我城我書 / One City One Book Hong Kong

One City One Book Hong Kong （我城我書）is a community reading programme which aims to encourage as many people as possible, to read and discuss a single book at around the same time. Each year students, scholars, and readers of all kinds will focus their attention on one single book. A series of activities related to the chosen book will be held around Hong Kong, including discussions of the book and its themes, along with exhibitions, film screenings, school events, book discussions, author visits, cultural performances, library events, and so forth. The goals of the initiative are to build a sense of community and promote reading, discussion, and civic engagement.

Thanatic Ethics:
The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces

Shocking images of migrant bodies washed ashore, epitomized in Ai Wei Wei’s re-enactment of the Syrian infant Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body on a beach in Lesbos, have almost become a macabre shorthand for migrant deaths on foreign shores as more and more refugees undertake perilous sea crossings and other hazardous inland journeys, in search of a better life. We may wonder what happens to these bodies, what happens to these bones; are they repatriated back to the homeland? If not, are they in a cruel twist of fate, simply buried in mass graves on the foreign shores they tragically failed to reach while alive? How are the victims memorialized, if at all? This also raises related questions about the immigrant’s desire for a home burial. How is the longing for home manifested as a longing to die in the homeland? What about those who are criminalized and refused a burial? How is the right to die linked to citizenship and human rights in the context of migration and diaspora?

“Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces” seeks to explore these questions as they are articulated in literary and visual culture, and across disciplines.

Muslim Women’s Popular Fiction

Over the last decade, readers, publishers, and booksellers have noted a surge in popularity of genre works written by Muslim women, particularly in the Anglosphere. This project aims to bring together researchers to examine the global turn in popular fiction, and the concurrent “popular turn” in Muslim women’s writing through a focus on popular and genre writing by Muslim women (including romance, chick lit, detective fiction, Young Adult, fantasy, life writing, and science fiction) from a range of critical disciplinary perspectives.