Abstract:
What were Hong Kong crime films like before they became a local, regional, and eventually global success story? How did colonial film censors influence the development of Hong Kong genre cinema, and the crime film in particular? And how can we think through the relationship between crime films and their social context? In this talk, Dr. Kristof Van den Troost will discuss these and other topics covered in his new book, Hong Kong Crime Films: Criminal Realism, Censorship and Society, 1947-1986 (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).

文學院祝賀本院學者並表揚他們傑出的學術成就︰

卓敏文化及宗教研究教授 - 彭麗君教授 (文化及宗教研究系)

2022年度校長模範教學獎 - 邢福增教授 (文化及宗教研究系)

2022年度青年學者研究成就獎 - 墨瞻史教授 (歷史系)

2022年度研究生學術成果獎- 孫逸凡先生 (哲學系)

The different philosophical traditions as well as the different therapeutic concepts agree that they are based on "therapeutic principles" both theoretically and practically. My contribution would like to emphasize this connection, especially as it is usually ignored or at least undervalued in philosophical debates. And this is despite the fact that the two original scenarios - literarily by Sophocles’ "Oedipus" and philosophically by Socrates in Plato's "Art of Dialogue" - still vividly elaborate the basic chords of human existence, even if this is only noted in the double meaning of the Latin "laborare" as "simultaneously" of "to suffer" and "to work".
It is therefore not surprising that conceptual self-explanations and lucid horizons of thought on the one hand, and practical dialogue spaces between therapist and patient on the other, are not as different in terms of path and goal as one might initially assume.
In this sense, "therapies" are supports, promotions, even liberations of the human being with regard to its individual, intersubjective and social deep structures. This is not only obvious in the so-called Western hemisphere; this connection also proves to be fundamental in (East) Asian contexts.
With this in mind, my lecture follows a number of routes in which topoi such as 'I' and 'Self', 'We' and 'Others' or 'Strangers', 'Existence' and 'Meaning', 'Situativity' and 'Deep Structures' in their reciprocal conditional forms and above all with regard to their phenomenologically instructed "constitution processes". References to the decidedly therapeutic concepts of Viktor E. Frankl and Kimura Bin in particular would like to point out, among other things, that these foundations and insights are not only of cross-cultural relevance, but also actively contribute to the opening and shaping of 'intercultural and transcultural constitution processes'.

Online
No registration is required.
Meeting ID: 969 8769 8344
Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/96987698344

Face-to-face
Register by 21 March 2024
Link: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13685376

The human brain is remarkably efficient in language comprehension, capable of actively predicting upcoming semantic content and inferring implied communicative intentions. A fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience of human communication is understanding the neural dynamics that support the formation of these internally generated semantic/pragmatic interpretations. Although we know this process relies on a hierarchy of increasingly abstract representations and involves multiple cortical areas, the way these different system levels interact to achieve efficient comprehension is not fully understood. Our series of studies have shown that both semantic anticipation and intention interpretation consume time or cognitive resources, and are flexibly operated based on their relevance to the current communication task; the intentional level of meaning is not only (at lease in some situations) inferred from the intermediate-level representation generated during understanding but also mutually influences this intermediate representation later on; the coupling of the right TJP with other control, memory, and sensory brain areas plays a critical role in the processes of semantic anticipation and intention comprehension. These results suggest the critical role of active top-down generation processes in language comprehension and elucidate their specific cognitive processes and neural foundations.

I offer a new metaphysical account of what it is for an object to persist through change. On my proposed view, when an object undergoes change, this involves the object’s essentially having a determinable property (e.g., shape), which property is differently determined at different times (e.g., first as straight, then as bent). I argue that this account has advantages over existing accounts of persistence through change (including endurantism and perdurantism), including that it makes sense of how objects can be 'wholly present' at each time they exist, without inviting contradiction.

Joining the Talks Face-to-Face:
Public lecture: Register by 4 April 2024 | Seminar: Register by 18 Apr 2024
https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13684365

Joining the Talks Online (No registration is needed):
Zoom Meeting ID: 957 0183 7605
https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/95701837605

The question of whether AI systems of sufficient complexity are conscious has been much in the news of late, especially as regards large language models such as LaMDA, ChatGPT, and GPT-4. But can we know or justifiably believe that a given AI system is conscious? Here I canvass strategies offered in response to the problem of other minds — the question of how we can warrantedly establish that persons or other animals are conscious — and argue that these strategies won't work for the case of AI, for reasons that appear to be insuperable. I conclude that we are not now, and will likely never be in position to warrantedly establish of any AI system that it is conscious.

Joining the Talks Face-to-Face:
Public lecture: Register by 4 April 2024 | Seminar: Register by 18 Apr 2024
https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13684365

Joining the Talks Online (No registration is needed):
Zoom Meeting ID: 957 0183 7605
https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/95701837605

工作坊邀請了研究院歷史系學部主任卜永堅教授和人類學系的關宜馨教授介紹報讀RPG課程的要點和注意事項。此外，本院博士生Ms. Evelyn Pei(翻譯)和Ms. Miao Zixin(中國研究)也分享了她們的經歷，她們同樣是由本院授課式研究生課程 (TPG)升讀至RPG課程。Evelyn 和Zixin 的分享為正在考慮是否報讀研究式課程的同學提供了寶貴的意見。文學院副院長（教育）Jette Hansen Edwards教授表示，這次的工作坊提供了難得的機會，讓教授與同學真摰對話，別具意義。

工作坊的討論亦十分全面，涵蓋了輪選準則、申請程序、面試策略，以及如何與將來職業發展相結合等。透過這個工作坊，本院希望能夠啟發同學進一步思考自己是否適合修讀研究式課程，並為他們提供建設性的資訊。

中大文學院支持全球學生追求學術和研究抱負，歡迎有意在本院就讀的學生或深造的在職人士瀏覽我們的網頁，獲取更多課程資訊。

This presentation focuses on infertility and utilizes the theory of medical pluralism and its framework to discuss pluralistic medical strategies and their relationships to the local infertile women in Guangxi, China. The social  and cultural environment has created a local fertility culture, in which fertility not only ensures the continuation of the family line but also defines a woman's role and life meaning. Infertility is considered as "different", which leads to women having low self-esteem, having damaged social relationships, and living in a precarious marriage. As a result, pursuing reproductive success becomes the center of the infertile women's lives. In the medical pluralism of the local infertile women, Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) occupy a core position, and Traditional Chinese Medicine and Sacred Treatments are important supplements to ARTs. ARTs repair the body's "obstacles", Traditional  Chinese Medicine regulates the body's balance, and Sacred Treatments relieve psychological anxiety. Indeed, they complement each other, giving infertile women the confidence they need to continue treatment and contributing to reproductive success.

The lecture examines the role of Sudan in Western foreign policy imperatives in the immediate postwar/early Cold War period. Archival research shows that the status of Sudan acted as a poison pill for Egypt and Britain (the co-domini), with both countries using the question of Sudan’s self-determination to harden diplomatic positions that were contradictory, while United States officials, constrained by their limited understanding of the vexatious postwar dimensions of Anglo-Egyptian relations vis-à-vis Sudan, sought to avoid Sudan being used as an obstacle to a negotiated settlement. On the one hand, the British upheld the question of Sudanese self-determination to forestall quitting the region and surrendering its military presence in the Canal Zone as tensions surrounding Arab-Israeli relations escalated. On the other hand, the Egyptian Government, dominated by Wafdi nationalists, held firm that any negotiations over the future of Sudan could only take place after Britain had ended its military presence in the Canal Zone. The lecture argues that the subrosa decision by the British Government in 1951 to disagree with Egypt over Sudan because of its moral implications rather than over Britain’s increasingly controversial presence in Suez doomed efforts at negotiating a new Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of Alliance and this set the stage for an accelerated British evacuation of both Sudan and Suez.

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

The rise of the passport and the history of identity documents has been largely explained as a matter of building the state by policing belonging and monitoring the movements of subjects and citizens. This talk complicates that picture by recovering the role of labour control in the practice of documenting identity in England, from the main early modern legislation of the servant testimonial or pass system in the Statute of Artificers (1563) to the economic crisis of the 1690s. The statute required people to carry documents known as "testimonials" when they finished their agreed term with their masters and sought employment elsewhere. Historians have generally assumed that this system was not put into practice. But new archival evidence presented in this talk suggests instead that masters and servants did use testimonials, at least for exceptional cases. The ephemeral nature of the documents means that their history must be researched from the epiphenomenal traces left behind.

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