Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone

Thursday, October 16, 2025

6 to 7:30 pm

20 Cooper Square, 3rd fl lobby

Please join the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality for a book launch and discussion of Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone, with author Alvin K. Wong. A limited number of free copies will be available at the event. The event will conclude with a catered reception.

In Unruly Comparison Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone, Alvin K. Wong examines queerness in Hong Kong through a transdisciplinary analysis of Sinophone literature, cinema, visual culture, and civil society. Moving beyond Eurocentrism in queer theory and China-centrism in area studies, Wong frames Hong Kong as a model for global comparison by theorizing a method of unruly comparison—acknowledging the incommensurability of cultural texts and queer figures across different temporal and spatial locations. Here, unruly comparison positions Hong Kong as an undefinable time-space that troubles historicist, colonial, and China-centric renderings of the city as merely a site of British colonial legacy, Chinese rule, or global capital. Wong analyzes queer interracial desire in WWII; a cinema of gay male cosmopolitanism; queer intimacy among migrant workers; trans visuality and legality; cross-border sex work; and the queer diaspora of Hong Kong after the 2019 protests. Through Wong’s readings, Hong Kong becomes a queer region of racial, gender, and sexual incommensurability. By foregrounding the friction, asymmetry, and perverse juxtapositions of unruly comparison of Hong Kong with the Sinophone world, Wong reframes key debates in queer theory and East Asian studies.

This event is free & open to the public. Registration is required. To register for in-person attendance, please complete this form. 

Alvin K. Wong is Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. He is also the Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures. His research covers Hong Kong literature and cinema, Sinophone studies, queer theory, and transnational feminism. His book Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone is published by Duke University Press in 2025. He has also published in journals such as Journal of Lesbian Studies, Gender, Place &; Culture, Culture, Theory, and Critique, Cultural Dynamics, Continuum, Diacritics, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Interventions, and Screen. He also coedited the volume Keywords in Queer Sinophone Studies (Routledge, 2020). Alvin is the editor of the journal Continuum and Chair of the Society of Sinophone Studies.

This event is co-sponsored by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU and the Department of East Asian Studies.

For more information, please contact the NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at csgs@nyu.edu.

Accessibility note: This venue has an elevator and is accessible for wheelchair users. There are single-stall, all gender restrooms, and a lactation room available. If you have any access needs, please email csgs@nyu.edu.