Circulations of Radio Sounds in Cold War Hong Kong

The project investigates the history of radio in Hong Kong during the Cold War period (1950s–1960s) at the intersection of literature and sound studies. It initiates a study of the institutional history of Radio Hong Kong (RHK) and Radio Rediffusion (RDF) and exemplary works of individual writer-broadcasters, which has received scanty scholarly attention if not been utterly neglected. Combining archival research with a comparative study of media and literary history, this project delineates the social and cultural relationships between radio broadcasting, airwave novel, and popular Hong Kong literature and film to understand how the particular aesthetic and rhetorical effect of radio had different inflections on the production in other media forms. This project sets out to offer a comprehensive picture of the radio network and assess the significance of a distinct Hong Kong aural culture.