In Memory of Dr. Yau Ka-fai

Message from the Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities
Sept. 11, 2008

It is with great sadness that we inform colleagues of the death of Dr
YAU Ka-fai, a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Honorary Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature.  Dr. Yau was also an alumnus of the University of Hong Kong (BA and MPhil), and he wrote a dissertation entitled Of Graphology: Notions of Space & Time in Contemporary Cultures, under the direction of Professor Ackbar Abbas. After earning his doctorate at Stanford University, Dr. Yau returned to Comparative Literature to pursue research on literature, cinema and culture.  He published widely in the areas of Chinese literature and film, and his work can be found in Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Positions, Tamkang Review, Textual Practice, Wide Angle, and Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.

Obituary from Professor Jeremy Tambling, Honorary Professor, Department of Comparative Literature

Dr Yau Ka-fai, whose untimely death has just been announced, was one of the brightest and sharpest of Comparative Literature students in the mid-1990s.  I will always remember his enthusiasm and probing questions and willingness to learn in a course I taught on the body in western culture.  He went on to take an MPhil with Professor Ackbar Abbas, examining Chinese and Western texts alike within the context of the theory derived from cultural studies, and went on then to take a PhD at Stanford, where one of his teachers was Haun Saussy.  His equal interest in 'The Story of the Stone' and Swift and Balzac and Chinese and specifically Hong Kong film (which he approached through the theories of Gilles Deleuze) will always be remembered, and it is pleasing to know that he published his work, in journals such as Textual Practice, long before he finished his PhD.  In the autumn of 2005, he came to take up a post-doctoral fellowship in Comparative Literature.  My last memories of him are his giving me a poster of Wong Kar-wai's film, 'Happy Together', and sending me an article he had published on crowds.  Had he lived, he would surely have had an interesting career, and contributed much to the study of literature --Chinese, American, and European.