Dr Hilary Chung lectures at Peking University

29/10/2018  Dr Hilary Chung, Founding Director of the Global Studies programme at Auckland University and Comparative Literature specialist visited NZC at PKU and delivered a lecture for Peking University Humanities Series.

On 29 October, 2018, Professor Liu Shusen of the New Zealand Centre at Peking University and Professor of English Literature and Professor Zhao Baisheng of the Centre for Autobiography and Life Writing Studies jointly hosted a University lecture by Dr Hilary Chung, Founding Director of the Global Studies programme at Auckland University and Comparative Literature specialist. On morning of 29th October she presented her lecture to an audience of engaged master and doctorate students, and faculty members from Peking University and Communication University of China.

Dr Chung with host professors Zhao and Liu

As a former Associate Dean International for the Faculty of Arts at Auckland University, Dr Hilary Chung has a long association with the New Zealand Centre and has visited Peking University many times.  We were delighted to welcome her this time as she completed an official visit to China visiting universities in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. Her association with Peking University goes even further back as she is herself an alumna of the University, having studied here as a doctoral student in the 1980s. This lecture was arranged as a direct result of the recent visit to New Zealand of a delegation from Peking University led by the New Zealand Centre in which Professor Zhao Baisheng participated.  We look forward to continued fruitful exchange between the two institutions in the literary field.

Dr Chung’s current research comprises a comparative study of representations of multiculturalism, particularly in diasporic Chinese theatre, in three countries:  New Zealand, Australia and Canada.  She also drew on her long experience of teaching a graduate seminar in autobiography and life writing in the Comparative Literature programme at the University of Auckland to present a lecture, especially written for the two sponsoring Centres, on autoethnographical perspectives in Chinese-New Zealand theatre. The lecture received a positive reception, and was followed by an animated question and discussion period.

Dr Chung lecturing

In her lecture, Dr Chung showed how she combines autobiographical theory with ethnographical perspectives and postcolonial theory to analyse how creative work, especially theatre in this case, is able to address the problematic of multiculturalism in New Zealand.  She presented an analysis of the difficulties that arise when seeking to address the relationship between the historical bi-cultural framework, enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document, established between the British Crown and Maori chiefs and the multicultural realities of present-day life in New Zealand.  She showed how, through embodiment, autoethnographical theatre is able to “speak back” both to dominant discourse of exclusion and minority discourses of quietism and compliance.

Click here to read more news and events stories...