Bulletin Spring‧Summer Autumn‧Winter 1999

have spent the past three years working on modalities in the Chinese language, language changes and shift of the cognition frameworks, interface of components in the Chinese language, and the psychological reality of the count/mass. Apart from six conference papers, the programme has generated a considerable database of lexical items in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. Ten volumes of research findings have been desk-published, and are available for purchase. Dr. J.K.K. Tam has recently succeeded Dr. John J. Deeney as the director of the Comparative Literature Programme, and six researchers from the depa r tmen ts of Eng l i sh, Chinese, and translation, plus one project investigator have devoted much time and effort on five research projects: the Hong Kong Literary Scene, Poets of the Pacific Rim, Between Aesthetics and History, Western Impac t and Cu l t u r al Change, and Classical L i t e r a ry Terminology. Ap a r t f r om occasional meetings, the project on terminology has held workshops i n both Hong Kong and Beijing, w i t h participants f r om Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Numerous articles have also been published, and an anthology of Hong Kong poets in English w i l l soon be published. The Human Computing and Methodology Programme focusses on four areas of research: computational linguistics, anelectronic dictionary of Chinese pronunciation, Internet and CD-ROM services, and humanities methodology. Established in 1993-94, the programme has been instrumental in building up the networking capabilities of the microcomputer laboratory in the Faculty of Arts. Together w i th other facilities, the laboratory provides researchers w i t h easy access to various network centres in the wo r l d and their databases. Dr. Kwan Tse Wan is the director of this programme. A HK$3 mi l l i on Research Project on Hong Kong Cultural Studies The f ou r regular p r og r ammes are basically financed by private funds, but colleagues from the institute have also joined hands w i t h researchers from other local tertiary institutions and occupational sectors to launch a new programme on the cultural formations of Hong Kong in the fifties and sixties. Initial emphasis w i l l be placed on Hong Kong literary productions, leftist films, Chinese literary history and its teaching, teaching of English literature, and civic culture and political discourses. The HK$3 million project is funded by the UPGC, and working meetings are regularly held. Included in the first-year plan are regular colloquia, a seminar/conference in the summer of 1995 w i t h a workshop for interested postgraduate students, and, tentatively, the publication of eight volumes of the programme's research output in 1994-95. Thefour programme directors (from left): Dr. Kwan Tse Wan, Dr. Ho Hsiu-hwang, Prof. Liu Shu-hsien and Dr. J.K.K. Tarn Introducing the Research Institute for the Humanities 3