“Radical Utopian Communities in Jamaica, Japan, and South Africa: A Global History from the Margins, 1900–1950” by Dr. Robert Kramm (LMU)

Faculty of Arts Conference Room, Run Run Shaw Tower 4/F 4.36, HKU 

At the turn of the twentieth century, radical utopian communities were built all around the world. They served as retreats, but they simultaneously constituted hubs for activists, reformers, and revolutionaries to meet, share, and develop new ideas and practices of community and human existence. The talk deliberately builds on different and seemingly unrelated case studies […]

“American Popular Culture, Comic Strips, and Globalization in the Early Twentieth Century” by Professor Ian Gordon (NUS)

Faculty Lounge (Run Run Shaw Tower 4.30)

In the early twentieth century Richard Outcault's American comic strip Buster Brown appeared in different forms in countries such as Brazil, Britain, Denmark, France, Italy, and Spain. This article discussed those appearances in light of Outcault’s attempts to preserve his intellectual property rights and his shift of the strip from the New York Herald to […]

History in the Making – “Trials of Sovereignty Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857–1922” by Alastair McClure (HKU)

Faculty Lounge (Run Run Shaw Tower 4.30)

Trials of Sovereignty offers the first legal history of mercy and discretion in nineteenth and twentieth-century India. Through a study of large-scale amnesties, the prerogative powers of pardon, executive commutation, and judicial sentencing practices, Alastair McClure argues that discretion represented a vital facet of colonial rule. In a bloody penal order, officials and judges consistently […]

Call for Papers: 14th Spring History Symposium

The University of Hong Kong

Call for Papers: 14th Spring History Symposium, HKU, 9 and 10 May 2025   The Department of History is pleased to announce that the 14th Spring History Symposium will take place at the University of Hong Kong on 9 and 10 May 2025 and will provide a venue for postgraduate students and early career scholars […]