Bachelor of Arts (BA) - The University of Hong Kong

92AMER2006. II/III Here's looking at you, kid: America as a foreign country (6 credits)(This course is also offered to non-BA students for inter-Faculty broadening purposes.)This course will explore how America is looked at from the outside. Paralleling the idea of the 'Empirewriting back' in post-colonial studies, this course considers the reactions of 'outsiders' to a globalization,which is often seen as Americanization. We will consider various genres of communication includingfilm, advertisements and music, but the emphasis will be on various genres of writing - prose, poetry,newspaper articles, short stories and novels.Assessment: 100% coursework.AMER2007. II/III Dissertation (12 credits)The dissertation shall be completed and presented for examination by April 30 of the academic year inwhich the course is taken.Assessment: 100% coursework.AMER2008. II/III A special topic in American studies (6 credits)(This course is also offered to non-BA students for inter-Faculty broadening purposes.)Assessment: 100% coursework.AMER2011. II/III A special subject in American studies (12 credits)Assessment: 100% coursework.HIST2032. II/III Case studies in women's history: Hong Kong and the U.S. (6 credits)(Cross-Listing in Department of History and Programme in American Studies)(This course is also offered to second and third year non-BA students for inter-Faculty broadeningpurposes.)This seminar course will foreground themes and issues in women's history/gender history in the 19thand 20th century. By focusing on Hong Kong and the U.S., students will work within a comparativeframework to explore difference and common ground between societies and selected historical periods.Topics include: varieties of women's reform movements, gender and World War II, and gender andeconomic transformation in the late 20th century.(Note: BAII students wishing to take this course may do so with the permission of the Department ofHistory or Programme in American Studies.)Assessment: 100% coursework.AMER2013. II/III Experimentation and liberation?: 20th century arts in America (6credits)(This course is also offered to non-BA students for inter-Faculty broadening purposes.)In this interdisciplinary survey of 20th century U.S. music, art, film, television and popular media,several lecturers will consider popular (mainstream) and experimental forms. Music lectures willdiscuss ragtime, jazz, big band, popular music, blues, rock and the growth of truly 'American' musicalideas and liberatory meanings. Other topics will include the rigidity of academic music, the freedom of'downtown' music, and the rise of minimalism, performance art and postmodern approaches to music.Art History lectures will build on music lectures focusing on the related themes of American abstractexpressionism, the civil rights movement, feminism, and modernism and postmodernism. Film lectureswill compare Hollywood genres and non-Hollywood experimental film. The course concludes with adiscussion of vernacular poetry, rap, and lectures on television, popular culture, the internet, and theAmerican hegemonic presence in a global media market.Assessment: 100% coursework.