EVENT DETAILS

Self-Renewal: An Intellectual and Institutional Quest (更新) with Ping-Chen Hsiung, UCI CIPSH Chair in New Humanities

In her inaugural talk as CIHSH Chair in “New Humanities” in the UCI School of the Humanities, Dr. Ping-Chen Hsiung will look back and reflect on self-renewal as an intellectual quest and a built-in element for institutional sustainability. This talk will examine the academic environment which gave birth to childhood history, gender studies, medical humanities, and eco-humanities in post-war Taiwan and the U.S. On the other hand, this same period produced organizations such as ANHN (Asian New Humanities Net), CHCI (Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes), and CIPSH (International Council of Philosophy and Human Sciences), which serve as a call to consider the challenge for humanities practitioners upon our new horizons.

The School of Humanities welcomes internationally renowned scholar Hsiung Ping-chen as CIPSH Chair in New Humanities for five years beginning July 2019. Designated by CIPSH, the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (Conseil International de la Philosophie et des Sciences Humaines)—a program of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—the position is part of a global initiative to highlight and encourage existing research networks of centers of research in the humanities and to attract greater attention to the humanities and their impact on contemporary society.

Dr. Hsiung is a professor of history and director of the Taiwan Research Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). She served as director of the Research Institute for the Humanities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2012 to 2016, dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2009 to 2011, and dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Central University from 2004 to 2007. In 2003, she founded the Asian New Humanities Net. Hsiung has served as the research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taipei since 1990, and K.T. Li Chair at Central University in Taiwan since 2006. She earned a Ph.D. in history and M.A. in art history from Brown University and an M.S. in population studies and international health from Harvard University.