PhD (Illinois)
Chairperson and Undergraduate Coordinator
RRST 9.34
vukovich@hku.hk
3917 7934
ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH BIO
Dan Vukovich (胡德) is an internationally recognized, inter-disciplinary scholar who works on issues of post-colonialism, politics, and critical theory in relation to the P.R.C. and the China-West relationship. Trained at the Unit for Criticism at Urbana (PhD in English), his work is grounded in theory and interpretation whilst inspired by the radically contextual, cultural studies work of Hall, Williams, and Said. His motifs are the age-old problems of representation, the politics of discourse (or knowledge), and the dialectics of difference and universality.
After working for awhile as teaching faculty at a technical college, he finished his PhD in English at Urbana and the Unit for Criticism in 2005. He came to Comp Lit in 2006, since then serving various administrative roles and preaching the need to take China as well as cultural critique seriously.
He is the author of three monographs, including the influential China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the PRC (Routledge 2012) and the critically acclaimed Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the P.R.C. (Palgrave 2019). These books have been reviewed over 20 times.
His third monograph, After Autonomy: A Post-Mortem for Hong Kong’s first Handover, 1997–2019 (Palgrave, 2022), critically and uncomfortably examines the politics and global/colonial dynamics of the 2019 movement and of the first handover era. Recent book talks for this include: U Hawaii (Center for Chinese Studies); the London School of Economics; King’s College (Lau China Institute); and HKU with colleagues from the School of Law. Videos available at the usual places.
He has also published two dozen journal articles and book chapters, in e.g. Critical Asian Studies, Third World Quarterly, Javnost: The Public, Cultural Politics, and Cultural Critique. His work is frequently cited across a number of fields in the humanities and social sciences, from China studies and history to politics, communications, and cultural studies.
He occasionally writes or speaks publicly on China and Hong Kong matters, e.g. at https://www.fridayeveryday.com/decolonizing-hong-kong-on-the-eve-of-the-second-handover/
Last but certainly not least, he teaches frequently and with enthusiasm for Comp Lit, offering classes in a range of canonical and heterodox subjects from world literature (Plato to NATO) and postcolonialism, to political theory, the globalization of ideas and discourses, and how to interpret complex texts and problems.