Venue: Function Room, 11/flr, Jockey Club Tower (Faculty of Social Sciences), Centennial Campus, HKU
This Conference was supported by: Strategic Research Theme in China-West Studies; Louis Cha Fund; School of Humanities

9:45 Welcome and Introduction to Terra Critica. International Network for the Critical Humanities (Birgit Kaiser & Kathrin Thiele, University of Utrecht)

10:00 Transactions in the Critical Humanities (Timothy O’Leary, Head of School of Humanities, HKU)

10:15 Pause

10:30-12:30 Panel 1: Networks, Critique, and the Global University (Chair: Kathrin Thiele)

Jacques Lezra (New York University), “Primary Relation: Against the Global University”

Esther Peeren (University of Amsterdam), “Welfare and Education as Transactions: The Logic of Quid Pro Quo”

Sam McAuliffe (Goldsmiths University of London), “On Utopia and Critique”

12:30-2:00 Lunch

2:00-4:00 Panel 2: Critical Readings (Chair: Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (HKU))

Sybrandt van Keulen (University of Amsterdam), “The Critical Power of an Island”

Ang Sze Wei (HKU), “Why Race?”

Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor (Penn State University), “Made in Plasticville: Plastic Politics and Environmental Art”

Roz Hammers (HKU), “Working Transactions: Viewing Chinese agrarian labor and its production in China and Europe during the early- to mid- 19th century”

4:00-4:15 Coffee Break

4:15-5:45 Panel 3: Politics, Critique, and the University (Chair: Timothy O’Leary)

Evelyn Wan (University of Utrecht), “Making room for trans-cultural and trans-generational critique: Performance Studies international (PSi)’s ‘Future Advisory Board’”

Gina Marchetti (HKU), “In Search of a Feminist Method: HeForShe and the Critical Humanities in Hong Kong”

Carolyn Lau (Chinese University of Hong Kong), “Decolonizing the Mind: Three Speculations on the New Humanities”

9:30-12:00 Panel 4 Critical Theory (Chair: Kathrin Thiele)

Leonard Lawlor (Penn State University), “Power and Responsibility: Furthering the Work of the Critical Humanities”

Xudong Zhang (New York University), “A Defense of Theory in the Age of Global Capital: Rethinking the Political in the Aesthetic, and Vice Versa”

Paul Alberts (University of Western Sydney), “The Humanities and Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene”

12:00-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:30 Panel 5: New technologies, New Humanities (Chair: Birgit Kaiser)

Anne Sauvagnargues (University of Paris Ouest), “A New Ecology of Images: Digital Art Machines”

Mercedes Bunz (University of Westminster), “Digital Technologies, Politics, and the Question of Enlightenment”

3:30-3:45 Coffee & Tea

3:45-5:45 Panel 6: Other Voices (Chair: Timothy O’Leary)

Nicole Huang (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Voice as Ephemera: Reconstructing a Culture of Listening in 1970s China”

Celina Hung (NYU-Shanghai), “Creolizing the Sinophone ‘South Seas’”

5:45-6:00 Closing Remarks: Conference Organisers – O’Leary, Thiele, Kaiser