Faculty of Arts and Humanities | University of Macau

人文學院中國語言文學系嘉賓講座: “廣義漢字文化圈和漢字音研究的新資料” – 鄭偉教授 FAH-DCLL Guest Lecture : "New Evidence in the Study of Chinese Character Phonology and the Extended Sinosphere" by Prof. Zheng Wei
2025-11-05 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | E21-3118

"New Opportunities in the International Art & Design Education" UM Global Academic Symposium’s First Art & Design Parallel Forum - 「國際化藝術設計教育中的新機遇」 澳大全球學術研討會首次藝術設計論壇
2025-11-06 10:30 - 17:00 | UM Gallery Auditorium (E1-B1002)

ELC-EWCC: Holidays Listening Sessions
2025-11-06 15:00 - 2025-11-20 16:00 | E7-1022
Dear students,
The semester is winding down, and it’s time to get into the holiday spirit! ★* ✧˚.
Join us for the EWCC Holidays Listening Sessions, hosted by Kate, Henny, and Kirk, where you can unwind, sip steaming hot chocolate, and enjoy your favorite Christmas and New Year tunes in a warm, festive atmosphere.
We’ll gather in E7–1022 for two cozy afternoons of music, games, and conversation. While the songs play♫ ♪, you’ll test your English listening skills with fun activities like bingo, live voting, and group discussions—all while savoring that perfect winter drink. *o(≧∀≦｡)o

Location: E7–1022, EWCC
Dates: Thursdays, November 6 & 20, 2025
Time: 3:00–4:00 PM

Whether you come for the English practice, the Christmas vibes, or simply the free hot chocolate, this is your chance to relax, meet new friends, and celebrate the joy of the season. ♫ ♪
Seats are limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.
❅ Participants will receive 1 smart point and 10 cs points.❅
▷ Register here:
https://umac.au1.qualtrics.com jfe/ form/ SV_4SWI9d9PqTu68U6
For any enquiries, contact us at fah_elc_ells@um.edu.mo.
Come for the English learning and holiday tunes—stay for the hot chocolate. ♫ ♬
We can’t wait to celebrate with you!
Best wishes,
English Writing and Communication Centre (EWCC)
English Language Centre
Faculty of Arts and Humanities

FAH-DENG Guest Lecture: "From Technological to Digital Reproducibility: Teaching Literature in the Age of A.I"
2025-11-06 16:00 - 17:30 | E21A-G038
Abstract:
Since the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022, intense debates have emerged within the humanities—and literary studies in particular—concerning the practice of teaching literature at universities. In this talk, I will explore these debates through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s concept of “technological reproducibility,” developed during the 1930s to describe the emergence of photography and film.
Today, much digital content—including digitized literature—is instantly reproducible, transmissible, and marketable via online platforms and networks. Literary texts can also be repurposed as training data for Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, which may then be used by writers and students to generate new content. These developments raise critical questions: Is digital reproducibility fundamentally different from what Benjamin termed technological reproducibility? And if so, what are the implications not only for the teaching of literature but also for literature itself?
Biography:
Angus Nicholls is Professor of Comparative Literature and German at Queen Mary University of London. His books include Myth and the Human Sciences (2015), Goethe’s Concept of the Daemonic (2006), Friedrich Max Müller and the Role of Philology in Victorian Thought (co-edited with John Davis, 2017), and Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought (co-edited with Martin Liebscher, 2010). He was formerly co-editor of the journals History of the Human Sciences (Sage) and Publications of the English Goethe Society (Routledge). His current book project is a presentist history of Comparative Literature as an academic discipline, focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century.

From Hanzi to Kanji: How Chinese Characters Were Shaped into "Japanese Style"? - 漢字，如何被塑造成「和風」的形與意？
2025-11-07 14:30 - 17:30 | E34-G011

CIUM’s Academic Seminar – The Contemporary Evolution of Rhetorical Word Formation Morphology
2025-11-07 15:30 - 17:00 | E21-3118

Key Concepts of Ancient Egyptian Religion - 古埃及宗教的核心概念
2025-11-07 18:00 - 21:00 | E34-G011

「萬里千尋」電影放映會暨學術座談: 探尋張大千海外藝術人生 - “OF COLOR AND INK”Film Screening and Panel Discussion: Exploring Chang Dai-chien’s Life and Art Overseas
2025-11-11 14:30 - 17:30 | Student Activity Centre Theatre (E31-G001)

Popular participation versus the ‘Rule of Experts’ in 19th and 20th century European and American conservation , Prof. Miles Glendinning
2025-11-11 15:00 - 17:30 | E21-G002

CIUM’s Academic Seminar – Segmentation of Chinese SVO Sentences
2025-11-12 14:30 - 16:00 | E21-3118

FAH/DPHIL Lecture Series – "The Question of the Way and Errant Wandering: On the Transcultural Entanglement of Lǎozǐ and Parmenides" by Prof. Fabian Heubel, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
2025-11-12 17:30 - 19:00 | E21A-3118
Microsoft Teams: https://go.um.edu.mo/7mnk1eav

Abstract
In his lectures on the Presocratic philosopher Parmenides from 1932, Martin Heidegger not only speaks about the “question of Being” (Seinsfrage), but also about the “question of the Way” (Wegfrage). This is understandable, because Parmenides distinguishes three ways. I would like to assume that Parmenides and Lǎozǐ ask both the “question of Being” and the “question of the Way”. In the case of Parmenides, Being can be said to take precedence, although the two attach very different, even opposite, meanings to it. For Lǎozǐ, on the other hand, the Way is in the foreground.
For Parmenides, only the first way (the way of Being) is walkable, whereas the second way (the way of Non-being) is not. The third way is a way that ordinary people take, the way of the “double-headed” (δίκρανοι). Heidegger says about them: “they have their heads here and there, and that without noticing the ambiguity and suspecting it”. They go without a way, “in errancy”: “their whole perception is a soon this way, soon that way, a going back and forth, directionless, criss-crossing – πλαγκτός – erring. […] They do not just go in errancy – they are constantly in it and cannot get out of it.”
But what is the errancy of the double-heads? And what is the relation of the three ways in Parmenides to the “Way” (道) referred to by Lǎozǐ? In this talk, I will try to argue that Lǎozǐ defends the third way between being and non-being, by transforming it into a Way that wanders between “being-without” (無/無在) and “being-with” (有/有在).

Bio
Professor Fabian Heubel is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taipei. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Free University of Berlin. His main research interests include: comparative and transcultural philosophy, Classical and Modern Chinese philosophy, interpretations of Chinese philosophy in Western sinology, Critical Theory, contemporary German and French thought, aesthetics and philosophy of art.

FAH-DPORT-CIELA: Seminar by Professor Pedro Pombo on "Macau, from the ocean to the archives: maritime labour routes, emigration and Chinese heritage in the Mascarenes"
2025-11-13 18:00 - 19:30 | E21-1029
Dear Professors and Students,
We are most pleased to invite all to attend the following Seminar by Professor Pedro Pombo on “Macau, from the ocean to the archives: maritime labour routes, emigration and Chinese heritage in the Mascarenes” on Thursday, 13/11/2025, at 6:00pm in room E21-1029.

BIO
Professor Pedro Pombo
Lecturer at the Islands and Small States Institute, University of Malta
Pedro Pombo is a Lecturer at the Islands and Small States Institute of the University of Malta. Earlier he was a Marie Curie European Research Officer at the same institute with the project Heritage Ecologies, Culture, Resilience and Development in Island States, funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Commission.
After graduating in Decorative Arts and Design, Pedro received his PhD in Anthropology from ISCTE- IUL, Lisbon (2015) with an ethnographic exploration of space, belonging and local history in Southern Mozambique.
His research has focused on traces of Afro-Asian circulations through aesthetic and anthropological approaches, focusing on heritage, landscapes and memories in the Indian Ocean. He is co-author of the documentary “The Club” (2021), on the Goan diaspora in Tanzania, with Nalini Elvino de Sousa, funded by the RTP-Portuguese Television.
He was a fellow and received research grants from the IIAS-ACL, Leiden, The Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, Bayreuth University, Germany and the Cultural Institute of Macau.
His actual project investigates the role of heritages in promoting local economic development and social and environmental resilience in small island states and jurisdictions located in Europe and the Indian Ocean.

ABSTRACT
Macau, from the ocean to the archives: maritime labour routes, emigration and Chinese heritage in the Mascarenes

This presentation shares research on the role of Macao in the transoceanic transport of Chinese contract workers to the Western Indian Ocean world, and the cultural heritages, material and intangible, of Chinese origin in the archipelago of the Mascarenes, in the Southwestern Indian Ocean.
This work assumes a broad chronological scope, centred on the transport of contract workers from South China to the Mascarenes archipelago during the 19th century, with a special focus on the first decades of the system of indentured labour and taking us to the contemporary times and the Sino-Mauritian and Sino-Reunionese cultural presences.
The methodology is centred on an ethnographic approach, crossing archival research and heritage and cultural studies, and inciting dialogues between history and cultural landscapes, the past and the present, the archives and contemporary society. Following the presentation of the findings in archives in Mauritius and Reunion, I will explore the contemporary cultural landscapes of the Mascarenes through short vignettes that illustrate the ways history informs today’s insular cultures. Using the boutik sinwa (Chinese store in the Mauritian and Reunionese creoles) as a fundamental material, and intangible, heritage of life in the Mascarenes, I follow documentaries, artworks and published biographies to highlight how the first generations of Chinese migrants gave way to truly local communities.
IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

THE 3RD CONFERENCE ON EVIDENTIALITY AND ITS RELATED CATEGORIES
2025-11-15 09:00 - 2025-11-16 18:00 | E21-G035

“The Most Ancient and Convincing Example to Refute Racist Theories”: Ethnicity and Cultural Contact in Ancient Egypt - 「駁斥種族主義理論的最古老且最具說服力的例證」：古埃及的族群與文化交流
2025-11-18 18:00 - 20:00 | Room G011, Cultural Building, Lecture Hall (E34)

FAH/DPHIL Work-in-progress Seminar - "Can LLMs Outputs Classify as Testimonial-based Beliefs?" by Mr. Lai Hei Wai
2025-11-19 17:30 - 19:00 | E21A-3118
Microsoft Teams: https://go.um.edu.mo/rx3pei7o

Abstract
With the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), scholars are starting to discuss the epistemological problems related to them. Recently, there are literatures that argue on the topic of whether LLMs’ outputs can be classified as testimony. Scholars give arguments that they cannot be classified as testimony by the reason that LLMs do not satisfy varies conditions. This paper introduces and analyize these conditions. And further argues that even if LLMs can satisfy all the said conditions in the future. However, by way they understand the content of their own outputs is fundamentally different from humans. Therefore, we still cannot classify LLMs’ outputs as testimony.

Bio
Lai Hei Wai is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Macau. He began his studies at Fu Jen Catholic University BA in Philosophy (2009-2014) and MA in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at The University of Saint Joseph (2020-2023). His research interests focus on topics related to epistemology, particularly in the epistemology of testimony.

人文學院中國語言文學系嘉賓講座: “語言接觸中的借用和干擾——以甘青河湟地區的語言接觸為主” – 敏春芳教授 FAH-DCLL Guest Lecture : “Borrowing and Interference in Language Contact: Focusing on the Hehuang Region of Gansu and Qinghai Province” by Prof. Min Chunfang
2025-11-19 19:30 - 21:00 | E21-3118

人文學院中國語言文學系嘉賓講座: “〈燕丹子〉的命名策略與敘事建構” – 李小龍教授 FAH-DCLL Guest Lecture : "On the Naming Strategy and Narrative Construction of Yandanzi" by Prof. Li Xiaolong
2025-11-19 20:30 - 22:00 | E21-1046

人文學院中國語言文學系、中國歷史文化中心嘉賓講座: “關於《漢書·百官公卿表》的新認識”–張欣博士 FAH-DCLL & CCHC Guest Lecture: ‘New Understandings on “The Table of the Hundred Officials and Ministers” in The Hanshu’ by Dr. Zhang Xin
2025-11-20 09:30 - 11:00 | Cultural Building E34-G019

人文學院中國語言文學系、中國歷史文化中心嘉賓講座: “從《揅經室集》看阮元禮學研究”–井超教授 FAH-DCLL & CCHC Guest Lecture: “Ruan Yuan’s Scholarship on Rites: A Study Based on the Yanjingshi Ji” by Prof. Jing Chao
2025-11-20 11:00 - 12:30 | Cultural Building E34-G019

FAH-DENG: "AI, the Spectacle, and Marx: Who is using the tech and for what purposes?"
2025-11-21 11:00 - 12:30 | E21A-3118
Abstract:
Marx urged the proletariat not to rally against new kinds of machines per se, even if at first glance fears arose that these could further their subjugation and alienation. Rather, the point is who is deploying these technologies, and for what purposes. Behind the spectacle and moral panic about the new, there may be something very familiar, once we look more closely.
Fears of new machines and new technologies have been around for as long as they have emerged, with worries about the changes and dangers they will bring, and moral panics about the effects on people and society. There were early fears about the train, about physically riding it, but also about this new kind of mobility in society. There have been moral panics about all new kinds of media, such as books and television, each imagined to lead to delinquency and moral decline. Fears of the computer in the 1950s were perhaps the start of some of the spectacular fears we have about AI now, with imaginaries of human-mechanical hybridity and technological autonomy (Grenham, 2020). Although these were also rooted in wider fears about the new technologies of science and medicine, viewed through a trope of a ‘violation of the natural order’ (Carroll, 2004, p. 40). The ‘overreacher plot’ is well-trodden in science fiction and horror, where the scientist extends the boundaries of the natural and thereby creates a monster (Carroll, 2004, p. 118).
Following the advice of Marx, Critical Discourse Studies scholars have an important role in regard to AI. We need to look beyond the spectacle, the wild fantasies and moral panics, and consider carefully where this new technology is being deployed in a concrete sense, by whom, and for what underlying aims. And as is the job of CDS, to consider the effects of this on knowledge, on society and the wellbeing of people. In this talk I look at one small, yet concrete, case of using AI to manage levels of theft in stores in Japan. I use this to consider some of the kinds of questions we might, in the humanities, need to be asking.

Biography:
Gwen Bouvier (PhD, University of Wales) is a Distinguished Professor at Shanghai International Studies University, Institute of Language Science. Her main research interests are digital communication and civic debate on social media. Professor Bouvier’s publications have drawn on critical discourse analysis, multimodality based on social semiotics, and online ethnography. She is the Associate Editor for Social Semiotics and Book Review Editor for Discourse & Society, and the Journal of Multicultural Discourses. Her latest publications include the book Qualitative Research Using Social Media (Routledge, 2022) and the articles Cancel Culture and Trigger-Ready Fragmented Interest Groups (TV and New Media, 2025); Social Media and the New Canon of Use for Social Protests (Discourse, Context and Media, 2025); and Evaluating the American-Chinese Trade War on Chinese Social Media: Discourses of nationalism and rectifying a humiliating past (Critical Discourse Studies, 2025).

The Left Hand of God: Translation and Theology in the Work of Father Joaquim Guerra SJ
2025-11-21 14:30 - 16:00 | E34-1002

Historical Ethnography: Its Conditions of Possibility
2025-11-21 14:30 - 16:00 | E21-2001

FAH-DENG: "Workflow Matters: Comparing Human Translators and Multi-Agent LLMs in Literary Translation"
2025-11-21 16:00 - 17:00 | E21A-G049
Abstract:
The lecture explores how translation workflows affect performance in both human and AI literary translation. Large language models (LLMs) perform well in general translation but often struggle with literary nuance and coherence. Professional human translations are compared with two multi-agent LLM systems: one modeled on human practice with drafting and revision phases, and another redesigned for LLM capabilities with specialized agents for planning, style, and coherence. Expert evaluations show that both AI systems achieved accuracy comparable to human translators. The LLM-oriented workflow produced more stylistically rich and fluent translations, occasionally with creative additions, whereas the human-modeled workflow was concise but less cohesive. The findings suggest that workflows optimized for LLM capabilities can yield exceptional literary translations and, in certain aspects, surpass human performance.

Biography:
Kanglong Liu is Associate Professor in the Department of Language Science and Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research focuses on empirical approaches to translation studies, translation pedagogy, corpus-based translation research, and Hongloumeng translation studies. His work has appeared in leading journals such as Target, Perspectives, Lingua, Language Sciences, International Journal of Specialised Translation, System, International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, and Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. He serves as Associate Editor of Translation Quarterly, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (SSCI and AHCI), and Heliyon (SCI). He is the author of Corpus-Assisted Translation Teaching: Challenges and Issues (Springer, 2020) and co-editor of several volumes, including Translation and Interpreting in the Age of COVID-19 (Springer, 2023), Dream of the Red Chamber: Literary and Translation Perspectives (Routledge, 2023), Corpora in Interpreting Studies: East Asian Perspectives (Routledge, 2023), and Translation Studies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Routledge, 2025).

"Presence & Concept" the First Part: The 15th Florence International Biennale of Contemporary Art and Design - 「現場與理念」第一講：第15屆佛羅倫薩國際當代藝術與設計雙年展
2025-11-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Room G011, Cultural Building, Lecture Hall (E34)

宋代「文治復興」與華南宗族的形成—以功德祠和「五世祖」為例
2025-11-26 12:00 - 14:00 | E21-3118

FAH/DPHIL Lecture Series – "Can family relationships in Ruist traditions be transformed? Reconsiderations of Ruist families from the perspective of the transformative dimension of culture" by Prof. Lauren F. Pfister, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
2025-11-26 17:30 - 19:00 | E21A-G049
Microsoft Teams: https://go.um.edu.mo/7mnk1eav

Abstract
IFamily relationships in Ruist traditions have been regularly linked to specific virtues that distinguish the younger from the elderly, the female from the male, and have often been employed in various historical periods for promoting strongly patriarchal forms of familial relationships. Some Ruist advocates have described these virtues and their related relationships in absolute terms and have declared their eternal validity. Nevertheless, there are a number of perspectives from within Ruist classical works that suggest that there are ways in which some of these relationships might be transformed.

Bio
Lauren F. Pfister is an internationally recognized sinologist and comparative philosophy scholar. He is a Professor Emeritus from the Religion and Philosophy Department of Hong Kong Baptist University, and is currently the Rector of the Hephzibah Mountain Aster Academy, a humanities-based cross-cultural research center located in Colorado, USA. Previously he had served as an Associate Editor of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy. His studies of James Legge’s English translations of The Chinese Classics and The Sacred Books of China have received international attention. In the past decades, he has continued internationally to explore issues and dialogues related to theoretical matters dealing with traditional Chinese culture and its distinctives.

人文學院中國語言文學系嘉賓講座: “閩南方言智能語音數據庫研究” – 許彬彬教授 FAH-DCLL Guest Lecture : "Research on Intelligent Speech Database of Southern Min Dialect" by Prof. Xu Binbin
2025-11-26 19:30 - 21:00 | E21-3118 or via Voov

FAH/DPHIL: Philosophy Café
2025-11-27 16:00 - 17:30 | E21A-3118

人文學院中國語言文學系嘉賓講座: “守正創新:中國書法審美觀念的嬗變 ——兼論當代“醜書”產生的背景” – 張維佳教授
2025-11-27 19:30 - 21:00 | E21-3118 | Tencent Meeting

"Presence & Concept" the Second Part: Creative Practice of the "Self" in Contemporary Art Trends - 「現場與理念」第二講：當代藝術潮流中「我」的創作實踐
2025-11-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Room G011, Cultural Building, Lecture Hall (E34)
