Hong Kong Shue Yan University
Department of English Language & Literature
Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies
Course Title:
Hong Kong Cultural Production
Course Code:
ENG 512
Number of Credits:
3
Duration in Weeks:
14
Contact Hours Per Week:
Lecture (2 Hours)
Tutorial (1 Hour)
Pre-requisite(s):
NIL
Prepared by:
Ms. Maria CHAN
Course Description
This course examines Hong Kong cultural production in the areas of theatre, cinema and
literature. Various cultural texts including cinematic and literary texts will be examined to
explore the relationship between Hong Kong cultural production and Hong Kong cultural
identity and analyses the nature and problems of Hong Kong cultural production. This course
also provides an interdisciplinary analysis of globalization on Hong Kong culture. Emphasis
will be placed on the complex nature of the global-local dynamics.
Course Outcomes, Teaching Activities and Assessment
Course Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
Upon completion of this course students should be able to:
identify key features and likely future of Hong Kong cultural production
ILO1
critically evaluate the development of Hong Kong cultural production
ILO2
analyse changes in local cultural industries and their relation with
ILO3
globalization
apply critical concepts in analysing cultural production
ILO4
develop critical and creative thinking and writing through appreciation of
ILO5
cultural production
TLA1
TLA2
TLA3
Teaching and Learning Activities (TLAs)
Introduction of issues related to cultural production and critical concepts
Critical analysis of Hong Kong cultural production
Group discussion
2
TLA4
TLA5
TLA6
AT1
AT2
AT3
AT4
Students’ presentations
Review writing
Essay writing
Assessment Tasks (ATs)
Class participation and discussion
Students have to read the articles / book chapters listed in the course
outline before they come to class and take part in class discussion.
Oral presentation
Students have to go and watch a local production (a film/a play,
different from that in AT3) and analyse it with one of the approaches
introduced in this course.
Reviews
Students have to go and watch a local production (a film/a play
different from that in AT2) and write a review of 1000 words.
Essay
Students have to critically examine one Hong Kong cultural
production in an essay of 5000 words. The essay may develop on the
ideas presented in AT2, together comments received from the
classmates and teacher after the oral presentation.
TOTAL
20%
20%
20%
40%
100%
Alignment of Course Intended Learning Outcomes, Teaching and Learning Activities
and Assessment Tasks
Course Intended
Teaching and Learning
Assessment Tasks
Learning Outcomes
Activities
ILO1
TLA1,2,3
AT1,2
ILO2
TLA1,2,3,4
AT1,2
ILO3
TLA1,2,3,4
AT1,2
ILO4
TLA3,4,5,6
AT3,4
ILO5
TLA3,4,5,6
AT3,4
3
Course Outline
Week 1 Introduction to issues in cultural production:
What is cultural production? What are the factors affecting cultural industries? How
can the global-local dynamics drive Hong Kong into the future?
Readings
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1999). “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction.”
Modernity: Critical Concepts. Ed. Malcolm Waters. London: Routledge. pp. 351-68.
Erni, John Nguyet. (2001) “Like a Postcolonial Culture: Hong Kong Re-imagined.”
Cultural Studies, 15 (3/4): 389-418.
Horkheimer, Max & Adorno, T. W. (1999). “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as
Mass Deception.” Modernity: Critical Concepts. Ed. Malcolm Waters. London:
Routledge. pp. 292-313.
Lovell, Terry. (1994). “Cultural Production.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A
Reader. Ed. John Storey. New York: Pearson Longman. pp. 539-44.
Week 2 Kung Fu films: nationalism, localism and transnationalism
Films:
Bruce Lee, The Way of the Dragon, 1972 & Jackie Chan, Police Story, 1985 &1988
Readings
Desser, David. (2005). “Making Movies Male: Zhang Che & the Shaw Brothers
Martial Arts Movies, 1965-75.” Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema. Eds. Pang, Lai
Kwan & Wong, Day. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. pp. 17-34.
Wong, Day. (2005). “Women’s Reception of Mainstream Hong Kong Cinema.”
Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema. Eds. Pang, Lai Kwan & Wong, Day. Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press. pp. 239-60.
Week 3 Hero films: pre-Hollywood vs Hollywood films
Films:
John Woo, A Better Tomorrow, 1986 & Face/Off, 1997
Readings
Choi, Wai Kit. (2005). “Post-Fordian Production and the Re-appropriation of Hong
4
Kong Masculinity in Hollywood.” Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema. Eds. Pang,
Lai Kwan & Wong, Day. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. pp. 199-221.
Week 4 The Colonial Experience
Film:
Wayne Wong, Chinese Box, 1997
Readings:
Alter, Iska. (2002) “Chinese Box Gender Hong Kong.” New Asia Academic Bulletin.
18: 101-9.
Cheung, Esther. (2002). “Reading the Hong Kong Trauma in Wayne Wong’s Chinese
Box.” New Asia Academic Bulletin. 18: 85-99.
Luk, Thomas. (2002) “Hong Kong as City/Imaginary in The World of Suzie Wong,
Love is a Many Splendored Things and Chinese Box.” New Asia Academic Bulletin.
18: 73-82.
Week 5 Future of Hong Kong films
Readings:
Emilie Yeh. (2010). “The Deferral of Pan-Asian: Critical Appraisal of Film
Marketization in China,” Reorienting Global Communication. Eds. Curtin, Michael &
Shah, Hemant. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 183-200.
Week 6 Play: The French Kiss
Readings
Li, Santayana. (2012). Journey to Home. Trans. Gigi Chang. Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press.
Week 7 Play: Murder in San Jose
Readings.
Chong, Candace (2011). Murder in San Jose. Trans. Margaret Cheung. Hong Kong:
Hong Kong Arts Festival Society.
Week 8 Adaptation: The Two Gentlemen of Guangdong’s Midsummer
Nightmare on the Fifteenth Night
Readings
Chan, Rupert. The Two Gentlemen of Guangdong’s Midsummer Nightmare on the
5
Fifteenth Night
Week 9 Novel
Readings
Chan, Rupert. (2011). Chocolate’s Brown Study in the Bag. Hong Kong: Proverse
Hong Kong.
Week 10 Short Stories
Readings
XiXi. Marvels of a Floating City and other stories.
Week 11 Poems
Readings
Ho, Louise. (2006). Hongkong Poems. Tubingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.
Kerr, Douglas. (2010). “Louise Ho and the Local Turn: The Place of English Poetry in
Hong Kong.” Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image. Ed. Kam, Louie. Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press. pp.75-96
Week 12
Students’ Presentations
Week 13
Students’ Presentations
Week 14
Recapitulation
Academic Honesty
You are expected to do your own work. Dishonesty in fulfilling any assignment
undermines the learning process and the integrity of your university degree.
Engaging in dishonest or unethical behaviour is forbidden and will result in
disciplinary action, specifically a failing grade on the assignment with no opportunity
for resubmission. A second infraction will result in an F for the course and a report
to University officials. Examples of prohibited behaviour are:
Cheating – an act of deception by which a student misleadingly demonstrates that s/he
has mastered information on an academic exercise. Examples include:

Copying or allowing another to copy a test, quiz, paper, or project
6

Submitting a paper or major portions of a paper that has been previously
submitted for another class without permission of the current instructor

Turning in written assignments that are not your own work (including
homework)

Plagiarism – the act of representing the work of another as one’s own without
giving credit.


Failing to give credit for ideas and material taken from others

Representing another’s artistic or scholarly work as one’s own
Fabrication – the intentional use of invented information or the falsification of
research or other findings with the intent to deceive
To comply with the University’s policy, the term paper has to be submitted to
VeriGuide.
Resources
Primary texts
Chan, Rupert. (2011). Chocolate’s Brown Study in the Bag. Hong Kong: Proverse
Hong Kong.
Chan, Rupert. The Two Gentlemen of Guangdong’s Midsummer Nightmare on the
Fifteenth Night
Chong, Candace (2011). Murder in San Jose. Trans. Margaret Cheung. Hong Kong:
Hong Kong Arts Festival Society.
Chong, Candace. (2011). The French Kiss. Trans. Rupert Chan. Xianggang: Tong
Chuang Wen Hua Gong Fang.
Ho, Louise. (2006). Hongkong Poems. Tubingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.
XiXi. Marvels of a Floating City and other stories
Films:
Bruce Lee, The Way of the Dragon, 1972
Jackie Chan, Police Story, 1985 &1988
John Woo, A Better Tomorrow, 1986 & Face/Off, 1997
Supplementary Readings
Adorno, Theodor. (1991). The Cultural Industry. London: Routledge.
Branston, Gill. (2000). Cinema and Cultural Modernity. Philadelphia: Open
University Press.
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Burkitt, Ian. (1999). Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity.
London: Sage Publications.
Chatman, Seymour. (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and
Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Clarke, David. (2001). Hong Kong Art: Culture and Decolonization. Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press.
Clifford, James. (1988). The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography,
Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Curtin, Michael & Shah, Hemant. (2005). Reorienting Global Communication.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Erni, John Nguyet. (2001) “Like a Postcolonial Culture: Hong Kong Re-imagined.”
Cultural Studies, 15 (3/4): 389-418.
Hill, John and Pamela Church Gibson. (2000). Film Studies: Critical Approaches.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kam, Louie, ed. (2010). Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image. Hong Kong: Hong
Kong University Press.
Lehman, Peter. (1997). Defining Cinema. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University
Press.
Pang, Lai Kwan & Wong, Day, eds. (2005). Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema.
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Pun Ngai and Yee Lai man, eds. (2003). Narrating Hong Kong Culture and Identity.
Hong Kong: Oxford University Press
Stam Robert. (2000). Film Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Storey, John, ed. (1994). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. New York:
Pearson Longman.
Vitali, Valentina. (2005). “Why Study Cinema? Serial Visions of the Cultural Industry
and the Future of Film Studies.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6, no. 2: 282-88.
Waters, Malcom, ed. (1999). Modernity: Critical Concepts. London: Routledge.