There is nothing better than literature to show that we are connected by timeless universal human truths transcending the ideas and assumptions of our age and background.
Fulbright Scholars Present Literature of the American South
For five days, postgraduate students hailing from mainland China and Hong Kong gathered at CUHK to intensively discuss and analyse writers of the American South under the guidance of Fulbright Scholars. The Fulbright Southern Writers Seminar in Hong Kong was organized from 20th to 24th March by the Hong Kong-America Center (HKAC), the CUHK Department of English and the American Studies Collection of the University Library. The aim of the seminar was to promote the study of literature of the American South in Hong Kong and China, and to highlight the University's American Studies collection in Wu Chung Library. The readings included Faulkner, Southern poets Robert Warren Penn, James Dickey and Dave Smith, and Flannery O'Connor and Ralph Ellison.
Despite Faulkner's liberal use of Southern speech traditions — sometimes accompanied by stream of consciousness — the students from CUHK and four other Hong Kong universities, as well as Sun Yatsen University (SYSU) in Guangzhou and Shantou University, surprisingly, did not have a hard time grasping the real issues behind his sometimes convoluted rhetoric, showing that literature points below cultural differences to the human condition. Guiding the seminar was Prof. Ernest Suarez, Fulbright Scholar and chair and professor of English at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., who is currently based in SYSU. 'During my visit to CUHK in November 2005, I was brought to see the Faulkner Collection in Wu Chung Multimedia Library. It must be the best Faulkner collection in Asia and I wondered "How can this be used?"' said Prof. Suarez whose classes and seminars on contemporary writers of the American South have been extremely well received in this part of the world.
Other contributors to the seminar included Dr. Dennis McCann, Fulbright Scholar at CUHK, who spoke on religion in the American South, Dr. Marco Antolin of Millersville State University, who dealt with issues in translating Southern American writers into other languages, and Prof. Reid Mitchell, Fulbright Scholar, who gave a special session on writers from New Orleans.
Outstanding American Studies Collection at ULS
Dr. Glenn Shive, director of the HKAC, lauded the research collection on American literature and culture at Wu Chung Library as 'very distinctive in all of Asia'. He said, 'I have wanted for a long time to highlight the collection and bring it to young scholars of American literature in Asia, so that they can do research here rather than having to go to the US. The Department of English is very welcoming towards the idea.'
Dr. Shive is looking to hold the seminar again next May. The HKAC is also exploring the possibility of producing, jointly with the Department of Translation, a publication of modern American poetry translated into Chinese. Other programmes planned for this year include business students exchange between the US and China, a meeting of American and Asian scholars of religion and society, and the study of the history and culture of coastal South China by American professors. Dr. Shive hopes that through these activities, scholarly exchange between China and the US will be stepped up and Hong Kong's academic atmosphere will be internationalized as it is increasingly seen as a destination for American students and scholars.
Piera
Chen