Carroll, John M. (John Mark) Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2005. images/book009.gif In an engaging, revisionist study, John M. Carroll argues that in the century after the Opium War, Hong Kong's colonial nature helped create a local Chinese business elite. <p>By the end of the nineteenth century, the colonial government saw Chinese businessmen as allies in establishing Hong Kong as a commercial center. The idea of a commercially vibrant China united them. Chinese and British leaders cooperated on issues of mutual concern, such as the expansion of capitalism and political and economic directions for an ailing China.</p> <p>These Chinese also found opportunities in the colonial system to develop business and commerce. In doing so, they used Hong Kong's strategic position to underscore their own identity as a distinctive group unlike their mainland counterparts. Nationalism took on a specifically Hong Kong character. At the same time, by contributing to imperial war funds, organizing ceremonies for visiting British royalty, and attending imperial trade exhibitions, the Chinese helped make Hong Kong an active member of the global British Empire.</p> <p>In Edge of Empires, Carroll situates Hong Kong squarely within the framework of both Chinese and British colonial history, while exploring larger questions about the meaning and implications of colonialism in modern history.</p> http://library.hku.hk/record=b3015806 _blank Chua, Daniel K. L. Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1999. images/book001.gif "This book is born out of two contradictions: first, it explores the making of meaning in a musical form that was made to empty its meaning at the turn of the nineteenth century; secondly, it is a history of a music that claims to have no history - absolute music. The book therefore writes against the notion of absolute music which tends to be the paradigm for most musicological and analytical studies. It is concerned not so much with what music is, but why and how meaning is constructed in instrumental music and what structures of knowledge need to be in place for such meaning to exist. Instead of existing in a pure and autonomous form, music is woven back into the epistemological fabric, and tangled with the discourses of theology, visual perspective, biology, philosophy, gender, chemistry, politics, physics. Such contextualisation, far from diminishing the significance of music, actually demonstrates the centrality of music in the construction of modernity. From the thought of Vincenzo Galilei to that of Theodor Adorno, Daniel Chua suggests that instrumental music has always been a critical and negative force in modernity, even with its nineteenth-century apotheosis as 'absolute music'." http://library.hku.hk/record=b2156833 _blank Ci, Jiwei Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2006. images/book014.gif "In this book, Jiwei Ci explores the dual nature of justice, in an attempt to make unitary sense of key features of justice reflected in its close relation to resentment, punishment, and forgiveness. Rather than pursue a search of normative principles, he probes the human psychology of justice to understand what motivates moral agents who seek to behave justly, and why their desire to be just is as precarious as it is uplifting." http://library.hku.hk/record=b3488232 _blank Clarke, David Oxford University Press, 2000. images/book007.gif Much has been written about China's contemporary art scene, but little attention has been paid to the complicated ways in which the Chinese and Western art traditions have influenced each other. Featuring many stunning reproductions of original artworks, this beautiful book tells that story, exploring how Chinese artists--whether using traditional media or adopting media and techniques from the West--have responded to the momentous changes brought about by modernism. _blank Dikötter, Frank New York : Columbia University Press, c2006. images/book003.gif "Exotic Commodities is the first book to chart the consumption and spread of foreign goods in China from the mid-nineteenth century to the advent of communism in 1949. Richly illustrated and revealing, this volume recounts how exotic commodities were acquired and adapted in a country commonly believed to have remained "hostile toward alien things" during the industrial era." http://library.hku.hk/record=b3830179 _blank Dikötter, Frank WalkerBooks.com - Copyright © 2011 Walker Publishing Company, Inc. images/book018.gif "MAO'S GREAT FAMINE is a gripping and masterful portrait of the brutal court of Mao, based on new research but also written with great narrative verve, which tells the gripping story of the manmade famine that killed 45 million people from the dictator and his henchmen down to the villages of rural China."—<b>Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar</b> http://www.walkerbooks.com/books/catalog.php?key=874 J. Charles Schencking Stanford University Press images/book016-cs.gif This book explores the emergence of the Imperial Japanese Navy from a rag-tag collection of coastal craft in 1868 to the world’s third largest blue water navy in 1922. Rather than focus on warships, hardware, and military technology, this study traces the development of this service as a political, ideological, and institutional force in Japan and, moreover, examines its development as a social phenomenon. <p>Based on extensive archival research in Japan, <i>Making Waves</i> fundamentally challenges the popular notion that the navy was a “silent,” apolitical service. Politics, particularly budgetary politics and the selling of the navy to elites and common citizens, became the primary domestic focus—if not the overriding preoccupation—of Japan's admirals in the prewar period. In pursuing larger budgets through lobbying oligarchs, coercing cabinet ministers, forging alliances with political parties, occupying overseas territories, conducting well-orchestrated naval pageants, and launching spirited propaganda campaigns, the navy not only grew in stature and size, but it also helped foster the notion that Japan was, and would forever be, a naval nation.</p> http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=4977 http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=4977 Marchetti, Gina Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2006. images/book006.gif Global perceptions of China have changed dramatically since the massive student protests that took place in Tian'anmen Square in April 1989. The media spotlight trained on Beijing, and the international uproar over the events of that spring still shape the world's perceptions of the People's Republic and the ways that Chinese people, within and beyond China, see and portray themselves. <p>In From Tian'anmen to Times Square, leading film scholar Gina Marchetti considers the complex changes in the ways that China and the Chinese have been portrayed in cinema and media arts since the Tian'anmen revolt. Drawing on her interviews with leading contemporary Chinese filmmakers, Marchetti looks at a wide range of work by Chinese and non-Chinese media artists working in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore and on transnational co-productions involving those places. Focusing on the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality on global screens, Marchetti traces the momentous political, cultural, social, and economic forces confronting contemporary media artists and filmmakers working within "Greater China."</p> http://library.hku.hk/record=b3484610 _blank Mark Ravinder Frost and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow Hong Kong University Press images/book019.gif <i>Singapore: A Biography</i> (Hong Kong University Press, 2009) by Mark R. Frost of the HKU History Department has been selected as an 'Outstanding Academic Title' for 2010 by <i>CHOICE</i>, the leading academic review journal for academic and college libraries in the U.S. <p>Every year, <i>Choice</i> subject editors single out for recognition the most significant print and electronic works reviewed during the previous calendar year. This prestigious list of publications reflects the best in scholarly titles and attracts extraordinary attention from the academic library community. The 2010 feature includes 668 titles in 54 disciplines and subsections. The books are selected for their excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to their field, and their value as important - often first - treatment of their subject. </p> <p>In 2010, <i>Singapore: A Biography</i> was also awarded the Asia Pacific Publishers Association's Gold Medal for Best Book (General).</p> # http://www.hkupress.org/Common/Reader/Products/ShowProduct.jsp?Pid=1&Version=0&Cid=16&Charset=iso-8859-1&page=-1&key=9789888028177 O'Leary, Timothy Continuum (October 27, 2009) images/book015-ot.gif This monograph develops a unique approach to thinking about the transformative power of literature by drawing upon the much-neglected concept of experience in Foucault's work. For Foucault, an 'experience book' is a book which transforms our experience by acting on us in a particular way. In this book, Timothy O'Leary develops a unique approach to thinking about the transformative power of literature by drawing upon this often neglected concept and applying it to literary texts. Starting from the premise that works of literature are capable of having a profound effect on their audiences, he suggests a way of understanding how these effects are produced.Offering extended analyses of a range of Irish writers, including Swift, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Friel and Heaney, O'Leary draws on Foucault's concept of experience as well as the work of Plato, Aristotle, Dewey and Deleuze and recent debates about literature and ethics. Of interest to readers in both philosophy and literature, this study offers new insights into Foucault's mature philosophy and an improved understanding of what it is to read and be affected by a work of fiction. http://www.amazon.com/Foucault-Fiction-Experience-Timothy-OLeary/dp/0826495958/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252035885&sr=1-2 Pomfret, David M. Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2004. images/book012.gif "As European society became more urbanized in the nineteenth century and new approaches to city life were developed, educated observers began to articulate their fears about the impact cities had on the young. No less alarming were instances of misbehaviour by young city dwellers, which commentators often sought to explain through reference to environmental conditions. Remedying the particular problems faced by young people in cities required influence over this group. As the city was seen to have undetermined traditional links between older generations and the young, it was clear that by the late nineteenth century new methods were necessary to reach and to improve young city dwellers. By raising the problem of the reciprocal relationship between the young and their cities, Europeans made the meaning of urban living an integral component in the ongoing debate about the rising generation." "This is the first study to address the broad age spectrum of pre-adulthood, rather than one or other of its constituent life-stages, allowing the interrelated development of its sub-categories to be highlighted. Situating the study within the specific comparative context of an Anglo-French study has enabled the clarity of analysis to be sharpened and claims for cultural similarities and differences to be grounded historically. Focusing on one English city, Nottingham, and one French city, Saint-Etienne, a comparative perspective has been provided addressing the reciprocal relationship between young people, adults and the urban environment. In comparing these two cities this study also engages with historians' claims for general, trans-national shifts in the cultural meanings of childhood, adolescence and youth, and considers how these were worked out at local level." http://library.hku.hk/record=b2636800 _blank Thomas, Greg M. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2000. images/book008.gif "In Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France, Greg Thomas sets forth a new ecological model of landscape painting, in which the process of art is seen to mimic the creative processes silently at work in the environment around us. Developing an aesthetic of place with implications for the entirety of nineteenth-century art, Thomas focuses specifically and with engaging exactitude on the landscapes of Barbizon painter Theodore Rousseau. These paintings - dreams of nature as a web of life in which human beings occupy a peripheral role - overwhelmed Rousseau's contemporaries with their novel light effects, original perspective, and "sheer profusion of visual sensation." While Baudelaire considered them superior to even Corot's works, they baffled art critics and have never fit convincingly into the received categories of naturalism, "pre-Impressionism," or modernism." http://library.hku.hk/record=b2139632 _blank Tsao, Willy and Chan, Hing Yan (Hong Kong Version) images/book002.gif Warrior Lanling was a famous general and renowned adonis who lived in China around 500AD. Despite the civil strife and bloodshed, his beauty reigned. Famed for his fearsome mask, he was invincible on the battlefield. His success fueled the king's jealousy and ultimately led to his untimely death. Warrior Lanling was poisoned before reaching his thirties, leaving only a legend. <p>Fifteen hundred years on, choreographer Willy Tsao attempts to strip the mask from Warrior Lanling and reveal the complexity of this legendary beauty by using four hand-picked virtuoso dancers. Set to an original score by contemporary composer Chan Hing-Yan, and accompanied live by a unique ensemble of musicians, "Warrior Lanling" received rave reviews for its full-house premiere in 2007.</p> <p>This DVD, featuring behind the scenes footage, is a collector's item for every dance lover.</p> _blank Yip, Virginia (CU) and Matthews, Stephen (HKU) Series: Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact images/book013.gif How does a child become bilingual? The answer to this intriguing question remains largely a mystery, not least because it has been far less extensively researched than the process of mastering a first language. Drawing on new studies of children exposed to two languages from birth (English and Cantonese), this book demonstrates how childhood bilingualism develops naturally in response to the two languages in the children's environment. While each bilingual child's profile is unique, the children studied are shown to develop quite differently from monolingual children. The authors demonstrate significant interactions between the children's developing grammars, as well as the important role played by language dominance in their bilingual development. Based on original research and using findings from the largest available multimedia bilingual corpus, the book will be welcomed by students and scholars working in child language acquisition, bilingualism and language contact. _blank