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Dr Yoke-Sum Wong
Lecturer
Department: History
Degree: PhD. Dept. of Sociology, University of Alberta, Canada Thesis: "The Chaos of Dainties": Singapore and the Confections of Empire, 1819-1930 (January, 2003) M.Ed. Dept. of Educational Policy Studies (International/Intercultural Education) Thesis: Postmodernism, Representation and The Subaltern Woman (May, 1994) University of Alberta, Canada BA in English [Minor - Political Science], 1988-1991
Associated research centres and groups: Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe)
Current Teaching
Sociology 200 Course Convenor and Lecturer (Michaelmas & Lent)
Research Interests
I struggle with my work and for a definition. Always the gaps, always the shadows, always the passing idea - and the scattered thoughts like rotting leaves in puddle-water. As Clifford Geertz writes, there is no synoptic picture here.
How the message unfolds is a matter of interpretation.
I work with history (Imperialism and Postcolonialism), historiography and material culture, exploring the ambiguities of the relationships of colonial subjects, their exchanges, their worlds and their material landscapes. My work is inter-disciplinary -- informed by post-structuralism, post-colonialism and various schools of historiography, and cultural theories. Basically, I read anything that interests me and I get my best ideas from outside the discipline. I like the mess of details, and engaging with the structure of messiness. Home and abroad are singular and yet multiple spaces. I am fascinated with the flows of those worlds and how things, food, peoples and ideas moved around, asking for example, why a late 19th century Japanese print looks suspiciously like a Whistler painting? How do people know a landscape based on their own cultural maps? Why do 19th century homes in tropical places resemble Palladian villas? Why are there always three flying ducks on domestic interiors around the world? And how did they get there?
Connected to my work on imperial histories and their mobile cultures, is my interest in art and design, particularly modernism. Buildings and objects are richly textured narratives, built on a pointillist canvas of ideas, influences and experiences - too impossible to tell, too numerous to unfold. Therein lies, I believe, the sociological imagination - quirky and surreal and very, very wonderful to revel in.
Posts:
Part2 Director, Sociology Department
Managing and Responsible Editor, Journal of Historical Sociology (quarterly, Wiley-Blackwell), since year 1999
Course Consultant, Center for Social Studies, Warsaw, Poland.
Publications (selected)
"When there are no Pagodas on Pagoda Street: Navigating 19th Century Urban Singapore" Vol. 38 special issue of Environment and Planning A. (2006), 325-340.
Beyond (and Below) Incommensurability: The Aesthetics of the Postcard Common Knowledge V.8, #2 (Spring 2002), 333-356.
"The Sigh of the East: A Sense of Empire and Other Lingerings" Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 36(2) May 1999, pp. 269-282
"Modernism's Love Child:The Story ofHappy Architectures" in Devalued Currency: Elegiac Symposium on Paradigm Shifts Part 1 Common Knowledge (Duke U Press) Summer 2008
Twenty Years of the Journal of Historical Sociology Volume 1 - Essays on the British State eds. Derek Sayer & Yoke-Sum Wong Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell(May 2008)
Twenty Years of the Journal of Historical Sociology Volume 2 - Challenging the Field eds. Derek Sayer and Yoke-Sum Wong Oxford, Wiley, Blackwell (May 2008)
Book Manuscript (in process)
The Aesthetics of Cute in Contemporary Japanese Art (Contracted to Palgrave-MacMillan New York),May 2011
Singapura: A History, 1819 - 1939 (under review, University of Liverpool Press)
Editing
Managing Editor of The Journal of Historical Sociology The Journal of Historical Sociology (JHS) is an international interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal, published quarterly by Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford since 1988 with over 2600 Institutional/Consortial (electronic and non-electronic) subscriptions.
Affiliations
Intermedia Research, Dept. of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/irs/IR/
Potential Doctoral Proposals
Theory, Material Culture, Cultural Studies, Historical Sociology, Design, Art and Architecture, Mobilities
Supervision
PhD Supervision:
Simone Britto (with Dr. Bulent Diken) - Completed (with minor revisions) October 2007
Thesis title: Negative Morality Prolegomena to any Moral Thinking after Auschwitz
Sergio Fava (with Professor John Law)http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/prospective/phd/students/fava.htm
Thesis Working Title: Designing Nightmares: Art and Science in Environmental Apocalypticism
Karolina Kazimierczak (with Professor Lucy Suchman) - Completed with no revisions, March 2009
Thesis Working Title: Linguistic Fantasies and Fantastic Worlds: On the Creative Use of Fictional Languages in the Non-fictional World.
Gail Crowther (with Professor Lynne Pearce)
Thesis Working Title: The Use of Secular Icons in the Construction of Personal Identity
Craig Hammond (with Dr. Graeme Gilloch)
Thesis Working Title: Ernst Bloch, Film & Fairy Tale Narrative: Journeys 'Towards-Home'.
Jack Nye (with Dr. Graeme Gilloch)
Thesis Working Title: Leo Lowenthal and the Sociology of Literature
Other Interests and Hobbies
I am happiest when wandering in the Rem Koolhaas designed spaces of Prada, New York, standing gobsmacked in front of Matisse's Red Studio in MoMa, simply being in the Tugenhadt Villa in Brno, Czech Republic, luxuriating in the Noel Coward Suite at The Eastern and Oriental, Penang, debating with my poodle -- like John Steinbeck did with his poodle Charley, collecting Hello Kittys and all manner of Maneki Nekos (lucky cats)-- and eating in sidewalk cafes and hawker stalls in South East Asia.
And my all time favourite album is still Neutral Milk Hotel's Aeroplane over the Sea.
Associated Keywords: Architecture, Art/cultural history, Cultural theory, Ethnography, Historiography, Landscape, Material culture, Memory, Mobilities, Modernism, Socio-Cultural Anthropology, Twentieth-century popular culture
Contact Details
Tel: (5)94932
Room: Bowland North, B18
Office Hour: By appointment
- FASS Intranet -
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Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YD
United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 1524 510851
Fax: +44 (0) 1524 510857
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