About the Center | 關於中心
About Center
The Global Co-Becoming and International Sinology Research Center will build on the strengths in global sinology that National Sun Yat-sen University has developed over the last four years, establishing a globally inter-connected hub based in the south of Taiwan dedicated to excellence in sinological research, teaching, publishing and outreach, placed with an encompassing transcultural framework. The center will draw on the extensive humanistic tradition of the Sinitic-world to develop and richen philosophies of co-becoming, a mode of thought that seeks to attenuate conflict by means of self-reflexive critique and the fostering of empathetic imaginations, promoting peaceful, mutually transformative solutions to conflicts such as national rivalry, economic inequality, gender discrimination, and climate degradation. The center will draw on the extensive strengths of NSYSU’s faculty in sinological and trans-cultural studies to develop co-becoming as a powerful humanistic method for the 21st century global community. In doing so, it will help the university meet its commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including no poverty, good health and well-being, gender equality, reduced inequalities, and responsible consumption and production.
Future Development and Prospect
A. The establishment of a "An East Asian Co-Becoming Humanistic Space," which will be built in partnership with the East Asian Academy of Liberal Arts at the Unviersity of Tokyo, the Berggruen China Center, Beijing, and our the other academic partners who are members of our center's international consultitative committee.
B. Each year our center will carry out two major international conferences under the broad rubrics of "Global Co-Becoming" and "International Sinology," with one conference taking place at our home institution in Kaoshiung, Taiwan, the other taking place on the campus of one of our institutional partners. Over the next three years we will hold six international conferences, deepening the global discourse around co-becoming as well as Sinology as an globally engaged humanistic practice.
C. Each year we aim to carry out a minimum of six international forums on various topic related to the three research clusters within our center: the research cluster on global sInology, the research cluster on transcultural studies, and the research cluster on phiolosophies of co-becoming.
D. We will lunch a dynamic podcast series, currently entitled "Global Co-Becoming: Humanities, Science, AI," in which we will interview the notable intellectual figures who will be visiting our campus to participate in our various academic forums. Such thinkers will provide their thoughts on the concept of co-becoming, as well as how it can relate to
E. The center will pursue an aggressive agenda of publishing initiatives throughout its first year of operation, with the plan to support the publication of five academic monographs that will represent the research results of the various international conferences, international forums, interviews, and workshops held by the center. The center will also use 114 funds to continue publish research related to academic conferences and initiatives that were held in 113 under the GSF framework. The center has already made arrangements to partner with Wunan Publishing House to publish a “Global Co-Becoming and Humanistic Innovation” Book Series with the goal of publishing twelve to fifteen volumes in the next three years, volumes which will represent the research findings from all of the various international conferences, forums, and visiting scholar programs that we held under the GSF framework and will go on to hold under the GCIS framework. Wunan has already agreed to publish this book series with us, and we expect it to be a major contribution to the intellectual life of the Chinese speaking world.
F. Empowering and enabling the next generation of leaders in philosophical, literary, and aesthetic critique and exploration will be a central task of our center, and to that end we look forward to using the funds provided to us by the center to employ at least one post-doctoral researcher for a total term of three years. The full-time researcher will be selected from emerging post-doctoral talents within both Taiwan and the larger field of global academia as a whole. He or she will be given a full-time salary, office space, as well as research funding to pursue creative research projects in the fields of global sinology, philosophies of co-becoming, and transcultural inquiry.
G. Research center directors will work to deepen and strengthen the Global Sinology mini-course module (國際漢學微課程) that was created under the old GSF framework. While this course module has been successful in developing student interest in Sinology understood as a transcultural and multi-national field of knowledge, there is an opportunity to deepen and expand the course module, while more thoroughly integrating it with the problematic of co-becoming. As one of the reviewers of the first draft of this research proposal kindly pointed out, it is in the realm of curriculum planning that intellectual frameworks such as Global Sinology and Co-Becoming can be most thoroughly integrated into the intellectual life of the university. To that end, project principals will work with scholars from across the College of Liberal Arts and indeed the university to examine ways in which the mini- course module can be updated, with expanded course offerings, more sustained student oriented events (such as mini topic camps, intellectual brainstorming exercises, and community building initiatives for students within the course module). Project principals will also work with administrators from the university’s Office of Academic Affairs to examine strategies by which the footprint of the mini-course can be expanded within the larger overall intellectual life of the university.
