PhD student research interests
Kai-Yeung Fung (Paul)
My PhD research (2007-2010) can be briefly positioned in four areas:
- 19th century literature
- critical theory
- novel as a genre
- Russian literature.
My primary research is on Fyodor Dostoevsky and the representation of epilepsy in the 19th century urbanity. According to medical records, Dostoevsky had an epileptic fit at least in every three weeks since the age of twenty-five. Clinical study is not my focus. Instead, through examining all Dostoevsky's writings, the project attempts to understand the meaning of modernity by reading epilepsy as a mode of urban existence.
The research is conducted in three steps: first, to look at the history of epilepsy, then to treat epilepsy as an allegory of a mode of existence and lastly, to see how this mode of existence helps us to understand the 19th century city. The city which fascinates Dostoevsky is St. Petersburg. As he writes, 'Petersburg is the most fantastical city, with the most fantastical history of all the cities on earth'. I am interested in how epilepsy supplements the meaning of a city, which I see as a distinct marker of modernity.
Having come from the department of comparative literature in the University of Hong Kong, I am used to treat a literary work as a text that is not defined by author's intentions or any national values. A text can be architecture, a film, a novel, a painting, a poem. Part of my research is to see how epilepsy is represented in this textual community.