Welcome Back!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year holiday!

Congratulations to the Graduates of the 2021-22 M.A. Programme in Comparative and Public History!

The group photo-taking session for the M.A. Programme in Comparative and Public History was held at the Lady Shaw Building Rooftop Garden on 25 November 2022, with the presence of faculty members and graduates. Prof. PUK Wing Kin, Vice Chairman of the Department, and Prof. HE Xi, the M.A. Programme Director, were invited to present the Scholarship awards to Mr. CHAN Yiu Wah, Ms. Rachel ANDERSON, and Mr. SHUN Chi Ming as an encouragement for their pursuit of academic excellence.

Course Enrolments

Term 2, 2022-23 commences today. Students who wish to change their course enrolment for Term 2 are reminded to do so via the CUSIS during the following specified add/drop periods:

Undergraduate programme: Between 8:30pm on 16 January 2023 and 8:30pm on 22 January 2023
Postgraduate programmes: Between 10am on 9 January 2023 and 5:30pm on 23 January 2023

Recapping the World History Seminar “Rome Calling? The Making of Roman Catholicism as a World Religion Reconsidered” Conducted by Prof. Simon DITCHFIELD on 24 November 2022

Prof. Simon DITCHFIELD from the Department of History, University of York, was invited by the Centre for Comparative and Public History to deliver a lecture entitled “Rome Calling? The Making of Roman Catholicism as a World Religion Reconsidered” on 24 November 2022. In the beginning, he reexamined the binary interpretation model of early Catholicism featuring the tendency of proselytism by missionaries from Rome to local peoples in Africa, Europe, Asia, and America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Viewing this interpretation as a crude model of religious change focusing on ‘spiritual conquest’, he further complicated it by highlighting reciprocity in which conversation instead of conversion took place regarding religious indoctrination and impacts. To rectify the misunderstanding in that process, DITCHFIELD conducted a case study concerning Roman Catholicism throughout the globe, drawing upon the primary source, Francesco Ingoli’s Report on the Four Parts of the World in the 1630s. The talk ended by rethinking how this global indoctrination influenced the papacy and canon law in contemporary Roman Catholicism.

Recapping the World History Seminar “Portuguese Mestiços and Mercenary Networks in the Seventeenth-Century Deccan: An Exercise in Global Microhistory” conducted by Prof. Giuseppe MARCOCCI on 1 December 2022

Prof. Giuseppe MARCOCCI from the Faculty of History, University of Oxford, was invited by the Centre for Comparative and Public History to deliver a lecture entitled “Portuguese Mestiços and Mercenary Networks in the Seventeenth-Century Deccan: An Exercise in Global Microhistory” on 1 December 2022. He started the talk by introducing the Portugal-India trade route to outline the Portuguese “Informal Empire” which was borderless, self-organized, cross-cultural, muti-ethnic, and stateless. To avoid the problems of generalization in microhistory, he emphasized on the retrieval of the connected pieces of information from materials and repositories scattering across continents. Specifically, he examined the inquisitorial archives that contained the renegade tales and their tellers and located Portuguese runaways that drew upon snapshots from Ahmednagar. He later shed light on how mercenary networks were built in a frontier society and how the mercenaries fled away due to the treacherous Portuguese deeds. Overall, his study of the mercenaries’ networks presented the localized forms of endurance and adaptation to rapid and disruptive changes brought about locally by imperial rivalry and long-distance commerce.

Conference on New Frontiers in History Teaching in Hong Kong Secondary Schools 2023

The Curriculum Development Institute of the Education Bureau and the Department of History of CUHK co-organise the “Conference on New Frontiers of History Teaching in Hong Kong Secondary Schools 2023” on 13 January 2023. Historians, frontline teachers of Chinese history and history subjects will provide informative views on the development of history teaching in secondary schools and how to enhance learning and teaching effectiveness.

Organisers: Curriculum Development Institute, Education Bureau; Department of History, CUHK
Enquiry: 3943 8541

World History Seminar (2022-23)

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

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.