Reading Group
The Urban Narratives Network organises 2-3 reading group meetings per semester. Details of the reading group meetings, such as date and time and the readings, will be sent to registered participants at least two weeks in advance. If you are interested in joining the meetings, please sign up for individual sessions below.
Schedule for 2025-26 Academic Year
Third Meeting
Date: 3 Feb 2026 (Tuesday)
Time: 4.30-6pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong
Readings:
Hofmeyr, Isabel. “Introduction. Hydrocolonialism: The View from the Dockside.” Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House. (Duke University Press, 2022) (pp.1-26)
Hofmeyr, Isabel. “Conclusion. Dockside Genres and Postcolonial Literature.” Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House. (Duke University Press, 2022) (pp.77-84)
Kamal, Amr. “Emporialism in the Crossroads of Empire” Emporialism: Department Store Fictions and the Politics of the Mediterranean. (SUNY Press, 2024) (pp.75-106)
Kamal, Amr. “Neo-Emporialism and the Politics of Memory.” Emporialism: Department Store Fictions and the Politics of the Mediterranean. (SUNY Press, 2024) (pp.237-273)
Sign up: Please sign up here by 28 Jan 2026.
Second Meeting
Date: 27 Nov 2025 (Thursday)
Time: 4.30-6pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong
Guest Reading Group Leader:
Prof Yiu, Hoi Lam Melody
Research Assistant Professor
School of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Readings:
Chattopadhyay, S., & White, J. (2014). City Halls: Civic Representation and Public Space. In J. White & S. Chattopadhyay (Eds.), City Halls and Civic Materialism (1st ed., pp. 3–13). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315813684-2
Yiu, M. H. (2025). The Cultural Centre as a Public Institution. In Cultural Architecture and Late-Colonial Space (1st ed., Vol. 1, pp. 17–36; pp.146-165). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032710037-3
Bain, A. L., & Podmore, J. A. (2024). Introduction: configuring urban cultural infrastructure. In The Cultural Infrastructure of Cities. Agenda Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781788214933.001
Sign up: Please sign up here by 23 Nov 2025.
First Meeting
Date: 23 Oct 2025 (Thursday)
Time: 5-6.30pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong
Guest Reading Group Leader:
Dr. Gabriel Antonio Solis
Postdoctoral Fellow
Centre for Cultural Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Readings:
Ebner, Nina. “A borderland analytic: Thinking uneven development from the US–Mexico borderlands.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 55, no. 4 (2023): 1080-1088.
Ebner, Nina, and Gabriel Antonio Solis. “Nearshoring and the Militarization of the US-Mexico Border,” NACLA Report on the Americas 55, no. 4 (2023): 409-416.
Ahmed, Manan. “Adam’s Mirror: The Frontier in the Imperial Imagination,” Economic & Political Weekly, 46:13 (2011): 60-65.
Ho, Denise Y. “Hong Kong, China: The Border as Palimpsest.” Made in China Journal 5, no. 3 (2020): 94-101.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
Sign up: Please sign up here by 17 Oct 2025.
Schedule for Previous Years
2024-25 Academic Year
Second Meeting
Date: 6 March 2025 (Thursday)
Time: 5-7pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong
Guest Speaker:
Prof. Vincenz Serrano
Literary and Cultural Studies Program, Ateneo de Manila University /
Department of Cultural & Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Readings:
Ingold, Tim. “Ways of Mind-Walking: Reading, Writing, Painting.” Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (Routledge, 2022) (pp.237-253)
Ingold, Tim. “On Not Knowing and Paying Attention: How to Walk in a Possible World.” Irish Journal of Sociology, 31:1 (2023): 20-36.
Serrano, Vincenz. “If You Can’t See My Mirrors I Can’t See You.” The Collapse of What Separates Us (High Chair, 2010) (pp.8-9)
Serrano, Vincenz. “Short Walks.” The Collapse of What Separates Us (High Chair, 2010) (pp.23-27)
Serrano, Vincenz. When a Map Is Folded Cities Come Closer, When Clothes Are Unpacked Cities Fall Apart (High Chair, 2016)
Sign up: Please sign up here by 28 February 2025.
First Meeting
Date: 6 November 2024 (Wednesday)
Time: 5-7pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong
Guest Reading Group Leader:
Prof. Wesley Attewell
Department of Geography, University of Hong Kong
Readings:
Mattern, Shannon. “Introduction: Cities, Trees & Algorithms.” A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Princeton University Press, 2021)
Mattern, Shannon. “Chapter 1: City Console.” A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Princeton University Press, 2021)
Mattern, Shannon. “Chapter 2: A City Is Not a Computer.” A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Princeton University Press, 2021)
McElroy, Erin. “Dis/possessory Data Politics: From Tenant Screening to Anti-Eviction Organizing.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 47:1 (2022): 54-70.
McElroy, Erin. “The work of landlord technology: The fictions of frictionless property management.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 42:4 (2024): 456-475.
Sign up: Please sign up here by 31 October 2024.
2023-24 Academic Year
Fourth Meeting
Date: 28 May 2024 (Tuesday)
Time: 5-7pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong
Guest Reading Group Leader:
Prof. Creighton Connolly
Department of Urban Planning and Design, University of Hong Kong
Readings:
Barua, Maan (2023). Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology. University of Minnesota Press. (selected chapters)
Saguin, Kristian Karlo (2022). Urban Ecologies on the Edge: Making Manila’s Resource Frontier. University of California Press. (selected chapters)
Sign up: Please sign up here by 20 May 2024.
Third Meeting
Date: 22 February 2024 (Thursday)
Time: 6-8pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong
Guest Reading Group Leader:
Professor Cecilia Chu
Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Readings:
DeSilvey, Caitlin (2017). Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Saving. University of Minnesota Press. (Chap. 7 & 8)
Gandy, Matthew (2022). Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space. MIT Press, 2022. (Chap. 5)
Sign up: Please sign up here by 18 February 2024.
Second Meeting
Date: 24 November 2023 (Friday)
Time: 4pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong
Readings:
Amin, Ash, and Nigel Thrift. “Prologue.” Seeing Like a City (John Wiley & Sons, 2016).
Amin, Ash, and Nigel Thrift. “How Cities Think.” Seeing Like a City (John Wiley & Sons, 2016).
Wilson, Ara. “The Infrastructure of Intimacy.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 41:2 (2016): 247-280.
Sign up: Please sign up here.
First Meeting
Date: 20 October 2023 (Friday)
Time: 4-5:30pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong
Readings:
Easterling, Keller. “Extra-statecraft.”
Escobar, Arturo. “Introduction.” Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (Duke University Press, 2018)
Sign up: Please sign up here.
2022-23 Academic Year
Fourth Meeting
Date: 30 May 2023 (Tuesday)
Time: 4-5:30pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong + Zoom
Readings:
Simone, AbdouMaliq. “Introduction: Exposing the Surrounds as Urban Infrastructure” The Surrounds: Urban Life within and beyond Capture (Duke University Press, 2022)
Simone, AbdouMaliq. “Without Capture: From Extinction to Abolition” The Surrounds: Urban Life within and beyond Capture (Duke University Press, 2022)
Sign up: Please sign up here.
Third Meeting
Date: 21 March 2023 (Tuesday)
Time: 4pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong + Zoom
Guest Reading Group Leader:
Professor Dietrich Neumann
Professor for the History of Modern Architecture and Director of Urban Studies, Brown University
Readings:
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Painter of Modern Life.” The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, translated & edited by Jonathan Mayne (Phaidon Press, 1995)
Clark, T. J. “The View from Notre-Dame.” The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers. Revised ed. (Princeton University Press, 2000)
Harvey, David. “The Cartographic Imagination: Balzac in Paris.” Cosmopolitan Geographies: New Locations in Literature and Culture, edited by Vinay Dharwadker (Routledge, 2001)
Sign up: Please sign up here.
Second Meeting
Date: 20 January 2023 (Friday)
Time: 4-5:30pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong + Zoom
Readings:
Furuhata, Yuriko. “Introduction.” Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control (Duke University Press, 2022)
Furuhata, Yuriko. “Cloud Control: Tear Gas, Cybernetics, and Networked Surveillance.” Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control (Duke University Press, 2022)
Martínez-San Miguel, Yolanda, and Michelle Stephens. “Introduction: “Isolated Above, but Connected Below”: Toward New, Global, Archipelagic Linkages.” Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Towards New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations, edited by Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Michelle Stephens (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2020)
Pugh, Jonathan. “The Affirmational Turn to Ontology in the Anthropocene: A Critique.” Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Towards New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations, edited by Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Michelle Stephens (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2020)
Sign up: Please sign up here.
First Meeting
Date: 18 November 2022 (Friday)
Time: 4-6pm
Venue: City University of Hong Kong + Zoom
Readings:
Ameel, Lieven, et al. “Introduction”. The Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History (Routledge, 2020)
Cuff, Dana, et al., “Introducing Urban Humanities,” Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City (MIT Press, 2020)
Sign up: Please sign up here.
Enquiries
For enquiries, please contact the network co-convenors, Klaudia Lee (hiuylee@cityu.edu.hk) or Elmo Gonzaga (egonzaga@cuhk.edu.hk).
Transnational Urban Narratives Network 