Media

HKU weekly notice (from February 2 to February 8, 2013)

01 Feb 2013

 

Public talk "Computer science and journalism: two great tastes that taste great together"
Computer science and journalism are intersecting in surprising ways. Computational journalism combines classic journalistic values of storytelling and public accountability with techniques from computer science, statistics, the social sciences, and the digital humanities. This talk will be a lightning overview of the state of the art in this rapidly developing field, including work being done at the HKU Journalism and Media Studies Centre.

The speaker Jonathan Stray is a computer scientist and a journalist and currently leads the Overview Project at the Associated Press in New York, an open-source system to help journalists sort through huge quantities of unstructured documents. He has contributed articles to Wired, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and China Daily, and teaches computational journalism at Columbia University. He is an alumnus of the Master of Journalism programme at HKU.

Date: February 4, 2013 (Monday)
Time: 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Venue: Digital Media Lab, G/F, Eliot Hall, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, HKU

For enquiries, please contact Mr Leung at 3917 4004.

HKIHSS Departmental Seminar “Knowledge Transfer as Cooperative Conflict: Benjamin Hobson (1816-1873) and the Translation of Western Medicine in Late Qing China”
Speaker: Dr. Chan Man Sing

Benjamin Hobson came to China in 1839, after receiving full training in medicine at University College London, and served for the next twenty years as a medical missionary in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. He returned to England in 1860 on account of ill health. From 1850 to 1859 he published a series of treatises on western medicine in the Chinese language, the first of its kind in Late Qing China, spanning practically the full range of medicine of the time: anatomy, physiology, surgery, obstetrics, paediatrics, general medicine, and materia medica. He was assisted in this tremendous enterprise by his “Chinese teachers”, notably Wong Ping and Guan Xifu, who were more than amanuensis, taking on in fact an active role in reinterpreting and reformulating Hobson’s missionary medicine for a Chinese audience firmly entrenched in the Confucian intellectual tradition. This paper examines the subtle conflicts, both psychological and cultural, between Hobson and his Chinese assistants, and the ultimate asymmetrical compromise in the new hegemonic formation of scientific knowledge, drawing largely from two draft manuscripts of Hobson’s, Xiyi luelun digao《西醫略論底稿》and Fuying xinshuo《婦嬰新說》, recently discovered and now kept in the Australian National Library.

Date: February 6, 2013 (Wednesday)
Time: 4:00 to 5:30pm
Venue: Room 201, May Hall, HKU
Language: English

For further information, please visit: http://www.hkihss.hku.hk/en/home/index.html

For enquiries, please contact Yvonne Chan by email at yvechan@HKUCC-COM.hku.hk

HKUL Book Talk: On "Skeleton Women" and the female spy in China
Theme Book: Skeleton Women
Speaker/Author: Dr Mingmei Yip
Moderator: Ms Evelyn Ng (Co-Convenor of Women's Studies Research Centre, HKU)

Qin musician and novelist Mingmei Yip’s new and fourth novel is Skeleton Women, a Chinese phrase for femmes fatales. The novel tells the story about three women -- Camilla, a nightclub singer who has been forced to become a spy, Shadow a magician who jumps naked off a tall building, and a gender-ambiguous gossip columnist. All must scheme in order to survive the gang wars in lawless 1930s Shanghai.

In this event, Dr Yip will discuss the theme of her novels (with focus on Skeleton Women), how she incorporated Chinese culture into her work, and how she got published by a major New York Publisher. Following the talk, Yip will read excerpts from Skeleton Women and Song of the Silk Road, and sign copies.

Date: February 7, 2013 (Thursday)
Time: 7:15 - 9:00 pm
Venue: 1/F Special Collections, Main Library, HKU
Language: English

Registration: http://lib.hku.hk/friends/reading_club/bt2013_01.html

For information about Dr Mingmei Yip, please visit http://www.mingmeiyip.com

For information about the talk, please visit:
http://lib.hku.hk/friends/reading_club/bt2013_01.html

Foe media enquiries, please contact Marina Yeung by email at
mstyeung@HKUCC-COM.hku.hk

"Good Company: Leung Ping-kwan's Hong Kong" Exhibition
The exhibition commemorates the work of our city's foremost literary voice, Yesi, who sadly passed away on January 5, 2013. The exhibition is inspired by Leung Ping-kwan's collaboration with nine artist friends and communicates their shared vision of Hong Kong. Five of the exhibits have not been shown before.

“Good Company: Leung Ping-kwan's Hong Kong” also offers a bibliographical survey of Leung Ping-kwan's work in three genres - poetry, prose, fiction – from earlier to more recent times. The exhibition, held as part of the Faculty of Arts Centenary and co-organized by The University of Hong Kong Libraries.

Exhibition date: January 30 to March 1, 2013.
Venue: Atrium, G/F, Main Library, HKU

For opening hours of the HKU Main Library, please visit:
http://lib.hku.hk/general/hours/