2013
Asia in the Humanities/Humanities in Asia Forum
The
Crisis in Humanities: What Can the Study of Asia Offer?
with
presentations by
David
Schaberg
Dean
of Humanities and Professor of Asian Languages & Cultures,
UCLA
Terms
of Engagement in Academia East and West
and
Ping-chen
Hsiung
Director,
Research Institute for the Humanities and Professor of History, Chinese
University of Hong Kong
Humanities
over the longue durée: The Case of Modern China
Monday,
October 21, 2013
4:00
PM - 6:00 PM
UCLA
Faculty Center
Hacienda
Room
A
light reception will follow.
The humanities as a collection of research and teaching
fields are being challenged across North America and Europe from within the
university, by administrators, faculty and students shaping curricula and
choosing majors, as well as from without, by policy makers and the wider public
scrutinizing economic investment and the value of a higher education. In debates
often pitting the economic and utilitarian value of scientific and technical
knowledge against the virtues of critical and creative thinking learned through
a humanities education, the stakes are high for the allocation of resources as
well as the perceived role of education itself to future citizens and societies
as a whole. In these debates, the study of Asia has been a minor aspect of the
crisis and has to date held a modest position in discussions of how to respond
to it. Opportunistically, it might be argued that an understanding of Asian
languages and cultural traditions can only enhance the competitive advantage of
our future citizens in a global environment. Deep study of Asian intellectual
traditions and historical frameworks also point toward new paradigms in
humanities scholarship itself. Surprisingly, perhaps to humanists in the West,
the humanities are being funded and promoted in many parts of Asia and are seen
as essential to political and economic policy and public discourse. What might
we learn from the approach to humanities in Asia and how might the study of
Asian humanities be part of response to the crisis of humanities in American
academia?
In the Asia in the Humanities/Humanities in Asia 2013 Forum,
David Schaberg, UCLA dean of humanities, and Ping-chen Hsiung, former dean of
humanities at both Chinese University of Hong Kong and National Central
University Taiwan, will present remarks based on their scholarly and
administrative experiences. Their expertise will inform a discussion of the
larger issues of the current crisis and future place of the humanities at
American universities like UCLA.
The Asia Institute's initiative on the Humanities in
Asia/Asia in the Humanities brings together scholars from the fields of history,
literature, religion, and the arts working across time periods and Asian spaces
to develop new frames of research and pedagogy. For further information about
the initiative and its programs, please visit our website at http://international.ucla.edu/asia/humanities/.
