What is ‘The Punctum’ about?

Why is it launched and who are the target readers?

The CIE academic e-journal ‘The Punctum’ currently aims to showcase scholarly and creative works accomplished by lecturer academics of the English Team and the Cultural Studies and Creative Industries (CSCI) programme in Division of Arts and Languages. 

Our primary motive is to unlock colleagues’ enthusiasm about sharing their views on artistic as well as socio-cultural topics – let alone their individual scholarly specialist areas. While the e-journal first and foremost tends to facilitate an unremitting flow of internal intellectual interactions within the Division, it also endeavours to enable such dialogues to reach external individuals or groups of academics as well as students who may as well crave for a breath of fresh scholarly and creative air.

With its banner ICON so prominently and conveniently shown on the entrance webpage of the Division of Arts and Languages in the College website, the target readers of the e-journal simply include anyone interested ardently in art, language, literary and cultural studies.  

What are the key features?

The name of the e-journal ‘The Punctum’ – inspired by the French cultural theorist Roland Barthes – denotes as well as describes most of the contemporary cultural and intellectual tastes which are always paradoxically being the peripheral, the unexpected, the insignificant, and above all, being the binary opposite of the ‘studium’ (viz. ideological correctness and righteousness).

One of the key features of the e-journal is that contributors’ works will not be confined to the traditional types or genres. In other words, refraining from following usual dogmatic distinctions or boundaries governing selection of publications, we select any works that possess intellectual value, regardless of their forms being either critical prose and creative poetry, or visual images and (short) films, so that colleagues can own a much larger space to display their imaginative efforts.  

Although ‘The Punctum’ is planned to be published on an annual basis, each yearly ISSUE is very likely to be supplemented with ‘special issues’ from time to time – depending on special events arising; this may include, for example, commemorating certain artists or literati on the one hand and addressing current topical issues on the other.

Contents of ‘ISSUE ONE’

Officially launched in November 2022, ‘ISSUE ONE’ of the e-journal comprises six works in a variety of genres ranging from photographic album, through critical essay, to creative writing:

• Dr. Peter Lok’s mini photo album entitled ‘Hong Kong – a Decisive Moment’ is full of momentary and fleeting insights which he attributes to luck, but one may rather observe patience and skills…

• The article of Dr. Sidney Chan belongs obviously to that of a keen cultural scholar, reacting to a topical socio-economic concern, that is, NFTs, very quickly and sharply…  

• Dr. Bernie Mak echoes such academic acumen by providing us with a full array of rhetorical questions in relation to EMI as well as being an EMI teacher in Hong Kong...

• Dr. Pablo Tsoi’s apparently ‘over-ambitious’ essay tries to trace the evolution of portraiture in Western art – from a comparative perspective...

• As most of us are still trying very hard, having internalised the values of political correctness for so long, to add bricks onto that ponderous ideological architecture, Ms. Fiona Wong’s poems and images show us ‘ruins’…

• Dr. Yvonne Wong’s rhyme speaks in such a nostalgically contemporary (or vice versa) voice that resembles Yeats (the poetess herself may probably agree) and Li Qingzhao (one might also add).

Read now: www.cie.hkbu.edu.hk/the-punctum/