Recapping the Academic Seminar “Paradoxical Frugality: Consumer Culture in Developing South Korea” conducted by Dr. Anna LEE on 3 April 2023

Dr. Anna Jungeun LEE from the Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem was invited by the Department of History to deliver a talk entitled “Paradoxical Frugality: Consumer Culture in Developing South Korea” on 3 April 2023. This talk aims to reveal the tensions between consumer culture and government ideas in South Korea. Dr. LEE began with the economic policies during Park Chung Hee’s presidency (1961-1979) that attempted to control domestic consumption and subsidised the export industry. Afterwards, she elaborated on how advertisements in women’s magazines promoted foreign and luxury consumption ironically under different guises of nationalistic discourses on frugality. Dr. LEE found that these shopping guides, advertisements, and pictorials co-existed with didactic essays and opinion columns that condemn consumerism in the same publication. She concluded that women’s magazines during that period embodied a battleground where transnational influences confronted government regulations, nationalist rhetoric, and intellectual criticisms. Students and teaching staff actively engaged in the Q&A session after the talk. The audience enquired whether Dr. LEE’s research findings have any implications on the economic policies in wartime Japan, consumerism in China, etc. There was a reflection upon the Cold War context, taking account of the geopolitical influences of North Korea, Japan, and the United States.

 

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Recapping the World History Seminar “Architecture and Power: Medieval Lordship, Material Culture, and the Historian’s Craft” conducted by Prof. Maureen MILLER on 6 April 2023

Prof. Maureen MILLER from the Department of History, University of California, Berkeley, was invited by the Centre for Comparative and Public History to deliver a lecture entitled “Architecture and Power: Medieval Lordship, Material Culture, and the Historian’s Craft” on 6 April 2023. During the presentation, the speaker clarified the concepts of “lord/lordship” and “material culture” right from the start. To transcend the limitations of texts that scarcely recorded the non-literate in medieval Europe, she drew upon sources of material culture to reveal a more socially inclusive portrayal of the exertion of power. Specifically, she highlighted how palaces and plazas in the urban centers of medieval Italy communicated a highly differentiated set of claims to authority through the use of materials, style, and the manipulation of space. Overall, the built environment offered ample testimony to the ways in which the contemporaries of medieval historians sought to leverage the full panoply of human senses to communicate.

 

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60th Anniversary Lecture Series of Department of History, CUHK

 

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World History Seminar (2022-23)

Organisers: Centre for Comparative and Public History, Department of History, CUHK
Enquiry: 3943 8541

 

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Yu Ying-shih Lecture in History 2022/23

To enhance academic and cultural exchange, Chung Chi College, New Asia College and the Department of History of the University joined hands in 2007 to establish the “Yu Ying-shih Lecture in History”. This year, Professor XU Guoqi, Department of History in The University of Hong Kong, has been invited as the guest speaker of the following two public lectures:

All lectures will be conducted in Putonghua. Participation in person or online via ZOOM is welcome.
For registration, please complete the online registration form on or before 2 May 2023.
For enquiries, please call at 3943 1585.

 

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Exhibition

 

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The newsletter will resume in September 2023.
The Department of History wishes you all a fruitful and enjoyable summer!

 

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For teachers and students who have information to share with the Department, please email your articles in both Chinese and English to chanfiona@cuhk.edu.hk by 4:00pm every Monday.