Topic:Self-Consciousness of Civilization and Culture---the 100-year Reflection on May Fourth New Culture Movement
Time: 3:30 pm, June 20th(Tuesday), 2017
Venue: 217, Humanity Building, East Campus
Lecturer: Prof. Jilin Xu
Prof. Xu, born in Shanghai in 1957, is Zijiang Distinguished Professor and Doctoral Dissertation Supervisor in the Department of History, East China Normal University; Deputy Director of Institute of Modern Chinese Thought and Culture (Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education); Chinese Director of“Joint Research Center of Modern China and the World”(East China Normal University-University of British Columbia). Meanwhile, he is also a member of Expert Consultant Group of the United Front Work Department of CPC Central Committee, Commissioner of Shanghai Federation of Social Science Association, Vice Chairman of Shanghai History Association, and Council Member of Association of Chinese Historians.
He was a Guest Professor or Senior Visiting Scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Australian National University, National University of Singapore, Harvard University (the US), Academia Sinica (Taiwan), University of British Columbia(Canada),École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales(School forAdvanced Studies in the Social Sciences), The University of Tokyo,Freie Universität Berlin(Free University of Berlin), National Taiwan University. He is mainly engaged in the study of 20thcentury Chinese ideological history and intellectuals, Shanghai city culture. His recently published books includeTen Arguments on Chinese Intellectuals, Self-Collapse of the Enlightenment(co-author),Intellectuals in the Great Age, Public Communications of Modern Chinese Intellectuals(co-author), andFamily, Nation and the World: the Identification of Individual, Nation and the World in Modern China.Among them,Ten Arguments of Chinese Intellectualswon the First Wenjin Book Award by National Library of China.
About the lecture: 100 years after the May Fourth New Culture Movement, there are still arguments on the definitions of enlightenment and culture self-consciousness. When the New Culture Movement entered into the world mainstream culture, standing in front of 21th century Chinese intellectuals are questions: what is the Chinese culture subjectivity? and what is the Chinese culture identity? On one hand, we need to figure out how to extract the modern universal“goodness”from“our”historical culture, tradition, and experiences. On the other hand, we also need to figure out how to transform the universal“goodness”of international civilizations to the special China-based“us”, which is the core issue in building Chinese culture subjectivity. It is not only the subject of national culture but also human civilization. China will not walk out of the 100-year antinomy and rebuild its national confidence until culture and civilization are combined together and do not conflict with each other.
All the teachers and students are welcome.
School of Humanities and Law
(School of Public Administration)
June 16th, 2017
