台灣交通大學-日本東京大學暑期班 Imagining the Possibilities of the University and Civil Society from East Asia

2016-09-08 - 2016-09-11

Kuan-Hsing Chen 陳光興, NCTU
Yuan-Horng Chu 朱元鴻, NCTU
Tsuyoshi Ishii 石井剛, UTokyo
Shinji Kajitani 梶谷真司, UTokyo
Satofumi Kawamura 川村覚文, UTokyo
Joyce C. H. Liu 劉紀蕙, NCTU
Yuji Nishiya

We are now facing multiple challenges under the context of globalization: 1) social conflicts, like nationalism, racism, class differentiation, colonial unconsciousness, and so forth; 2) influence from the Cold War era that includes political-economic conditions, population migration, and class struggle as its after effects; 3) democratization movements and construction of a “co-existential”society. All of these issues are urging us to reflect on the history of civil society so that we can design a better future from it. In this regard, universities, especially their research and education in the field of the Humanities, appear to hold a critical responsibility.

In this summer program, we will examine how universities can contribute to the development of civil society, and how the Humanities should respond to the current challenges, particularly within East Asian society. At the previous academic forum in 2015 under our collaborative relationship between the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) and National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), we confirmed the importance of nurturing a trans-Asian academic network for the sake of fulfilling a shared purpose towards the future development of the Humanities. This year, we are going to go even further by pondering and designing the possibilities of the university and civil society in the East Asian context.

The program will consist of two parts: lectures by scholars from UTokyo and NCTU and a discursive session among graduate students from both institutions. In addition to Shinji Kajitani and Tsuyoshi Ishii, teachers in charge of the Project 2 "Praxis of Coexistence in Cultural Diversity", we will also invite Professor Shunya Yoshimi, vice president of UTokyo and the author of What Is University? (Daigaku towa nanika, 2011), and Yuji Nishiyama, associate professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University, who have published several works related to the university and Humanities, as special lecturers.

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