Date: 24th November, 2025 (Monday)
Time: 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Venue: The Good Bridge, 4/F, Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Venue: Faculty Conference Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong
Registration is required. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
- For HKU members (HKU Portal login is required): https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=103739
- For non-HKU members: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=103739
“There is nothing new under the sun,” says the author of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Christian Bible. This, with some provocative simplification, could well be the epigram for human cultural production, in which we constantly see the phenomena of recurring symbols and archetypes, narrative patterns, allusion, sampling, and outright imitation. The recurrence of expression has been addressed to various extents and in various ways by a wide range of famous thinkers and scholars including Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Northrop Frye, Joseph Campbell, Noam Chomsky, and Harold Bloom. This talk will critically examine recurrences and returns in cultural expression, taking reference from the realms of literature, film, and popular culture. What, as scholars, producers and consumers of culture, can we do about such commonalities? Can we consider taxonomies of recurrence as a helpful critical framework? Can this approach reveal anything significant about human society and the ways in which we interact with each other? To what academic disciplines and areas of human activity can this be applied? Last and certainly not least, how do we avoid reductivity and oversimplification in this kind of approach? In short, can foundations of expression be meaningful and not hollow, and if so, how do we do that?
Robbie B. H. Goh has been Professor and Provost of the Singapore University of Social Sciences since 2021. Prior to that he was Professor at the National University of Singapore, where he held various leadership appointments including Head of the Department of English Language and Literature, Deputy Director of the Asia Research Institute, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He has published mainly in the fields of Indian Anglophone literature, Christianity in Asia, and the semiotics of popular culture. A literature scholar by original training, much of his work also seeks to incorporate the methodologies of other disciplines such as linguistics, human geography, history and religious studies. Among his publications are the books Christopher Nolan: Filmmaker and Philosopher (2022, Bloomsbury Academic); Language, Space and Cultural Play (2020, Cambridge University Press, co-authored with Lionel Wee); Protestant Christianity in the Indian Diaspora (2018, State University of New York Press); and Contours of Culture: Space and Social Difference in Singapore (2005, Hong Kong University Press). He has also authored more than 100 academic articles, in a wide range of edited volumes and journals including Studies in the Novel, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Urban Studies, Asian Studies Review, Social Semiotics, and others.
