Historians have often identified "merchants" in the historical record— individuals who made a living through trade, often traveling great distances to distant markets to buy and sell. During the later Middle Ages, the Italian city of Genoa was famous as a city of merchants, as expressed in the Latin proverb Ianuensis ergo mercator: "a Genoese, therefore a merchant". Genoese merchants crossed the Mediterranean and West Asia, often settling overseas for years at a time. The figure of the adventurous, intrepid individual merchant has proven compelling for economic historians, yet a close analysis of notarial documents preserved in the city archives reveals just how widespread investment in commerce was in medieval Genoa. Behind every merchant stood a vast network of investors, business partners, and agents, often revealing surprising social connections between merchants and all elements of society. This talk investigates the diffuse, social nature of overseas commerce in late medieval Genoa, by examining the role in trade played by investors of all social classes, artisans, sailors and legal professionals, to understand just how complex the social ties of merchants really were, and what it truly meant to be a merchant in the medieval Mediterranean.

The biomedical treatments for chronic illness usually feature long-term management plans that entail regular clinical visits, long-term medication, and keeping a healthy lifestyle.

This talk presents an ethnographic account that follows a group of young and middle-aged former migrant workers in China who suffer from chronic kidney disease (CKD). These patients criticize and avoid biomedical treatments, calling CKD as a “rich people’s disease.” Contrary to the common assumption that associates chronic illness with societal affluence, wealth, and modernization, these migrant workers believe that only rich people can benefit from chronic illness treatments in biomedicine. Considering the biomedical treatment plan for CKD unhelpful, they instead turn to alternative therapeutic options such as traditional Chinese medicine and stem cell therapy. This study traces these patients’ social and therapeutic trajectories and embeds their healing experiences into their life histories and lived realities. It offers new insights into how structural marginalization shapes therapeutic choices and healing experiences of chronic illness.

Title: Unruly Speech: Displacement and the Politics of Transgression
Speaker: Saskia Witteborn (School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Date: Friday, 2 February 2024
Time: 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Mode: in-person
Venue: Room 213, Humanities Building, New Asia College, CUHK

A light lunch will be served at 12:45 pm. First come, first served.

Abstract:

Transgressive communication and media practices are a useful starting point for exploring the production of social realities, including spaces in which hierarchies of meanings can be challenged. The talk, which is based on the monograph Unruly Speech: Displacement and the Politics of Transgression (2023), introduces the audience to some of these transgressive practices in the context of displacement and diasporic advocacy. In particular, the talk focuses on the Uyghur diaspora in the United States and in Germany to show how transgressive practices travel and are adapted for diasporic purposes. The discussion highlights how transgression can be traced across time and space to  identify its historical, institutional, and technological moorings as well as emerging spaces for rights discourses on a global scale. Moreover, the discussion illustrates how diasporic transgression constitutes sociopolitical and technological configurations that have to align with a politicized humanism by Western state and nonstate actors to reach diasporic goals. Overall, the longitudinal, multi-sited research in China, the United States, and Germany provides the basis for a conversation about fieldwork in transnational settings and the conditions that enable and control transgressive practices in contexts of displacement.

香港中文大學文學院於近期參加了分別由入學及學生資助處及研究院舉辦的國際生入學資訊日。

學院代表前往越南河內、印尼雅加達和馬來西亞吉隆坡，與有意報讀中大文學院本科課程或研究院課程的當地學生見面及交流，向他們介紹中大的教學環境、文學院的歷史、多元課程與豐富的學術資源等。

我們希望透過這些互動交流活動，讓更多海外學生與我們的老師對話，加深他們對中大及文學院的認識，與及提供更全面、更清晰的資訊。對我們的課程感興趣的同學，請隨時瀏覽我們的網站或透過電郵聯繫我們。

Research Topic and Project Summary
Language learning is critical in today's interconnected world, offering many advantages across professional, personal, and societal spheres. However, learning a new language as an adult presents substantial challenges, with varying learning difficulties and outcomes across learners. Contemporary foreign language training programs often fail to take into account the unique needs and profiles of learners, resulting in suboptimal learning processes and outcomes. With such observation, Professor Feng and his team focus the research on developing “A Predictive Personalization Approach to Enhance Foreign Language Learning and Teaching”. This project aims to 1) develop and refine language prediction models capable of forecasting individual learners’ short- to medium-term classroom-based language performance, and 2) assess the effectiveness of tailored language remediation on students with potential language learning difficulties based on the model predictions. This project has the potential to improve language learning outcomes, understand the driving factors of learning success, influence educational policies, and find practical applications in classrooms.

In sharing his thoughts, Professor Feng expressed his deep gratitude for the support provided by the Research Grants Council (RGC), emphasizing the grant as a testament to the collaborative spirit and multidisciplinary approach of the team involved. He extended his thanks to the Department, Faculty, and University for their unwavering support of young researchers and their commitment to fostering innovative research.

We invite the Faculty community to join us in congratulating Professor Feng and his team for securing this prestigious grant and wishing them success in their groundbreaking research endeavors.

The early modern period was “the global age of pearls” Portraits of rulers, aristocrats and elites in both Europe and Asia show the abundant use of pearls in jewellery and clothing. Sought after for their lustre and their symbolism, pearls were a marine material transformed into the most astonishing works of ornamentation. Yet, pearls were also a natural resource produced by oysters harvested by the millions from the warm tropical waters of the Americas and the Indian Ocean. The case of pearl fishing off the coast of Venezuela in the early sixteenth century by the Spanish, highlights two factors: first, the intense fishing of pearls that led to their depletion, and second, the concomitant exploitation of enslaved divers. The organisation of labour and the tools used in pearl fishing depleted the resource rather than protecting or enhancing it. This paper argues, however, that the so-called ‘curse of the commons’ – the idea that when a number of people have unchecked access to a finite resource, they will tend to overexploit it – is not fate. A second case study – that of the Dutch East India Company’s pearl fishing in the Gulf of Mannar in the seventeenth century – presents a different understanding of pearls as a resource, one that emphasises profitability over time. The paper concludes by arguing that technology can be both a repository of processes and a tool of destruction.

ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183

Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

報名/活動網頁連結:
https://www.history.cuhk.edu.hk/wp-content/uploads/events/2024/20240201_World-History-Seminar_Giorgio-RIELLO.jpg

Xúnzǐ develops a sophisticated metaethics, semantic theory, and epistemology according to which the content of language and thought is determined through socially coordinated, norm-governed activity directed at fulfilling human interests. Xúnzǐ sees this activity as subject to causal constraints imposed by the natural environment, which determine the success or failure of what we do. The result is an intriguing approach to explaining the content of what we say and think that leaves no space for a gap to open up between mind and world. For on Xúnzǐ’s picture, even failed activity engages with the world, and the diachronic nature of causal constraints on our activity ensures repeated, ongoing opportunities to correct cognitive error. In this talk, I sketch the Xúnzian view of how the mind relates to the world and highlight its distinctive features through a comparison with the widely discussed “Naturalized Platonism” of John McDowell. Xúnzǐ’s approach, I suggest, offers fundamental advantages over McDowell’s. An intriguing consequence of a Xúnzian approach is a shift in the focus of epistemology to the role of epistemic virtues such as competence, judiciousness, and conscientiousness.

Online
No registration is required.
Meeting ID: 912 9593 3416
Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/91295933416
 

Face-to-face
Register by 25 January 2024
Link: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13681897

In this interdisciplinary talk, Prof Murphy will discuss the impact of the "pictorial turn" identified by W. J. T Mitchell in the 20th century. It analyses how selected contemporary novels have responded to a proliferation of images in modern society and demonstrates how they incorporate visual encounters in their narratives, exemplifying a deep intermedial integration of word and image. This analysis argues that the porous form of the novel has proven to be an eminently suitable place of cohabitation with the visual arts, demonstrated most vividly in its innovative use of ekphrasis.

Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. University of Chicago
Press, 1994: 3.

2024.01.20 （六）
東方明珠香江情 —— 二戰後的香港往事

2024.02.03（六）
嶺南毓琇出白沙 —— 誰說廣東是南蠻之地

2024.02.17（六）
放浪形骸那些年 —— 蘭亭序内外的魏晉風骨

2024.03.02（六）
蘇東坡 & Friends —— 宋代士人夜繽紛

2024.03.16（六）
沉船方知中土好 —— 大航海時代的中國

2024.04.06（六）
難為官商定分界 —— 晚清盛宣懷的政商互動日記

2024.04.13（六）
刻骨銘心食人族 —— 商與周的人肉產業鏈

2024.05.04（六）
萬歲萬歲萬萬歲 —— 帝皇，煉丹，長生不老
 

講者
禤駿遠先生 (Mr. Ian Huen)
國學愛好者，從事投資多年，美國普林斯頓大學畢業，香港中文大學比較及公共史學文學碩士。著有 The Rising Sons: China's Imperial Succession & The Art of War 及 What Bruce Lee Didn't Know About Kung Fu and Other Revelations About China。新作《你說的是從前──清末與今日中國》於2023年五月由商務印書館（香港）有限公司出版。

講者
吳滔教授 Prof. WU Tao
中山大學歷史學系 (珠海)
Department of History (Zhuhai), Sun Yat-sen University