Ackbar Abbas

Born 1942.

Ackbar Abbas is a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine/USA. Previously he was chair of comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong, China and also co-director of the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Cultures. His research interests include globalization, Hong Kong and Chinese culture, architecture, cinema, postcolonialism, and critical theory. His book Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1997. He previously served as a Contributing Editor to Public Culture, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.

His publications include articles in periodicals such as New Literary History, New German Critique, Public Culture, Positions, and Discourse as well as monographs on modern Chinese painting and contemporary photography. In addition to studies of Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, film theory, and postmodernism, Ackbar Abbas reflects on culture in Hong Kong.