writer, translator of Russian literature, professor and doctoral supervisor of Capital Normal University, scholar Yanjing, vice president of Chinese Association for Russia, East Europe & Central Asia Studies, Fulbright fellow at Yale University, laureate of Russian Friendship Order, Top 10 Uutstanding Figures of Chinese-Russian Humanity Cooperation, Academician Likhachev Award, Read Russia Prize, Wenjin Prize of Chinese National Library, October Prize and etc. More than 60 monographs, essay collections and translations, such as Selected Poems of Pushkin, The Letters of 1926 (Rilke, Pasternak, and Tsvetaeva), A History of Russian Culture, Hope Against Hope, On Grief and Reason, A History of Russian Literature, The Organic Composition of Russian Literature, Lectures on Russian Literature.
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Manlin XU
Scholar and Translator
Manlin XU, Doctor of Literature, Professor of Russian Literature, Dean of School of Russian, Sichuan International Studies University, member of the National Administration Committee on Teaching Russian Language, director of the National Association of Russian Literature, Jialing Scholar of Sichuan International Studies University, Winner of prizes such as Teaching of Excellence. Taking Russian literature and translation study as her areas of interest, Manlin XU has so far published a lot, including books such as The Moon of the Silver Age, journal papers such as The Connective Poet between the Classical and the Modern, translations such as Selected Poems by Maxim Amelin.
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What does a PR person do? 有請關公!
A professional talk will be held in mid-February by Ms. Sabrina Lai. The topic is “「有請關公!」 What does a PR person do?”.
Speaker
Miss Sabrina Lai
Miss Lai is currently a Senior Public Relations Officer at an international engineering consulting firm. She focuses on providing public relations services for clients ranging from government departments to developers in the private sector. She is familiar with managing projects' external relations issues, formulating public relations strategies, and handling event management. Before joining the PR industry, Miss Lai gained experience in the local broadcasting news industry, and developed knowledge in public affairs. In the academic aspect, Miss Lai obtained an MA in Translation at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2019.
CCS Career Workshop #3
The Absolute Host
In this presentation I will show the importance of hosting as a key framing device in Chinese ritual life. More specifically, I will present the ways in which the Chinese emperor, because of his status as Son of Heaven, assumed the position of the Absolute Host, commanding the chief host position in all situations of hosting in which he participated. I will present three "scenarios' from the Manchu Qing dynasty: 1) the Grand Sacrifice (大祀), in which the emperor was the chief officiant; 2) the alternating audience system (年班), with which the emperor hosted the lords and other dignitaries of the Qing Inner Asian domains in the first month of the lunar New Year; and 3) an imperially-sponsored commemoration ritual where the Kangxi Emperor bestowed favour upon his favourite minister Xiong Cilü (熊賜履). I will establish the key conceptual difference (and indeed radical contrast) between what I call 'hosting' and what is treated as 'hospitality' in the anthropological literature. It is hoped that this study will contribute to broader discussions in anthropology and Chinese Studies on key framed relationship and interactions between different categories of actors (human, spirits and things) as well as on expressions of power and sovereignty.
Speaker:
Prof. Adam Yuet CHAU
Professor of the Anthropology of China, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge