ENGL2075 – The idea of China – HKU School of English

Academics

Undergraduate

Course Offerings and Timetables

ENGL2075 – The idea of China

This course examines China as a cultural “Orient” in world literature, focusing primarily on its representation in Western works. Unlike the Islamic world, China has never fought continually with Europe in wars until the nineteenth century. Nor was it under prolonged colonial rule like India. This relative autonomy, together with its parallel historical development with Europe, turned it into an enduring object of Western fascination and imagination. Through close readings of selected Western literary and intellectual works featuring China, this course explores how various aspects of China, including its natural landscape, philosophy, local traditions, and history, were represented, interpreted, and conceptualised by European writers and intellectuals. In so doing, we will critically rethink Orientalist knowledge production in its historical and contemporary formations, as well as the issue of writing the “Other”.

Topics

By the end of the course, students should be able to

Trace the historical evolution of “the idea of China” in selected Western texts
Approach the history of East-West knowledge and cultural exchanges through a literary and intellectual lens
Deploy the framework of Orientalism and its critiques to interrogate the power asymmetries and ideologies in the European conceptualisation of China
Critically examine the ethics of writing the cultural “Other”
Reflect on the repercussions of historical representations in contemporary cultural understanding

objectives

The goals of this course are three-fold. First, students will be introduced to the fundamentals of sociolinguistics (key terms, major concepts and sociolinguistic methodology), enabling them to understand the perspective and development of the discipline. Second, students will be trained to analyse sociolinguistic studies and engage in critical thinking about the process of scholarly research. Third, students are encouraged to explore the connections between the discipline and their world, and build awareness of power and discrimination issues related to language use globally as well as in the Hong Kong context.