Founded in 1902, Nanjing University is a comprehensive university with a long history. In the process of building a world-class university, Nanjing University established the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (IAS) in May 2005. Guided by the concept of “comprehensive, research-oriented and internationalized,” the birth of IAS marks a new endeavor in the innovation of research systems. Under the direct supervision of the vice-president in charge of humanities, IAS is a comprehensive university-level institution, whose academic activities are supervised by the Committee of Experts. Three kinds of academic positions are offered at the institute, including lecture professors, chair professors and scholars in residence. Interdisciplinary research groups are formed to carry out research of special issues concerning important social and theoretical problems.
The goal for establishing IAS is to break the blockage between disciplines and departments, integrate the academic resources of the university, encourage interdisciplinary research and improve research work. Putting forward three lecture series, i.e. “Masters’ Tribune,” “Academic Frontier,” and “Scholars’ Forum,” the institute invites distinguished scholars from both home and abroad to give speeches at the university. Three interdisciplinary teams are associated with the institute, i.e. “Environmental Studies,” “Media and Culture Studies,” and “Gender Studies.” The institute has had academic exchanges with a number of prestigious universities abroad and in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The institute has become the window and platform of the internationalization of humanities and social sciences at Nanjing University.
At the heart of the Pembroke Center's research agenda is a questioning of what counts as foundational knowledge in a given discipline. This questioning of the production of knowledge is related, in turn, to the challenges that studies of "difference" present to the academy--gender studies; studies of race, ethnicity, multiculturalism; cross-cultural and postcolonial studies.
Scholars affiliated with the Center look to the complex ways "differences" are produced culturally, socially, epistemologically: sexual and gender differences, the differences that are fundamental to the categories of "race" and ethnicity, nationality, religion, and so forth. It is there, at the intersection of the production of knowledge and articulations of "difference," that the Pembroke Center locates its research and teaching.
The Center houses a unique array of programs and institutions:
- The Pembroke Seminar, a year-long advanced research seminar
- Conferences and lectures
- International collaborative projects
- Postdoctoral fellowships
- Grants and fellowships for Brown faculty and students
- The undergraduate concentration in Gender and Sexuality Studies
- The journal, differences
- Archives dedicated to feminist scholarship and women of Brown and Rhode Island
- The Pembroke Center Associates alumnae/i organization
The Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University supports collaborative research among scholars in the humanities, focusing on interdisciplinary and comparative work across cultural and linguistic boundaries. Through its fellowship and grant programs, distinguished visitors program, and regularly scheduled events, the Cogut Center strives to:Foster innovative work in the humanities and related disciplines.
- Sustain and nurture international perspectives at Brown in an era of increasing globalization.
- Explore the history and effects of the rapid growth of technologies of information and visualization.
- Examine the public role of the humanities in the context of recent challenges and pressures.
- Enrich relations between the humanities and the studio and performing arts.
- Investigate the re-emergence of pressing issues of ethics and aesthetics.
- Reinvigorate the concept of critique and the role of critical theory in the humanities.
East Asian Studies is a multidisciplinary department teaching and creating new knowledge about that part of the world geographically located in East Asia, embracing the western rim of the Pacific Ocean, and whose society is based on the Confucian tradition.
Its mission is to provide rigorous and varied exposure to East Asia through the teaching of three languages - Chinese, Japanese and Korean - and substantive courses on these cultures, both individually and in comparative contexts. East Asian Studies is committed to the study of Chinese, Japanese and Korean as the essential foundation of expertise on these cultures. Courses on cultural issues draw upon many disciplines, particularly the humanities and social sciences.