6 Credits | Dr. Danny CHAN
This course aims primarily to examine the transformation of identity in Hong Kong through the analysis of the tropes of crises, home, and “border-crossing” in contemporary Hong Kong literary, filmic and other cultural texts. We shall explore how various crucial moments of transition in Hong Kong history have produced identity crises in the people of Hong Kong. Some of these intriguing moments include the communist takeover in 1949, the 1997 handover, as well as more recently the SARS outbreak, the urban redevelopment debates, and other current issues. We will also explore the possibility of understanding one’s sense of self/selves through the various practices of writing Hong Kong. We will discuss critically the relation between nation and home, self and other, the individual and the collective, memory and forgetting to critique the cultural problems bound up in a space of flows called “Hong Kong.”
Assessment: 100% coursework.