(BA) (4-year-programme) - The University of Hong Kong

189AMER2044.Wall Street: Issues in American business (6 credits)This course will draw on selected issues in American business in order to teach us about the essentialcharacteristics of US society, including its character, values, as well as written (e.g. legal) andunwritten codes of behaviour. Every day, decisions are made on Wall Street which affect howbusiness is conducted in America, Asia and everywhere else around the globe. How did one addressbecome so influential in, and such an icon of, American business? This course seeks to examine theWall Street phenomenon, as well as its culture, influence and impact on specific components ofAmerican business. Issues under discussion may involve the nature of American business, its place inthe national life (“the business of America is business,” affirmed President Coolidge), its code ofethics and failures to live by that code. Case studies will be drawn from the famous and infamousexamples of American entrepreneurial spirit as they made headlines up to, and including, the 21stcentury. Furthermore, issues such as the rise of the Internet and the information age will be examinedto explore the reverse—how they shape Wall Street and the way business is conducted in America.Prerequisite: NilAssessment: 100% courseworkAMER2046. Legal fictions: United States citizenship and the right to write in America (6credits)In 1776, the idea of self-evidence grounded the philosophical assertion that “all men are createdequal.” And yet, political, economic and social equality in the democratic republic of the UnitedStates has often proven less of a guarantee and more of a promise. Beginning with Thomas Jefferson’swriting of the “Declaration of Independence,” the recognition of a person as fully human in the UnitedStates has depended on assumptions regarding race, class and gender. The course examines thechanging definition of United States citizenship by putting legal texts (the U.S. Constitution, federaland state laws, Executive Orders, Supreme Court decisions) in dialogue with literary writings and film.In this course we will read stories by people whom federal and or state law barred from fullcitizenship. Through autobiographies, fiction, poetry and speeches, we will examine the culturallegacy of legal terms such as “domestic dependent nation,” “illegal alien” and “unlawful enemycombatant.” The course themes may include: property and democracy, slavery, westward expansionand Indian Removal, immigration (with particular focus on China and Asia), the right of women tovote, and the wartime powers of the Executive Office. Our goal will be to pay careful attention to thelanguage and genres of the American legislative and judicial system, and conversely to contextualizeliterature in relation to the legal history through which the U.S. Constitution has been reinterpretedand amended to broaden its terms of equality. We will read writers who used words to protest againstand revise the historical circumstances in which they had to fight for legal standing. We will alsoconsider how different kinds of writing -- legal, scientific, autobiographical and fictional -- employdifferent rhetorical strategies to reach audiences, affect readers and influence the world.Prerequisite: NilAssessment: 100% courseworkAMER2048.American literature (6 credits)This course considers a selection of essays, novels, poetry and short stories by great American authorsin the twentieth century. The course will offer a survey of excellent literature by interpreting themesthat are important to American culture and that will allow us to compare and contrast styles of writingand patterns of narrative development. The reading list will embrace the rich cultural, ethnic andracial diversity of the twentieth-century literary scene in the United States and the class discussionwill pay careful attention to the social context in which these authors wrote and published their work.The reading list may include a manageable amount of reading chosen from important authors such as