ENGLISH DEPARTMENT EVENTS – ACADEMIC YEAR 2004-5

Soon after the start of the September term, we held our usual ‘Welcome party’ to help the new first years get to know the rest of the students and staff in the department, and of course to play some games and to eat and drink together.

In October, Dorothy Yuen took about a dozen of her students on a visit to the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at City University. They were shown the linguistics laboratory and the departmental library, and listened to a mini-lecture from the professors in the department, on the structure and curriculum of the program, and issues in translation and linguistics. Our students’ frequent responses showed their interest in the relevance of the talk, and the visit.

Also in October, Julie Forrester and some of the members of her tutorial group went to view famous Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s massive stage backdrop ‘Parade’ (1917) which was on display in IFC mall. This was a very special opportunity as the painting is so large and therefore difficult to move that it has rarely been displayed outside of France.

In November it was suggested that the newly formed tutorial groups try writing an article on the theme of pollution and environmental problems, and after combining some of the best efforts, we were delighted to get a letter published in the South China Morning Post.

December brought a short talk by alumni Mr. Peter Sun Ho Lee, just retired from teaching in America, and author of ‘Higher Standard Writing in English’. Mr. Lee told us that when he was a student (over 30 years ago) our department was called The Department of Foreign Languages, there were 3 Jesuit priests who lectured in our department and the subjects available included Greek and Latin. Mr. Lee remembered our current staff members George Shea Koon-ho and James Yiu Po-kwong as fellow students. Mr. Lee has lived in America for many years and has just retired from his teaching career there.

Another event in December was the College’s Athletics Day, in which we felt that our relatively small department covered itself in glory (thanks to the enthusiastic participation of our students) by winning the third highest tally of medals for girls from one department. Also in December we held our Christmas party and ‘traditional’ carol singing session at the entrance to the College, for everyone to join in.

In January Julie Forrester’s tutorial groups visited the HK Museum of Art’s exhibition on Impressionism, which offered a rare chance to look at paintings by famous artists such as Manet, Degas, Renoir, Sisley, Monet, Pissaro and Cezanne.

Around 20 current and ex-students (and at least one potential student of the future?) visited Julie’s home in March for a party. Much food, drink and fun!

In June we had a talk by a former lecturer in our Department, Hugh Whitby, who is a member of Amnesty International, the human rights organization. His talk was entitled “Why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong” and was about the use of the death penalty.