“I Was Always Liminal: An Interview With Xu Xi” by Amba Tyrie

Editor’s note: This interview took place in 2021. Amba Tyrie (Amba): Is your book entitled The Unwalled City related to Kowloon Walled City? Xu Xi: Yes, I borrowed the title from the idea of the Walled City, as I grew up when the Walled City was still around—­­so the idea of ‘unwalling’ was the way…

“Representing AIDS in China” by Serene Ng Yeuk Shu

The HP Series showcases excerpts from excellent Honours Projects by students from the Department of English Language and Literature. [Read all entries here.] Supervisor: Dr Ruth Y. Y. Hung “Not now! No one’s around to take pictures. Next week, we’ll book our best photographer: If every plasma station’s being shut down, a head must roll… This…

Announcement: Benedict Rowlett Awarded ECS Research Grant

We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Benedict Rowlett has been awarded an Early Career Scheme research grant (HKD 273,178) from Hong Kong’s University Grant Council for his important and much-needed research project entitled “A Linguistic Landscape Study of the Gay Games in Hong Kong”. Huge congratulations! Dr. Rowlett shares here on Agora about…

“Writing and Rewriting” by Ivan Delazari

Holding a copy of the book you have written in your own hands is, in a sense, a creepy experience. Creepy in a good way, of course—excuse my oxymoron. You might feel the urge to flip through those pages to check if what’s there is really yours—to recognise those evenly printed lines as the ones…

“Preface to Poetry in Pedagogy: Intersections Across and Between the Disciplines” by Dean A. F. Gui & Jason S. Polley

The image opening this book about “intersections” is an eponymous poem in the shape of a frangipani flower. “Intersections” is one editor’s humble (and humbling) attempt at navigating an online text manipulation generator, which required manually trackpad-drawing the desired mosaic. The poetic montage textually and visually showcases the cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary praxes of poetry, pedagogy,…

Announcement: Professor Sirkant Sarangi @ HKBU

The Department welcomed Professor Sirkant Sarangi (Aalborg University) to Hong Kong Baptist University for Department of English’s Research Postgraduate Seminar Series on “Exploring Professional/Health Communication through Discourse Analysis: Research Topics and Methods” (9-11 January 2020). Sponsored by the University Grants Committee, the HKBU Department of English Language and Literature, and the Master of Arts in…

“On Xi Xi” by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho

Short speech delivered on Thursday 7 March 2019, at the 2019 Newman Festival (7-8 March 2019, University of Oklahoma): First, I must say that I am very honoured to be invited to be one of the jurors of the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature 2019, focusing on poetry. I didn’t need to think twice in…

“I Am A Girl” by Coco Chan

The HP Series showcases excerpts from excellent Honours Projects by students from the Department of English Language and Literature. [Read all entries here.] Supervisor: Dr Jason S Polley I am a girl. I was born a girl. My biological traits tell me I am a girl. So, unless I undergo sex reassignment surgery, my sex…

“A Passage to Genre: Fictional and Non-fictional Genres in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India and The Hill of Devi” by Kit Yeung

The HP Series showcases excerpts from excellent Honours Projects by students from the Department of English Language and Literature. [Read all entries here.] Supervisor: Professor Stuart Christie The following analysis charts specific interactions between fictionality and non-fictionality as they approach the zone where putative fictionality and non-fictionality become coextensive. In this experiment, I will take…

“From the Victorian Vampire to the Contemporary Vampire” by Horace Tam

The HP Series showcases excerpts from excellent Honours Projects by students from the Department of English Language and Literature. [Read all entries here.] Supervisor: Dr Tammy Lai-Ming Ho The Vampire and its Reflections on Victorian Society After the discussions of the vampire figures in three Victorian vampire fictions, including The Vampyre, Carmilla, and most importantly,…

“A Creative Exegesis of Liberality and Marriage in Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” by Zarah Tong

The HP Series showcases excerpts from excellent Honours Projects by students from the Department of English Language and Literature. [Read all entries here.] Supervisor: Professor Stuart Christie An excerpt 63———Before I start, allow me to explain: 64—–I love to share, silent not to remain. 65—–Experience of love, I don’t have much, 66—–The previous I guess…

“Beneath the Umbrellas” by Louis Chung

The HP Series showcases excerpts from excellent Honours Projects by students from the Department of English Language and Literature. [Read all entries here.] Supervisor: Dr Tammy Lai-Ming Ho Beneath the Umbrellas: Cantonese as the Symbol of Hongkong Identity, Freedom and Weapon against Corrupted Language Language is human beings’ most important asset. It is the primary…

“Memory, Misremembering and Nonplace” by Chau Cheuk Man Charmaine

The HP Series showcases excerpts from excellent Honours Projects by students from the Department of English Language and Literature. [Read all entries here.] Supervisor: Dr Tammy Lai-Ming Ho Memory, especially personal memory, serve as a source in the construction of “nonplace” and the re-imagination of history. Memory is derived from personal experience. It contains details…

“Avatar as Self” by Mignon Chiu

The HP Series showcases excerpts from excellent Honours Projects by students from the Department of English Language and Literature. [Read all entries here.] Supervisor: Dr Jason Eng Hun Lee Avatar as Self: the Politics of Jouissance in Natalia Figueroa’s Fran Bow (2015) and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and…

“Cyber-Realism in Practice” by Lam Man Tsun

The HP Series showcases excerpts from excellent Honours Projects by students from the Department of English Language and Literature. [Read all entries here.] Supervisor: Dr Jason S Polley Borders that divide our world have largely been eliminated these days, the result of globalisation. In “The Masses: The Implosion of Social Media”, Jean Baudrillard demonstrates the…

Announcement: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming Appointed Advisor to The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing

Dr Tammy Ho Lai-Ming (何麗明), an Associate Professor at the Department of English, has been appointed an advisor to The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing (利茲大學當代華語文學研究中心). The Centre is based at the University of Leeds and it is run by a managerial committee, assisted by an international Advisory Board. It organises talks, readings, workshops, symposia and…

“Umbrellas and Bottles” by Stuart Christie

Foreword I’m delighted to announce the publication of an important volume from the University of Mississippi Press, Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty Twenty-First-Century Approaches, which includes an essay of mine about teaching Eudora Welty in Hong Kong, with direct and attributed input (discourse, photos, storyboards, and images) from some remarkable young people who helped me…

Announcement: Outstanding ENG and ENGED students 2017-2018

Congratulations to these outstanding ENG and ENGED students! Pictured here with Professor Lian-Hee Wee (ENG), Dr Tammy Ho Lai-Ming (ENG) and Professor Johnny Poon (Acting Dean, Faculty of Arts). The Outstanding Students Presentation was held on Friday 29 September 2017 to recognise Arts Faculty’s high-achieving students with awards in outstanding academic performance, outstanding achievement, outstanding…

“Gender Studies Concentration” @ HKBU

  Gender Studies Concentration (GSC) at Hong Kong Baptist University is the first of its kind in Hong Kong. It consists of 21 units co-offered by the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Social Sciences. GSC aims at delivering a unique opportunity for students to add breadth to their major studies, through being exposed…

Announcement: The Seventeenth Workshop on Cantonese

日期: 2017 年 4 月 22 日 (星期六) 地點: 香港浸會大學, 思齊樓, 719 主題: 粵難粵學 Date: April 22, 2017 (Saturday) Venue: David C. Lam Building (DLB) 719, Hong Kong Baptist University Theme: The Teaching and Learning of Cantonese as an Additional Language “The Seventeenth Workshop on Cantonese” will take place on April 22, 2017 (Saturday) at…

“Comics and Graphic Narratives; or, The Art of the Matter” by Jason S Polley

The fourth-year English course “Comics and Graphic Narratives”, a title as ambiguous as, say, “Short Stories and Novels”, and even the more equivocal “Prose Fiction”, is organised into several unstable thematic groupings: underground comics (or comix), revisionist narratives within the mainstream, memoirs & confessionals, new journalism, and auteur comics. The texts most recently selected for…

“A Secret About a Secret About a Secret” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming

Jo Shapcott’s poem “Myself Photographed” begins with an affirmative statement: “So this is me.” This line draws our attention to the subject of the photograph, although it does so with a slightly wry, or perhaps uncertain, tone provided by the word “So.” The next line, “In the field after we got lost,” continues this tone,…

“Mu Dan and Ambiguity” by Candy Wang

Mu Dan’s (1918-1977) poems, while incorporating elements and sentiments of classical Chinese poetry, also exhibit characteristics of Western modernist aesthetics and thoughts. For example, his poetry was influenced by William Empson (1906-1984), and this influence partially ushered Mu Dan’s shift towards Modernism. Perhaps the most significant impact of Empson on Mu Dan’s poetry was the…