Bulletin Spring‧Summer Autumn‧Winter 1999

Int roducing the Research Inst i tute for the Humani t ies Chou Ying-hsiung A n Institute w i t h a Rich Heritage I n a fast-changing wo r ld such as ours, amidst unprecedented technological and social developments, it is essential to find out where we stand i n relation to the past and future. It is also imperative to ascertain how we are related to other people as well as to the wo r l d as a whole. Humanities studies, as the name itself suggests, are aimed precisely at raising these compelling questions and trying to answer them from various perspectives — historical, philosophical, linguistic-literary, aesthetic, religious. Being uniquely located at an intersection, as it is, of the traditional and modem as well as the Chinese and the Western, The Chinese University of Hong Kong has a tradition of encouraging cultural and transcultural education and research. As a matter of fact, the early history of the University is closely related to such wo r ld famous scholars i n Chinese literature, history and philosophy as Ch'ien Mu, Tang Chun-i, Chou Fa-kao, Yen Ken-wang, Mo Tsung-san,and Chuan Han-sheng. To keep up w i t h the tradition as well as to meet the needs of recent research patterns, the University's Faculty of Arts founded the Research Institute for the Humanities in 1991. The institute aims at initiating and supporting collaborative and interdisciplinary research, coordinating strategic research, promoting publications, organizing conferences, and establishing linkages w i th overseas institutions. Four Major Programmes Currently some 30 researchers from different academic units are involved in four specific programmes launched by the institute. With Prof. Liu Shu-hsien as its director, the Comparative Studies of Cultural Traditions Programme has attracted no fewer than 18 participants from the departments of English, Chinese, history, philosophy, and translation. Over the last three years the programme has held regular monthly meetings to discuss modernity and Chinese modernization as well as traditionality and modernization. The discussions, in particularly those on conceptual framework and research methodologies, have been most stimulating and productive. As an outgrowth of such meetings, an essay collection, Modernity and Pluralism, has been put together for publication in 1994. Dr. Ho Hsiu-hwang is in charge of the Human Cognition: Interdisciplinary and Comparative Studies Programme. Three participants from the departments of English, philosophy and anthropology Introducing the Research Institute for the Humanities 2