Keynotes

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Open Access

Re-imagining Encounters: When Eileen Chang “Met” Stella Benson

(2023-05-29) Huang, Nicole

This keynote address presents Hong Kong as a strategic site to re-examine colonial "encounters," to contribute to a collective "re-imagining of a new set of social relationships grounded in decoloniality, anti-racism, justice, and preservation of the earth." Nicole Huang, Professor of Comparative Literature of the University of Hong Kong, speaks as a comparatist who recently left North American academia, relocated to the oldest tertiary institution in a former British colony, and has been working on a project that would require in-depth research into Hong Kong’s colonial past. The key figure in her presentation is the canonical Chinese writer Eileen Chang (1920-1995), who began her literary journey as a college student at HKU in 1939-1941, majoring in English and History.

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Open Access

Divergence / Difference: Divergent or Merely Different?

(Canadian Comparative Literature Association, 2022-06-21) Saussy, Haun

From the discussion of “difference” and “divergence” in both English and French languages, to the historical semantics of “divergence” and “convergence” in the knowledge optics, evolution theory, politics and Comparative Literature, Saussy provides an overview of the subtle differences between “difference” and “divergence.” He suggests that the meaning of divergence is less history than story, less the report on how things actually were than an effect of our mental limitations.