Common Core Courses on Offer in the 2022 Summer Semester

By
In General
  36

CCGL9011 Global Issues

Media in the Age of Globalization

Course Description

In this course, students will examine the role of an increasingly globalized and complex media ecosystem in shaping the global and local societies, as well as whether or not the growing access to information fosters knowledge sharing and citizen participation in public affairs and/or creates social problems like privacy infringment, misinformation or polarization. The students will also explore if the media system really changes the power distribution in information flow, domestic information production, and dissemination or actually reinforce the imbalance. Does the Information and Communication Technologies amount to an individual’s emancipation or another form of exploitation? What is the role of the media in Hong Kong, China and the rest of the world? In a multipolar cultural world, how do citizens contribute to the conversation on local and global issues? The course will also reflect on critical values such as the freedom of expression, information, privacy, transparency, and examine the impact of social media, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.

[This course is (re)designed as a “flipped classroom” mode. Students are required to prepare and complete pre-class activities (reading, videos, and research) before the class and participate the in-class activities and tutorials.]

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

  1. Demonstrate basic understanding of the global media system, in light of contending political, cultural and economic paradigms.
  2. Demonstrate basic understanding of the role of technology in the development of the global media system.
  3. Identify and demonstrate basic understanding of the mechanisms by which governments, and business interests influence the framing of news.
  4. Demonstrate basic understanding of the role of and impact of social media on the global dynamics of information flow and exchange.
  5. Demonstrate an awareness of the emergence of “new voices” in the global media.
  6. Demonstrate understanding of the issues of freedom of expression, privacy and transparency in relation to the global media.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

Summer Semester
Jul 25 – Aug 10, 2022
Mon, Wed & Fri (9:30 am – 12:20 pm)

Study Load

Activities Number of hours
Classroom sessions 24
Tutorials 10
Preparing materials and questions for discussion 25
Assessment: Group project 45
Assessment: Individual assignment 26
Total: 130

Assessment: 100% coursework

Assessment Tasks Weighting
Class participation 40
Group project 30
Individual essay 30

Required Reading

No required textbook. Students are expected to stay up to date on current events and major developments of media and technology in Hong Kong, China, and globally. Class readings (academic papers, news articles, online references, or other teaching resources) will be assigned before each lecture. Here is a tentative list.

Class 1: Introduction – Media, globalization, and media framing

Class 2: Journalism – digital news, citizen media, and globalized media

Class 3: Impact of Media Technology – beyond utopianism and dystopianism

Class 4: Decentralization – digital activism and blockchain

Class 5: Digital Freedom 1 – free speech and Internet censorship

Class 6: Digital Freedom 2 – digital surveillance, privacy, and transparency

Class 7: Ubiquitous Communication – Mobile Technologies and Public Diplomacy

Class 8: Data Society – AI and Future Technologies

Course Co-ordinator and Teacher(s)

Course Co-ordinator Contact
Professor K.W. Fu
Journalism and Media Studies Centre, Faculty of Social Sciences		 Tel: 3917 1643
Email: kwfu@hku.hk
Teacher(s) Contact
Professor K.W. Fu
Journalism and Media Studies Centre, Faculty of Social Sciences		 Tel: 3917 1643
Email: kwfu@hku.hk

CCGL9042 Global Issues

The Evolution of Civilization

This course is under the thematic cluster(s) of:

  • The Quest for a Meaningful Life / The Universe and the Question of Meaning (UQM)
  • The Human Lifespan (HL)

icon
Communication-intensive Courses

[This is a certified Communication-intensive (CI) Course which meets all of the requirements endorsed by HKU’s Senate, including (i) the teaching assessment of oral and visual communication ‘literacies’; and (ii) at least 40% of the course grade assigned to communication-rich assessment tasks.]

Course Description

This course will draw on economics, evolutionary theory, and psychology to address the key issues:

  1. How did humans go from relatively isolated tribal life to an increasingly cooperative, interconnected, globalized world?
  2. How can our knowledge of human nature and past progress be used to help solve major societal challenges?

The theme of this course is that natural selection is a useful framework for understanding how humans have progressed from subsisting in relatively isolated groups to where individuals are highly specialized in their productive efforts and highly integrated with the entire world through globalization. The course will explore how this progression may be the result of genetic selection, but likely more the result of selection acting on ideas, or memes, rather than genes, but in an analogous manner.

Through an understanding of human evolution, the origin of economic development will be explored. Combined with the psychological perspective of understanding the individual, we attempt to shed light on how complex civilization has come into existence. Lectures will ask one or two main scientific questions and then focus on answering them, showing the types of evidence that can be used to address the question and the logical progression of ideas.

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

  1. Demonstrate an understanding and awareness of the various domains of human progress.
  2. Describe and explain the basic principles of evolutionary theory as a model for human progress.
  3. Demonstrate an understanding of how trade and specialization are central to human advancement.
  4. Apply knowledge and understanding of evolutionary theory, psychology, and the scientific method to solving several societal problems.
  5. Develop and demonstrate ability to speak effectively, display data in graphs, and convey messages by integrating text and graphics.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

Summer Semester
Jul 11 – Aug 5, 2022
Mon, Wed & Fri (4:30 pm – 6:20 pm)

Study Load

Activities Number of hours
Lectures 24
Tutorials 14
Reading / Self-study 62
Assessment: Presentation (incl preparation) 20
Total: 120

Assessment: 100% coursework

Assessment Tasks Weighting
Class discussion 30
Presentation 40
In-class quizzes 30

Required Reading

  • Ridley, M. (2010). The rational optimist: How prosperity evolves. New York: Harper.
  • Harari, Y. (2014). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harper Perennial. [Selected chapters]

Course Co-ordinator and Teacher(s)

Course Co-ordinator Contact
Dr L.W. Baum
Department of Psychiatry, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine		 Tel: 2831 5106
Email: lwbaum@hku.hk
Teacher(s) Contact
Dr L.W. Baum
Department of Psychiatry, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine		 Tel: 2831 5106
Email: lwbaum@hku.hk

CCCH9054 China: Culture, State and Society
Mothering China: From the Womb to the Nation

This course is under the thematic cluster(s) of:

  • Gender, Sexuality, and Diversity (GSD)

Course Description

Why are there so many ‘Tiger Moms’ in China? Why are many Chinese women obsessed with having children, if not a male heir? How did the reforms and revolutions in China shape the notion of motherhood? What does it mean to be a mother in China today? Mothering China seeks to answer these questions from the perspectives of the state, elites, NGOs, and both women who are and are not mothers. The course explores how motherhood in China transformed from a personal experience to a national duty and the question of how national leaders and social elites constructed, sustained and altered the image of mothers between the late nineteenth century and now, a period marked by rapid sociopolitical changes in China. Through a variety of disciplinary lenses, and using dominant trends of mainland China as well as cases of mothering practices in Hong Kong and Taiwan, we will discuss a wide range of material including texts, films and adverts in order to align the changing image of Chinese mothers with the broader history of China’s twentieth-century revolutions.

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

  1. Analyze the historical role of the state in institutionalizing motherhood.
  2. Evaluate the consequences of state-initiated propaganda campaigns, women’s health and population programmes on mothers’ status.
  3. Examine how mothers in China conformed and resisted to the state’s intervention of their sexual, reproductive and mothering experience at different historical points.
  4. Assess how China’s twentieth-century reforms and revolutions shaped mothers’ changing image and experience.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

Summer semester
Jun 27 – Jul 22, 2022
Mon & Tue (9:30 am – 12:20 pm)

Study Load

Activities Number of hours
Lectures 24
Tutorials 8
Reading / Self-study 38
Assessment: Group video production and presentation 40
Assessment: Reflection writing 10
Total: 120

Assessment: 100% coursework

Assessment Tasks Weighting
Continuous assessment and task focused activities 40
Reflective writing 20
Video production 40

Required Reading

Selections from:

  • Davis, D., & Friedman, S. (Eds.). (2014). Wives, husbands, and lovers: Marriage and sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and urban China. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
  • Diamant, N. J. (2000). Revolutionizing the family: Politics, love, and divorce in urban and rural China, 1949-1968. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Dikötter, F. (1998). Imperfect conceptions: Medical knowledge, birth defects, and eugenics in China. London: Hurst & Co.
  • Evans, H. (2008). The subject of gender: Daughters and mothers in Urban China. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Goldman, M., & Perry, E. J. (Eds.). (2002). Changing meanings of citizenship in modern China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  • Johnson, K. A. (2016). China’s hidden children: Abandonment, adoption, and the human costs of the one-child policy. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press.
  • Johnson, T. P. (2011). Childbirth in Republican China: Delivering modernity. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books.
  • Kuo, M. (2012). Intolerable cruelty: Marriage, law, and society in early twentieth-century China. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
  • Lieberman, S. T. (1998). The mother and narrative politics in modern China. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
  • Liu, J. (2007). Gender and work in urban China: Women workers of the unlucky generation. London; New York: Routledge.
  • Schneider, M. M. (2014). The ugly wife is a treasure at home: True stories of love and marriage in communist China. Lincoln: Potomac Books.
  • Thiagarajan, M. (2016). Beyond the tiger mom: East-west parenting for the global age. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing.
  • To, S. (2015). China’s leftover women: Late marriage among professional women and its consequences. Abingdon, Oxon, UK; New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
  • Twine, F. W. (2011). Outsourcing the womb: Race, class and gestational surrogacy in a global market. New York, NY: Routledge.
  • Winter, J. M., & Teitelbaum, M. S. (Eds.) (2013). The global spread of fertility decline: Population, fear, and uncertainty. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Course Co-ordinator and Teacher(s)

Course Co-ordinator Contact
Dr C.L. Tsang
School of Humanities (History), Faculty of Arts		 Tel: 3917 2864
Email: cctsang1@hku.hk
Teacher(s) Contact
Dr C.L. Tsang
School of Humanities (History), Faculty of Arts		 Tel: 3917 2864
Email: cctsang1@hku.hk