About this course

Overview:

CCHU9012 Body, Beauty and Fashion is part of the HKU newly adopted Common Core Curriculum. Previous to Fall 2010, this course was offered as a three-credit Broadening course. Given its huge popularity during the 12 years it was offered as a Broadening course, the University decided to expand Body, Beauty and Fashion into a six-credit course and incorporate it into the Common Core Curriculum.

As noted in the student handbook, all first-year HKU undergraduate students are required to take two six credit Common Core courses from two different Areas of Inquiry (AoI). This course falls under the Humanities AoI and is designed to help students see the interconnectedness and interdependence between body, beauty and fashion from a variety of perspectives.  The overall aim of Body, Beauty and Fashion is to examine how individual level issues (like self esteem, stigma and identity) shape and are shaped by community level issues (mass media), societal level issues (gender) and global level issues (globalization and westernization).

Learning Outcomes:

The learning outcomes for this course are in keeping with the overarching goals of the Common Core Curriculum and emphasize developing core intellectual skills as well as reinforce core values and global responsibility. As such, students are required to:

  1. Describe, explain and differentiate the various sociological, psychological, anthropological and biological theories and ideas related to body, beauty and fashion.
  2. Extrapolate key elements of various theories regarding beauty, body image, fashion and gender and apply to their everyday experiences.
  3. Assess and critique messages regarding beauty, body image and fashion and place these messages in both a local and global context.
  4. Express a comprehensive understanding of the complex relationship between gender and beauty and how culture and history impact this relationship.
  5. Critically assesses social messages regarding body, beauty and fashion and discuss the social responsibility of accepting, not judging beauty as they explore alternative concepts of beauty that question conventional definitions.