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Global Humanities Distinguished Lecture with Hsiung Ping-chen

Jun 30, 2015 | 06:00 PM c.t.
Hsiung Ping-chen | The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Hsiung Ping-chen | The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Envisioning a Eurasian Humanities Exchange

Professor Hsiung Ping-chen is currently the Director at the Research Institute for the Humanities at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2009 to 2011, and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Central University from 2004 to 2007. Also, Prof Hsiung has been serving as the Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taipei since 1990, and K.T. Li Chair at Central University in Taiwan since 2006. An internationally renowned scholar in her field, she has also made remarkable achievements in academic administration.


Like Europe, China or Asia has a long and sprawling civilization. And like China or Asia, Europe or Germany has their own humanities traditions. In this global age, my talk is to revisit with the audience the institutional evolution and intellectual substances, as these traditions and institutions are trying to engage each other.

China, or Chinese studies as its modern academic embodiment, can be and has been represented from both within or outside its border both politically and intellectually. My essay will begin by giving an instructional outline of how Chinese history and culture, as a traditional heritage, had been established as “national humanities” in the early 20th century. It will then take the instance of “the culture circle of the Han-Chinese Script (漢字文化圈)”, as proposed by Japanese scholars to look at the problematik of the “Chineseness” against the millennia-old backdrop of common East Asian stakeholding of this cultural tradition, and its later implications. Furthermore, it will examine the post-war academic and social developments in Hong Kong and Taiwan as representing viable and critical alternatives to the mainland Chinese interpretation of, for example, Chinese history and Confucian philosophy. Positioned from these perspectives from Chinese diasporic vices as well as the sinological views internationally, I will then like to dwell upon the “national” as opposed to “non-national” characters of China as a civilization and a subject and object of investigation.

Outline:

(I) Introduction
(II) Evolution of Chinese Humanities---at Home and Abroad
(III) Sinological Studies in Europe and the Regional Studies Heritage
(IV) Western Civilization as Represented in China and Asia
(V) Envisioning a Conversation and Common Future
(VI) Conclusion

Since there had been an aspiration to organize a European-Asian Humanities Summit here in Berlin, in the near future, the presentation above is to foreground this endeavor to add to its reflectivity and depth

The event is organized in cooperation with the Thematic Network Principles of Cultural Dynamics.

Lecture in English.

Time & Location

Jun 30, 2015 | 06:00 PM c.t.

Freie Universitaet Berlin, Seminarzentrum, Room L 113, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin