This course introduces to students the emerging field of environmental humanities with a particular focus on China. Human activities have been drastically transforming the ecosystem. How do we in the humanities understand the changing nature, live with pollution, and make sense of ecological deterioration? How do technology, capital and state intertwine and contribute to climate changes and environmental crises? How do people in the humanities engage with issues of sustainability and environmental justice in everyday life? This course introduces major concerns in the field of environmental humanities through the lens of China, the “World’s Factory” and the most populated country with the second largest economy, whose environmental challenges have great implications for the rest of the world.

This course introduces music and philosophy as intersecting practices through which human beings give meaning to the world around them. No background in music or philosophy is assumed or required.

This course introduces students to the basics of anthropology and its role within the humanities, and its relevance to modern-day society.

The course will examine the historical evolution of Chinese culture and literature in various forms at different times.  Emphasis will be given to fiction and drama of the Ming-Qing period as well as to the literary works, films and culture of contemporary times.

The course will introduce students to the many-sided splendour of the Chinese cultural tradition through reading classical Chinese texts. 

The course explores the relationships among cultural appreciation, cultural representation, cultural continuity and cultural criticism.

This course is designed to introduce students to this influence of religion in various aspects of our modern life. It will explore a variety of religious themes such as religious myth, symbol and practice, as well as current religious issues in ethics and politics.

 Targeting at students with no prior knowledge of art history, this course introduces students to methodologies and theories currently used by art historians and curators to analyze and interpret works of art. 

This course aims to foster new understandings of the various ways in which language influences and shapes the experiences of life common to all humanity. 

This course aims to develop students’ abilities to “read” artwork. Students will gain a basic understanding that besides aesthetics and forms, artwork represents the culture, philosophy, religion, technology, literature, and history when it was produced and collected.

This course teaches the art and science of historical research. It enhances Innovation and Design by encouraging students to think out of the box, with critical thinking from multiple angles, with high ethical standard, and be innovative and creative.

Major topics examined in this course include museums, heritage, films, public monuments and tourism, etc. Local and global examples are used.

The course introduces students to major social and cultural issues in present-day Japan. It explores the important debates, problems, and challenges that have shaped Japanese society and culture in recent decades. The course encourages students to think critically about issues in Japanese society from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

The course invites students to explore the central components of linguistics. Students will have an overview of the properties of language and the various fields of linguistics, looking at the grammatical aspects of language, which include the studies of sounds and sound system, words and word formation, sentence patterns, and meaning. The psychological and biological foundations of language and applications of linguistics to other fields will also be covered.

This course offers a general and fun introduction to philosophical thinking and problems. Students will gain a basic familiarity with some of the major philosophical fields, figures, and issues from the perspective of a variety of global philosophical traditions.

This course explores music as a fundamental human practice, and introduces the study of music as central to broader humanistic inquiry. By engaging with styles and performance practices from various regions and historical eras, students will develop an understanding of the diverse ways in which music intersects with human experience, culture, and history. To this end, the course employs an issue-based approach. The first several class sessions deal with fundamental questions about music, such as: What is music? How do musical sounds communicate meaning? What are the relationships between musical sounds, contexts, listening habits, and human behavior? How and why do scholars study music? The remainder of the semester is devoted to particular case studies that explore music’s relationship to other realms including politics, religion, identity, and globalization. The class is structured around interactive lectures, demonstrations, discussion, and in-class group activities. No prior musical background or training is required.

An introduction to different theological reflections of the interpretation of Christian belief and practices, and their correlation to other disciplines and everyday life.

This course introduces the common issues in the field of translation, in particular the challenges translators face. Students are led to consider issues such as text styles, cultural contexts and the creativity of the translator as they are introduced to the nature of translation and translating. 

This course introduces the history of sign language research and how the findings gradually transform our understanding of sign language in human cognition, as well as human interaction in different sociolinguistic contexts. Key concepts to be introduced include sign language and gesture, natural sign language versus manually coded spoken language, sign language and spoken language grammars, deafness and sign language, sign language acquisition, unimodal bilingualism and bimodal bilingualism.

How do we decode the Chinese society and culture beyond cannons and official records? What is it like to live as a rural child, a divorced woman, a migrant worker, a non-Han, a disabled, or a blogger in today’s China? This English-taught introductory course moves beyond mainstream accounts by exploring the multiplicity of Chinese livelihoods and their underlying sociocultural meanings in everyday life. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach to offer a survey of Chinese cultures and societies as expressed and experienced at the grassroots level. Students will be guided to engage with both textual and non-textual materials produced by Chinese individuals and groups to appreciate the complexity of social lives and form critical understanding of Chineseness, its associated norms as well as deviations. This Faculty Package course serves as an introduction to Chinese Studies.