In this talk I will challenge the notion that the mental lexicon is like a dictionary in that it embodies a static collection of knowledge accumulated over the years. Instead, the mental lexicon needs to be adaptable and flexible, incorporating new material swiftly, and adjusting expectations when placed in different circumstances. I will argue that rapid episodic learning, memory consolidation during sleep and combining knowledge across multiple domains all have a role to play in supporting the agile lexicon. In its strongest form, my account proposes that every linguistic interaction a person has is the basis of a new associative memory that can then be consolidated over sleep if it is not first lost through interference. These episodic memories can then influence subsequent linguistic experience, alongside more crystallised linguistic knowledge. I will discuss recent evidence that tests this kind of account.

While sleep remains in many ways deeply mysterious, researchers are now beginning to recognise the importance of sleep for memory and learning. In this talk I will describe research carried out in our lab that has identified a crucial role for sleep in language acquisition, including ways in which both adults' and children's sleep can improve language learning. I will also talk about the mechanisms with which the brain uses sleep to aid learning, and discuss ways in which boosting your sleep might accelerate the learning process.

Drawing from the Analects and other classical texts related to Confucius, this lecture explores the characteristics and significance of what we term “rooted cosmopolitanism” as manifested in Confucius’ thought and practice. This nuanced perspective not only encompasses cosmopolitan ideals of transcending territorial and ethnic boundaries but also maintains a delicate equilibrium between unity and diversity, often overlooked in more radical interpretations of cosmopolitanism. Additionally, a comparative analysis with contemporary perspectives on rooted cosmopolitanism, such as those proposed by Appiah, will be briefly explored. By delving into Confucian rooted cosmopolitanism, this lecture illuminates the connection between Confucianism and global perspectives, highlighting its enduring relevance in contemporary discussions on cosmopolitanism.

Registration:

If you are interested to join, please register at: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13684644 by 17 April 2024 (Wednesday).

文學院院長唐小兵教授致歡迎辭，歡迎當日出席的所有來賓、得獎教師以及同學，特別感謝中大藝術系榮休教授，莫家良教授應邀為本次嘉許典禮的主禮嘉賓。唐教授表彰22位獲獎教師的貢獻並肯定他們的教學成就，他亦祝賀逾400名本科生和研究生在2022-2023學年入選院長榮譽錄。

主禮嘉賓莫家良教授分享了他數十年來的教學經驗，感謝各位老師無私的付出，讓學生得到優秀的教育機會。他同時鼓勵同學珍惜學習機會，養成良好習慣，適應急速轉變的現代社會，保持競爭力。 哲學系鄭宗義教授代表獲獎教師分享，他勉勵各位老師與時並進，利用科技協助教學，拉近與學生的距離，增加學生學習的動機和興趣。

英文系三年級本科生文愛然、音樂系研究院課程畢業生林巧媛分別分享了她們的學習心得。她們孜孜不倦學習，把握與同學、老師以至到海外交流的機會，並感謝大學、學院及學系提供了理想的學習環境，讓她們不但在學術及專業領域有所提升，更得到發揮的空間，成為更好的自己，將來得以繼續貢獻母校及社會。

文學院再次祝賀所有獲獎教師和表現優異的學生，與及感謝各位出席本年度的嘉許典禮，分享得獎者的喜悅，共渡美好時光！

得獎者名錄

Muslim women in India began to compose and publish travel accounts from the early twentieth century. Largely written in Urdu, their travelogues reveal a burst of fascination with the lives and practices of Muslim women from other regions of the world. The advent of this literature coincided with the emergence of new forms of Indian Muslim aspiration that sought to create affective links with their coreligionists abroad. As Muslim philosophers and politicians in India began to see themselves as part of something they were beginning to call the “Muslim world,” India’s women travelers produced their own imaginations of that world, not only by theorizing the nature of pan-regional Islamic links, but also by making them tangible through first-person narrative. And yet, ther aspirational Muslim unity was ultimately fractured by class- and race-based discrimination. This talk considers how Indian Muslim women’s travel writing eagerly sought out sisterhood with Muslim women from across Asia, while simultaneously declining to extend to those women a full membership in their aspirational “Muslim World.”

This talk examines what it means to listen in spaces where multiple ideologies vie for attention. In such pluralistic contexts, it is possible for sonic utterances that appear perfectly well-formed by the standards of one community to sound illegible or outrageous to other ears. One striking example of this sort of rupture is found in the reception of Sinitic opera (戲曲) within Anglophone audiences. As Nancy Rao (2022) documents, English-language media outlets have long employed imagery of the chaotic, the mechanical, or the animal in describing the sounds of Sinitic opera. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sinophone authors draw upon entirely different vocabulary when describing these same sonorities, imagining them to be “清脆 crisp and clean” (Zhou 1996), “甜美圓潤 sweet and mellow,” (Chun 1989) and “明亮 clear and bright” (Sun 2017). What accounts for such stark divergences across perceptions of the same sounds? What prevents listeners from hearing the musicality inscribed in sounds from unfamiliar cultural spaces? And what are the aesthetic, epistemic, and political implications that diverse musicalities present for music scholars? This paper seeks to address these questions via a self-reflexive analysis of the author’s journey in learning to hear the musicality behind Huangmei opera (黃梅戲) and Taiwanese opera (歌仔戲).

Boycotts were vital components of the American Revolution. Few goods receiving more ire then, or more scholarly attention since, than tea. What did these protests mean? Tea protests and boycotts have been linked to socio-political revolution, U.S. independence, and the formation of American national identity. Yet boycotts are notoriously difficult to maintain, and these boycotts were no different: the dirty secret of the tea protests and boycotts of the 1770s is that they all failed, even as the revolution succeeded. Why? Were boycotts ways for ordinary colonists to engage in politics through their consumer choices? Or did colonists say one thing and do another? This lecture will reexamine the tea protests and boycotts from the Boston Tea Party in 1773 through American independence in 1776.

ZOOM Meeting Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

New media afford new forms of human sociality, require new forms of ethnographic investigation, and provide new means of presenting and engaging with ethnography. Articulated through recent ethnographic projects in what may be termed ‘metaverse’ spaces, this paper proposes several potential lessons. These cover methodological and epistemological insights for fieldwork within virtual reality and with communities whose key bonds run through cyberspace. But learning to navigate and understand the roles of these technologies in the field is only part of the challenge, as mastering AR and AI techniques can help to exhibit ethnography beyond the traditional constraints of the monograph or the ethnographic film. Artefacts that may be produced through the ethnography of metaverse can themselves become tools for ethnography, for instance where a hologram or radiance field representation of a space can be used as prompts and allow creative participation both of the ethnographic subject and the consumer of ethnography.

本報告將由河南文物局任偉局長介紹河南省近年來在文化遺產保護和公眾教育方面的最新成果。並將結合河南省的社會與經濟發展情況，討論在文化遺產保護方面創新性的方法與探索經驗。

活動網頁連結: https://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~ant/activities/activities-calendar/

登記表格: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13684197

歡迎有興趣人士參加。

合作單位: 河南省文物局

主辦: 香港中文大學新亞書院

香港中文大學人類學系考古及文化遺產研究中心

This international, interdisciplinary conference aims to uncover emergent frameworks and methods for the interpretation and analysis of literary, filmic, and cultural texts relating to the profound transformation of cities around the world across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Interdisciplinary in focus, our conference invites participants from both the humanities and social sciences working with texts and practices across historical periods and cultural contexts, from a diversity of disciplines and subfields including literature, film and media studies, architecture, geography, urban studies, gender studies, and anthropology. Participants interested in exploring intersections with gender, race, indigeneity; migration and the circulation of things, cultural texts, ideas, people, information; climate, ecology, and the nonhuman; and Asian urban practices and poetics are especially welcome.

Kindly send a proposal with a 400-500-word abstract and a one-page CV to urbanmediations24@gmail.com by 15 May 2024. As the goal is to produce an edited volume, accepted papers are expected to represent new, unpublished work.