Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia (SCIEA)
The Second Annual Meeting 2010
"Cultural Interactions in East Asia"
Conference dates
Dates : May 7-8., 2010
Place : Conference Hall, College of Liberal Arts, National Taiwan University
Address : No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, 10617 Taiwan, R.O.C.
Co-Sponsors : Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities
and Social Sciences, National Taiwan University (IHS, NTU),
College of Liberal Arts, NTU
Conference Objective
During the past decade or so, East Asia’s rapid rise has accelerated the pace of "globalization" and generated a high tide of research in East Asian culture. The multilevel interactive exchanges within East Asia warrant deeper study. However, during the course of the twentieth century, researches undertaken in the humanities and social sciences of each country were slanted in the direction of "state-centric" research. Relatively few scholarly publications took East Asia as their purview or commenced reflection from East Asia as their starting point. As we enter the twenty-first century, and witness the rapid rise of Asia (East Asia, in particular), together with the accelerated pace of globalization, the academic world of East Asian humanities and social sciences has begun to shift from the stance of "state-centric studies" to taking "the East Asian region as a whole" as its rightful purview. This new research trend certainly must be transcultural, transnational, interdisciplinary and multilingual in order to comprehend adequately the newly broadened purview of the field; it also must incorporate diverse academic groups. For this reason, the methodology of research in East Asian cultural exchange must shed any sort isolated research method that reflects national subjectivity or single local culture. Rather, when studying the engagement of any country or locality in the diverse network of cultural exchanges and interactions, we must produce new research approaches and methods.
Increasingly, scholars are adopting the purview of East Asian culture in studying the endless process of contact and interaction among cultures in East Asia to form meaningful cultural syntheses, and they are utilizing all sorts of new perspectives in the humanities and social sciences to analyze these cultural phenomena. For this reason, these new studies in East Asian cultural exchange provide dynamic new views of all sorts of "processes" of interaction in East Asian cultural exchange activity, rather than just focusing on the "products" of these cultural exchanges.
Based on the above stated purpose, this conference is organized around the four following themes :
1). Self and Other in East Asian Cultural Exchange :
This theme includes formations of "self" and "other" in regional exchanges in culture, economics, society and politics, thus forming the cross-border "East Asian Cultural Exchange Sphere" .
2). Political Identity and Cultural Identity in the Context of East Asian Cultural Exchange :
This theme includes considerations of the transnational experiences of East Asian cultural or political figures in the context of their East Asian regional exchange activities. Examples might include diplomatic missions, subjugated peoples, travel experiences, religious adepts, etc. How were these figures’ cultural and political identities formed in the cauldron of their interactive relations ?
3). Universal Values and Local Characteristics within the East Asian Cultural Exchanges :
This theme includes analyses of Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist forms of thought as they were transmitted across East Asia. The foreign religions of Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam provide other examples for inquiry. In the course of these interactive intellectual and religious activities, what general values and local characteristics emerged ?
4). Various Facets of East Asian Cultural Exchange in Terms of Intermediate Agents :
These intermediate agents could be individuals, groups or "things" or "objects" (classical texts, traded goods, trading vessels such as ships or trade routes such as the Silk Road or the Text Road.), or they could be "events" (regional or local political events, wars, religions, history texts, etc.). By examining such intermediate agents, we can transcend the cultural perspective of a single country and adopt a regional, multinational, multileveled purview. By going through the multifaceted perspectives of "viewpoint", "face" to "3D body", we arrive at the special characteristics of East Asian taken as a whole.
