• Why Verse? Aurora Leigh and the Rise of the Verse-Novel

    Room CRT-7.45, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

    Mr. Chan Man Long Johnson - RPg, School of English, The University of Hong Kong Abstract In 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning published her masterpiece Aurora Leigh, her “novel-poem” conceived as early as 1845. This decade-long work remains as one of the few examples of a little-researched literary genre in the Victorian era - the verse-novel. […]

  • Language and The Problem of Women’s Authority

    Room CRT-7.45, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

    Prof. Deborah Cameron - Faculty of English Language & Literature, University of Oxford (https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-deborah-cameron) Abstract The under-representation of women in public discourse and public life—in politics, in the corporate world, in the academy and in many parts of the media—is a significant real-world problem, which has persisted in spite of the removal of formal barriers […]

  • Modernity and Mechanical Reproduction in Gift-Annual Poetry

    Room CRT-7.45, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

    Dr Clara Dawson - The University of Manchester Abstract This paper addresses the absence of gift-annual poetry from critical accounts of the transition from Romantic to Victorian aesthetics. The close analysis of a number of gift-annual poems demonstrates that they are fundamental to our understanding of the literary history of the early-nineteenth century. It argues […]

  • Internationalising Drama

    Room CRT-7.45, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

    Dr Peter Jordan - City University of Hong Kong (https://scholars.cityu.edu.hk/en/persons/peter-edward-rees-jordan(8c512b7d-e06c-441f-a886-528f7d22580f).html) Abstract Live drama performance encompasses many forms not only as an art, but also in diverse applications, such as, public speaking, counselling, psychotherapy, corporate training, professional role play, and education. In this sense it is a highly transferrable skill. This presentation will outline and discuss the speaker’s […]

  • The Minutiae of Otiose Strokes in Medieval Scribal Practice

    Room CRT-7.45, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

    Dr Anya Adair - The University of Hong Kong (https://englishhkuhk.foarts.hku.hk/people/Faculty/84/Dr%20Anya%20Adair) Abstract An otiose stroke in the world of medieval scribal practice is a mark added to a letter that has no linguistic signification – these marks are common in English manuscripts of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, and are reproduced even in early English printed […]

  • Locating the Subject Theatre: Efforts in Southern India during the Colonial Period

    Room CRT-7.45, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

    Professor Balakrishnan Ananthakrishnan - University of Hyderabad (http://snscomm.uohyd.ac.in/theatrearts/Ananthakrishnan.html) Abstract Nationalism and modernity played a crucial role in creating the sense of modern Indian theatre in colonial India. Both, with mutual association, functioned together to locate theatre in Indian context as a subject which require domain knowledge and proficiency in practice different from the ongoing models. […]

  • Listening to Beckett: Sounds and the Event of Literature

    Room CRT-7.45, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

    Dr Bobo Wong - The University of Hong Kong Abstract This paper offers a close reading on Beckett’s Watt with special attention paid to its audio qualities in an attempt to rehearse the reading experience as an aesthetic event. Taking cue from recent view of literature as event, and the call for reinstatement of aesthetic […]

  • The FRANKENREADS: An international celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for Halloween 2018

    Additional Content On October 29, come celebrate Halloween and the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with the School of English and the English Society. The event will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. in CPD-LG.10.  Refreshments included. Come dressed up as your favorite monster – prizes for best costumes. 6 to 6:30 p.m. Frankenreads Read, watch, or listen to excerpts from Frankenstein and its adaptations. […]