Research Areas


The HMW Department is unique as it traverses several major areas of intellectual interests, including cultural studies, philosophy, and creative writing practice and pedagogy. The unifying rubric that defines the Department’s research work can be stated as “Critical Humanities and Everyday Life,” which is a terrain of philosophical complexity sourced by both critical theory at large and by practical and grounded experiences in modernity. In this terrain, humanism is de-normativized while everyday life is re-articulated.

Cultural Studies

e.g.

  • - International and Asia-based media and cultural studies;
  • - Cultural politics of race/ethnicity;
  • - Youth popular culture studies in transnational contexts;
  • - Displacement and migration; Trans-Chinese cultural studies;
  • - Asianism;
  • - Affect theory; Ethical food practices; Popular music;
  • - Hong Kong’s Artistic Identity;
  • - Museum studies; China and modernity;
  • - Reframing human rights politics;
  • - Continental philosophy

Media & Film Studies

e.g.

  • - Media industries and production;
  • - Digital media and Chinese societies;
  • - Trans-Chinese film studies;
  • - Creative industries;
  • - Mass communications;
  • - Queer Media Studies

Creative Writing

e.g.

  • - Using popular culture in classroom teaching;
  • - Non-Fiction and Fiction; Essay;
  • - Cross-genre writing;
  • - Poetics;
  • - Poetry writing;
  • - Literary translation;
  • - Creative writing pedagogy;
  • - Chinese creative writing;
  • - Prose writing;
  • - Popular music
 

Philosophy

e.g.

  • - Hermeneutics; 
  • - Drama Aesthetics;
  • - Contemporary poetry
  • - Human rights philosophy and politics;
  • - Marxism;
  • - “Religion” in contemporary continental philosophy;
  • - Biopolitics and life;
  • - Chinese philosophy; 
  • - Japanese philosophy; 
  • - Comparative philosophy
    (Western Philosophy and Confucianism, Western Philosophy and Daoism);
  • - Issues in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art; 
  • - Somaesthetics; 
  • - Philosophy of the Body.

Literary Studies

e.g.

  • - Contemporary women’s literary writing;
  • - Fact and fiction in auto/biographical narratives;
  • - Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature;
  • - Hong Kong Literature;
  • - Twentieth-century American literature;
  • - Early modern and modern Japanese literature and poetics;
  • - Classical Chinese poetry;
  • - East-West comparative studies;
  • - Contemporary literature of Diaspora in English;
  • - Asian American literature

Gender and Sexuality Studies

e.g.

  • - Race, Gender, and Security;
  • - Human Rights;
  • - Gender and sexual politics related to media and visual culture;
  • - Masculinity studies;
  • - Feminist Philosophy; 
  • - Art and Gender; 
  • - LGBT studies; 
  • - Queer Theory