This website is for Prof. Daniel Vukovich's students at Hong Kong University in the department of Comparative Literature. The latter is one part of the School of Humanities,  within the Arts Faculty).

While we will still use  Moodle and the university portal system for some things (e.g. group email from me) this site will be the main course website.  

This website hosts our syllabi and houses course documents -- like our class texts in pdf form -- as well as essay prompts, lecture notes and other supplemental material and links. The most current syllabus for each course will always be displayed here, on the specific page dedicated to the course. 

This site merely supports the things that go on inside the classroom and face-to-face, during lecture, discussion, tutorial, or on your own as you work.  My view is that face-to-face or offline education is by far the best education.     

When you click on a course-page to the left, you'll find a growing list of attachments (pdf's, docs) on the bottom of the  page. The main page is the syllabus itself for that course. I will update that as needed throughout the term.  Sometimes I remove files to save space. If you need something that is no longer there, shoot me an email.

Please also browse the "Writing Help" and "Research Links " pages for some pointers and links towards writing better papers. But my best advice is to share your drafts and meet with me (or your tutors) about your drafts and assignments. 

My office hours are on each syllabus, but I can and do make myself available other times as well. I am always happy to meet students.

If you want information about my other work in addition to teaching (i.e. writing)  you can check out http://hku-hk.academia.edu/DanielVukovich or can find my books and articles elsewhere online. 

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My Teaching Philosophy

You will not find fully written-up lectures or Power Point presentations here, because I neither write nor believe in those things.  For a parody of PowerPoint as a mode of education and communication, check out The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation [19 November 1863]. 

What I do believe is that much of the real education in higher education is simply listening to, writing down, and responding to what is said and done and assigned in the actual classroom.  

It is supposed to be difficult sometimes to listen to, understand, and take notes on what I am saying. So too for our class readings or screenings, though I will also guide you through them carefully.  

The material is new and challenging sometimes. What is more,  there are no objective or ready-to-hand answers for any of the problems and issues we examine. Otherwise it would be a waste of your time and of the tremendous opportunity to study the liberal arts and humanities at a college level.  

 This is all as it should be.  I can still recall struggling to  keep up with and 'get' lectures from my undergraduate and graduate school professors. If I had not been pushed to do so (to reach over my head) I would never have learned as much as I did.  Without this over-the-head factor we would also never learn how to think and write on our own, or to have the confidence to keep doing so.  

You've got to piece stuff together yourselves and make sense out of it.

The essay assignments I give you will in effect force you to do just that--  to put it together and make-do. This is also what life amounts to, intellectually and existentially.  By the time you leave university you should, ideally,  be able to embrace this. 

Despite all the corporate-managerial and pseudo-scientific hype that goes into current educational reform in Hong Kong and elsewhere, the only "outcome" that counts in college or in life is this: You become more responsible for, and better at learning on your own.   And you enjoy it.