Ackbar Abbas is a professor of

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

. Previously he was chair of comparative literature at the

University of Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is a public research university in Pokfulam, Hong Kong. It was founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese by the London Missionary Society and formally established as the University of ...

and also co-director of the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Cultures. His research interests include

globalization Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, th ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

and

Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the Cradle of civilization#Ancient China, world's earliest cultures, said to originate five thousand years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia called the Sinosphere as a whole ...

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

, cinema,

postcolonialism Postcolonialism (also post-colonial theory) is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and extractivism, exploitation of colonized pe ...

, and

critical theory Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are ...

. His book ''Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance'' was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1997. He previously served as a Contributing Editor to ''

Public Culture ''Public Culture'' is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary academic journal of cultural studies published by Duke University Press. It is sponsored by the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. ''Public Culture'' h ...

,'' an academic journal published by

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 ...

Early life and education

Born in 1947, Abbas was raised in Kennedy Town, Hong Kong to a family of Indian, Malaysian, and Chinese descent.interview with Abbas
/ref> Ackbar Abbas holds an MPhil from the

. He is married to Chinese vocalist and writer Liu Sola.

Contributions

Abbas has written extensively on Hong Kong culture, architecture, and cinema.

Publications

Books

*''Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance.'' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. *''Internationalizing Cultural Studies.'' Co-edited with John Erni. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. *''Chen Danqing: Painting After Tiananmen.'' Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, Cultural Studies Series No. 6, 1995. *''The Provocation of Jean Baudrillard.'' Ed. Hong Kong: Twilight Books, 1990. *''Literature and Anthropology.'' Co-edited with Jonathan Hall. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 1986. *''Rewriting Literary History.'' Edited with T.W. Wong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1984. *''Literary Theory Today.'' Edited with T.W. Wong. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 1981.

Editing

*Book Series Editor (with Wimal Dissanayake), ''The New Hong Kong Cinema.'' University of Hong Kong Press, 2002–present. *Special issue editor (with Wu Hung), ''Hong Kong 1997: the Place and the Formula.'' ''Public Culture'', May 1997.

Essays

*"Culture as Event in China’s Socialist Market Economy," in ''Proceedings of the 2005 Venice Biennale'', ed. Robert Storr, forthcoming. *"Faking Globalization," in ''Other Cities, Other Worlds: Urban Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age'', ed. Andreas Huyssen (2008). Reprinted in ''A Visual Culture Reader'', ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff, 3rd ed., (2012). *"The Fake as Anthropological Object," in Konzept Böll. Thema 2: Alles eins? Die Globale Zukunft von Kultur und Demokratie (forthcoming). *"Asian Phantasmagorias of the Interior," in ''HK Lab II: An Experience of Hong Kong's Interior Spaces'', ed. Laurent Gutierrez, Valérie Portefaix, and Laura Ruggeri (Hong Kong: Map Book Publishers, 2005), 290–298. *"The Turns and Returns of Beauty," in ''Uber Schonheit/About Beauty'' (Berlin: House of World Cultures, 2005), 91–103. *"Framing the City Through Cinema," in ''Migrating Images'' (Berlin: House of World Cultures, 2004), 112–118.

References

External links

Faculty profile from University of California Irvine
{{DEFAULTSORT:Abbas, Ackbar Hong Kong emigrants to the United States University of California, Irvine faculty Living people Alumni of the University of Hong Kong Academic staff of the University of Hong Kong 1947 births