Poster

CETL Seminar: Race in Europe and Asia

This talk will explore how different expectations and assumptions about the place of literature in culture distinguish HKU and the University of Palermo, and their pedagogy. For Italian students, literature is important to national and individual identity. Italy’s art is important to cultural identity and it is not a political one. Rome was important to world civilization, but Italy now sees itself as a country that is dying. For HKU students, on the other hand, Hong Kong art and literature can also be important to its political identity as it positions itself against and in alignment with China. Certain concepts we take for granted in an American-based education does not always hold through in other national contexts. “World literature,” for example, is not a known entity in Italy. Students who study literature from at least two different languages would identify with “Comparative Literature.” In Libya, as a PhD student from Libya explained during a discussion, students do not study their national literature, but rather, they study pan-Arabic literature. Consequently, pan-Arab identity is emphasized over national identity. Our global condition is marked by how seeing so much more reminds us of how little we actually know and see, and this talk provides a view of some of the challenges universities face in a globalizing world. The development of this work was supported by exchange visits to University of Palermo through a Teaching Exchange Fellowship (TEF) award from HKU.

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