(Re-)Configurations of Place, Person and Thing in Hong Kong Cinema and Literature after the Millennium

Responsible for the doctoral project: Helena Wu, M.Phil.
Funded by: URPP Asia and Europe
Project duration: since February 2013
Doctoral committee: Prof. Dr. Andrea Riemenschnitter, Sinology, Institute of East Asian Studies/URPP Asia and Europe; Prof. Dr. Sandro Zanetti, Comparative Literature, Institute of General and Comparative Literature/URPP Asia and Europe
Research Field: Entangled Histories

Abstract

The project contextualizes the study on topographical and biographical texts in Hong Kong cinema and literature after the turn of the millennium with a view to reintroduce the category of thing into its analytical readings of these texts. The project also examines how person, place and thing are fabricated and reincarnated in words and images to produce worlds within and outside texts, and how this aesthetic creation contributes to the incubation of different realities stretching from texts that we consume and produce to our everyday life, and vice versa. The three key areas of investigation are (1) the interplay between notions of writing, making and worlding in the production of (local) worlds, (2) post-colonial reconfigurations of place, person and thing in processes of aesthetic re-materialization, and (3) changing world views and emergent strategies of worlding as created in Hong Kong cinema and literature after the turn of the millennium.