“Port Cities, Periodicals, and Literary Histories”

Tuesday, 13 October 2026, 10:15–11:15 a.m.

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“Port Cities, Periodicals, and Literary Histories,” Dr. Klaudia Hiu Yen Lee, City University of Hong Kong

Port cities played a pivotal role in connecting places across the world; at the same time, their liminal or intermediary position—located at the juncture between land and sea—also made them key locales capturing the tension between motion and stasis, fluidity and friction. Port cities were also key sites where periodicals were produced, circulated, and read, especially amid enhanced global connectivity and trade networks during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This lecture will start with reflections on key imaginative possibilities associated with Asian port cities in literature produced during the period before proceeding to draw on examples from periodicals such as Odds and Ends: An Illustrated Journal (1896–97), China Punch (1867–68, 1872–75), North China Daily News (1850–1951) and The Straits Chinese Magazine (1897–1907), to discuss, firstly, the influence and adaptation of the English periodical form in Asian port cities, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai, and, secondly, how anglophone periodicals sought to establish a transnational readership while engaging with topical issues in local contexts. It will then focus on selected textual examples of creative works, such as short stories and poetry, published in periodicals in Hong Kong, such as South China Morning Post (1903–) and China Mail (1845–1974), to discuss how the literary spaces created in periodicals can offer alternative points of view or imaginative possibilities that can shed light on the tension and fissures in colonial society that might not often be captured in official colonial narratives. While the intersection of localized concerns and transnational engagement in anglophone periodicals could construct a sense of place and history, this lecture will also show that, what these periodicals and the narratives sought to represent, imagine, or exclude, would always reveal only part of a place’ (literary) histories and cultures. This will then lead to final reflections on the challenges of uncovering different voices and perspectives in periodical research. 

Short Bio: Dr Klaudia Lee is an Associate Professor at the Department of English, City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and culture, periodical studies, spatiality, comparative and world literature. She has published in international journals including English Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Journal of Victorian Culture, and Victorian Periodicals Review. Lee is the author of the monographs, Spatial Stories and Intersecting Geographies: Hong Kong, Britain, and China, 1890–1940 (Liverpool University Press, 2025), and Charles Dickens and China, 1895–1915: Cross-Cultural Encounters (Routledge, 2017). She is also the co-editor (with Sharin Schroeder) of Cities and Fantasy Across Cultures, 1830–1930: Urban Imaginaries and Transnational Encounters (Liverpool University Press, 2026), and (with Eli Park Sorensen) of World Literature: Approaches, Practices, and Pedagogy (Routledge, 2025). She is the co-founder of Transnational Urban Narratives Network and an executive council member of the Society for Global Nineteenth Century Studies. She is an associate editor of The Explicator, and a submissions editor of Victorian Periodicals Review and Journal of Victorian Culture.

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