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

122CLIT2037.Gender and sexuality in contemporary Chinese literature and film: I (6 credits)(This course is also offered to second and third year non-BA students for inter-Faculty broadeningpurposes.)This course introduces some representative works in contemporary Chinese literature around the ideasof gender and sexuality. We will examine contemporary Chinese literature against the background ofChina's recent reform and question the political significance of China's gender politics.CLIT2038.Gender and sexuality in contemporary Chinese literature and film: II (6 credits)(This course is also offered to second and third year non-BA students for inter-Faculty broadeningpurposes.)This course is a continuation of CLIT2037. It examines contemporary Chinese film around the idea ofgender and sexuality.CLIT2042.Reading confessing (6 credits)The objective of this course is to examine the relationship between literature and confession byexamining some important works of literature produced in the West and the East. The nature andsignificance of the discourse of confession and how it inflects literary textuality is central to the purposeof this course.CLIT2043.Reading the empire of the senses: Japan in contemporary culture (6 credits)Technologically and economically, Japan is the most advanced country in Asia. At the same time it isone of the most traditional. Japan is at once modern and traditional, forward-looking andbackward-looking, cosmopolitan and parochial, innovative and conservative, creative and derivative,other-directed and inner directed. The aim of the course is to explore the enigma, that is Japan, byfocusing on its cultural productions - literature, cinema, popular culture, advertising, television, comics,rituals, etc. By examining diverse cultural texts we plan to undermine the easy generalizations andubiquitous stereotypes that pass for cultural analysis and acquire a more complex and nuancedunderstanding of the national cultural space of Japan.CLIT2045.Colonialism/postcolonialism I (6 credits)In this course, we will study the very diverse representations Europeans make of non-European peoples,ranging from the idealized 'noble savage' to the barbaric and degenerate other. We will examine theseimages in travel narratives, philosophical treatises, fiction, paintings, photos, and films.CLIT2046.Colonialism/postcolonialism II (6 credits)This course, a continuation of part I, examines problems that arose after political decolonization. Someof the topics we will explore are: relation between modernity and tradition, postcolonial identities,multiculturalism, postcolonial rewriting and the question of return. All these issues will be examinedfrom a comparative perspective. Besides theoretical texts, we will use fiction and films from differentpostcolonial groups.