Cross-Offering Courses

This course explores the intersections of Cold War ideologies and Sinophone literary, cinematic, and cultural productions. By examining works produced in Chinese-speaking regions and diasporic communities, the course aims to uncover how Cold War narratives shaped, and were shaped by, the socio-political contexts of the Sinophone world. You will critically engage with key texts, fi lms, and cultural artifacts to analyze themes such as identity, resistance, transnationalism, and cultural diplomacy during the Cold War period. This course invites you to think critically about the cultural dimensions of the Cold War and to appreciate the complexities of Sinophone histories and narratives in a global context.

HC7101         Graduate Seminar

This course explores themes in Chinese studies in the areas of Chinese culture, literature, language, history, philosophy and/or arts. The course comprises a series of seminar presentations and discussions on selected topics or topics of special interest to the students. Topics chosen will vary from year to year, depending on student enrollment and the availability of guest speakers. Students who complete this subject will gain familiarity with academic discourse in different subject areas. The course will be conducted in Chinese but English reading materials may be included. Students are required to complete a term paper and in class oral presentation. Written project involves either an analysis or a critical review on reading materials or on particular aspect of student's research interest.

HC7888          Directed Reading

This course explores themes in Chinese studies in the areas of Chinese culture, literature, language, history, philosophy and/or arts. The course comprises a series of seminar presentations and discussions on selected topics or topics of special interest to the students. Topics chosen will vary from year to year, depending on student enrollment and the availability of guest speakers. Students who complete this subject will gain familiarity with academic discourse in different subject areas. The course will be conducted in Chinese but English reading materials may be included. Students are required to complete a term paper and in class oral presentation. Written project involves either an analysis or a critical review on reading materials or on particular aspect of student's research interest.

HH7101        Transnational History: Theories, Methods & Practices

HH7888        Directed Reading in History

HH7113        Advanced Directed Reading in History

This course is designed to provide a student with a more individualized course of reading that goes beyond the existing graduate courses. In this course, students are expected to read widely in their chosen field under the guidance of their supervisor/instructor. HH9016 is intended to provide students with a more advanced reading course than HH7888. Students whose research speaks to multiple audiences within and beyond history may also explore another sub-field or a differing approach to history than they examined in HH7888. The content and requirements of each directed reading course are determined by the student in consultation with his/her supervisor/instructor. The reading list, written work, and meeting times will be negotiated between the supervisor/instructor and the student. The final detailed syllabus will be subject to the approval of the Head of Division, prior to the commencement of the course.​

HL7108         Graduate Seminar in Victorian Literature & Culture

This course provides a thematic, instead of a purely chronological, approach to a number of Victorian literary texts. The comparison of canonical nineteenth-century works and only recently reprinted material, including fiction by long forgotten popular writers, will help us to understand the developments that engendered a plethora of controversies, both at the time and in its wake, engendered a versatility of works, and perhaps above all, created the novel genre as the Victorian era's most popular, critical, and representative form of literary expression. In covering a number of emergent subgenres as different as the sensational detective novel and the domestic family chronicle, the course thereby aims at once to offer a grounding in Victorian literary culture and to inspire research on new directions in recovery work as well as in aesthetic analysis.

HL7114         Graduate Seminar in Cultural Studies

Cultural studies is a broad phenomenon. This historically oriented seminar specifically explores cultural criticism, which examines the relationship of artistic culture to larger socio-political and economic developments. It begins with ‘culture’ during a machine-industrial era, with older notions of literary and artistic creation as realms of high culture that explored ultimate human meaning separate from the supposed debased values of industrial-capitalist society. We proceed to mass culture and the culture industry during this industrial era and the post-Second World War mass society linked to rapid communication and a new mass consumption. We also reflect on how the modernity associated with the colonial West affected the creation of modern culture in East Asia. The module concludes with culture in a post-industrial era, when services and finance capital add more ‘value’ than making things, and capitalism increasingly becomes globalised: capitalism, then, is not only about producing serialised mass products but is a zone of ‘creative’ industries. We also ask: is the burst of an inter-Asian pop culture in the wake of an increasing regional middle class linked to this globalised capitalism? What is the nature of culture and the time we live in now?

HL7201         Graduate Seminar in Creative Writing: Directed Study

The Graduate Seminar in Creative Writing: Directed Study will provide graduate students with an opportunity to engage in independent research related to their proposed dissertation/thesis and to produce an appropriate example of written work arising from this.

HL7888         Directed Study in Literature

HY7011          Directed Reading in Philosophy

This course is designed to provide students with an individualized course of reading that goes beyond the existing graduate courses. Specific contents of the course may vary depending on student needs and instructors. In this course, students are expected to read assigned material thoroughly under the guidance of their supervisor and to develop research projects.

HY7012          Independent Study for Thesis Preparation

This course provides students with an opportunity to engage in independent research related to their proposed thesis. The content and requirements of each Independent Study module are determined by the appointed supervisor and the student, depending on their area of interests. In this course, students are expected to develop a reading list under the guidance of their supervisor, to read widely both primary and secondary material, and to write a thesis outline as preparation for the thesis.

HY7013          Independent Study on Special Topics

This course allows students to engage in in-depth study of a philosophical subject chosen by the teaching faculty member. Assessment of this course include reading reports, face-to-face discussion, and research papers.

HY7021          Directed Reading in Philosophy II

CI7103        Conceptual Foundations Of Information 

What counts as information? Understanding information disciplines as the product of the desire for universal knowledge and the reality of repetitive information explosions will be a key issue in this course. Students will be exploring epistemology and information science, and Bourdieu’s theory of distinction as just some of the various disciplines. At a deeper level, the course will cover how we organize information via technologies of collecting and storing information over time as students delve into the anthropology of classification. Students will be introduced to famous classifiers such as Aristotle, Linnaeus, Otlet, Dewey, in making comparisons to modern technologies of classification. Other topics will include censorship and information privacy through the ages ¬– Who gets access to information and how? – as well as the development of public information facilities – from traditional print newspapers to the creating encylopedic knowledge on the Internet (and no, not just Wikipedia). Finally students will be exploring the concept of information in the 21st century: what are the key issues today?  

CI7104         Network Analysis: Theory & Methods

This course introduces the core concepts of network theory and methods and discusses theoretical and analytic issues associated with network analysis. It consists of three major parts: the theoretical foundations of network analysis, the review of seminal and recent works on social and communication networks, and applications of network theory to real-world problems. The course focuses on (but not limited to) the following topics: homophily and community structure, tie strength and structural holes, diffusion and network effects, small-world phenomena, random graph model, large-scale empirical networks, and computational approaches to network analysis. Students will learn and use programming languages for data collection and analysis. All the programming skills necessary for the course will be taught in a step-by-step manner. Prior knowledge of linear algebra and calculus will be helpful, but is not required.