[Pacific Time] October 19, 2021 6PM - 7:30PM
[Hong Kong Time] October 20, 2021 9AM - 10:30AM

Cosponsors: UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, Pomona College Asian Studies Program, UC Davis East Asian Studies, UCI Long US-China Institute, UC San Diego 21th Century China Center.

About the Event

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments everywhere imposed new controls to contain the spread of the virus. Hong Kong became the frontline of the global COVID-19 outbreak, as the coronavirus arrived from across the Chinese border. How has the pandemic reconfigured politics and society in Hong Kong, in comparison and in connection to other East Asian countries? This symposium features speakers who have studied this public health crisis in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Singapore either comparatively or in the context of regional connections, historical or contemporary.

Speakers

Wayne Soon

(Vassar College)

is Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College. His research focuses on how international ideas and practices of medicine, institutional building, and diaspora have shaped the region’s interaction with its people and the world. His book, Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History (Stanford, 2020), tells the global health story of Overseas Chinese who transformed medicine in twentieth-century China and Taiwan.

Samson Yuen

(Hong Kong Baptist University)

is Assistant Professor at the Department of Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. He studies contentious politics, civil society, and food politics, with a particular focus on the Greater China region. He has published articles in Mobilization, Political Studies, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Social Movement Studies, Island Studies Journal, among others. He is a co-editor of An Epoch of Social Movements (Chinese University Press, 2018).

Harry Yi-Jui Wu

(National Cheng Kung University)

is Associate Professor at the National Cheng Kung University. His research mainly focuses on the transnational histories of mental health. His first book, Mad by the Millions: Mental Disorders and the Early Years of the World Health Organization, was published by MIT Press in 2021. Besides historical research, He is also interested in commenting and critiquing humanities pedagogy in medical education. He is currently Co-Editor of the Journal of Social History of Medicine.