The 6thWorld Civilization Conference Summary
On October 26, 2013, the 6th World Civilization Conference was held at the
National
Humanities
Center
in
Research Triangle Park
,
North Carolina
. The theme of this year’s conference was “
China
and the World: Diversity of Civilization and Cross-Cultural Communication. This high profile academic conference was sponsored by Hanban (The Confucius Institute Headquarters), Confucius Institute (CI) at
North Carolina
State
University
(NC State), National Humanities Center (NHC), Nanjing Normal University (NNU),
Chinese
Academy
of Social Sciences (CASS) and Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS). This conference brought together over 80 people from 24 different academic institutions to exchange ideas among Chinese and US scholars.
The idea for this conference began a year ago, at a meeting at the NHC with Dr. Harpham, Dr. Wang Ning, from Tsinghua University and one of China’s leading scholars of literary and culture studies, and Dr. Ding Jianning, Chinese Director of the CI at NC State. NHC was interested to host more Chinese scholars and Dr. Wang suggested that a conference would be a great way to partner. Dr. Ding followed up with Hanban to secure funding and support of this large conference.
The conference began with a Welcome Reception on October 25, for those guests who traveled from out of the country and out of the State. Welcome remarks were provided by Dr. Geoffrey Harpham, Director of the NHC and Dr. Jeffrey Braden, Dean of the
College
of
Humanities
and Social Sciences at NC State (CHASS), and Anna Lamm,
US
Director of the CI at NC State. The conference was extremely honored to welcome 12 members from CASS, 4 members from SASS, 4 scholars from NNU, and 1 scholar from
Beijing
International
Studies
University
all the way from
China
.
Welcome remarks from Dr. Jeff Braden, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Science
The Opening Ceremony of the conference on October 26 began with remarks from Leslie Boney,
University
of
North Carolina General Administration
, Vice President of International, Community and Economic Engagement, Dr. Jeff Braden, representing NC State CHASS, and Dr. Ding Jianning from CI. The six keynote speeches in the order they were given:
l Diversity of Cultures and Cross-cultural Dialogue in the time of Globalization
RU, Xin,
Chinese
Academy
of Social Sciences (paper read by Chen Qineng, CHASS)
l Harmony with Difference -- the Only Road to Develop Civilizations
CHEN, Yunquan, Chinese
Academy
of
Social Sciences
l Subjectivity and Reverse Development of Civilization
ZHANG, Jie,
Nanjing
Normal
University
l Cosmopolitanism, World Literature and
China
WANG, Ning,
Tsinghua
University
l Rethinking Literary Comparison
David Porter,
University
of
Michigan
,
National
Humanities
Center
Fellow 2002-2003
l Chinese Literature Today as a working model for critical and literary collaboration between the
US
and
China
Jonathan Stalling,
University
of
Oklahoma
These keynotes speeches created the framework for our afternoon panels to break into smaller groups for further discussion. Each panel had six to seven speakers and the moderators also gave a speech and helped to encourage productive dialogue.
Panel 1:
China
Study and Cross-cultural Communication
Moderator: SPIRES, Hiller , NC
State
University
Panel 2: Space and Civilization
Moderators: YAN, Zhijun,
Nanjing
Normal University WONG, Dorothy ,
University
of
Virginia
,
National
Humanities
Center
Fellow 2011-2012
Panel 3: Chinese Literature, Popular Culture and Globalization
Moderator: ISAACSON,
Nathaniel
,
NC
State
University
The conference concluded with a presentation from ZHU Ying, from College of Staten Island-CUNY, showing her documentary From Cartier to Confucius, and a calligraphy demonstration by YANG, Haocheng from
Nanjing
Normal
University
.
This was the first academic conference that the Confucius Institute at NC State University hosted and due to its large success and many connections with many scholars we look forward to future collaborations to continue to be “global citizens” to encourage cross-cultural communication between
China
and US.
