creative historical writing

As  part  of  a  project  of  “creative  historical  writing”,  you  will  write  about  a historical  event  that  happened  to/in  Hong  Kong,  in  the  voice  of  a  contemporary,  real  or fictional.

  • For example, you could be a British trader in China, writing, in 1841, a letter to the wife they have left behind in England, about the ongoing (first) Opium War, commiserating about the  difficulties  of  trading  with  the  Qing    Or  you  could  be  a  Shanghainese entrepreneur fleeing the closing days of the Chinese Civil War and establishing their business in Hong Kong.
  • While the body text shall be written entirely from the point of view of the character you have chosen, you  must  justify  what  you  put  in  her/his  mouth  with  the  use  of  numerous  footnotes explaining the situation then, as described in historical documents or the academic literature. For  example,  if  you  are  an  immigrant  textile  worker  describing  to  her  family  back  in Guangdong  the  working  conditions  in  the  factory  she  works  at,  you  should  quote,  in footnotes,  contemporaneous  newspaper  reports,  academic  books  or  articles  that  support  the fictionalized  description  you  are

 
It  is  a  work  of  “creative  fictional  history”,  so  to speak: you are encouraged to be creative in the character and events you choose to write on, but you must be accurate about the historical events you are describing! This assignment must be backed up by at least 4-5  good  quality  sources  (i.e.  academic  journal  articles,  academic  books,  contemporaneous newspaper articles).
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creative historical writing
creative historical writing