ANFEP 2018: China & India
ASIANetwork Faculty Enhancement Program (ANFEP)
Deepening Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts
Seminars in Asia
Religion in National and International Affairs
in China and India
June 9 – 30, 2018
Directors
Dr. Glenn Shive, Executive Director, Hong Kong America Center, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Dr. David Palmer, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Hong Kong University
Dr. George Thadathil, Rector of Salesian College, Sonada, Darjeeling, West Bengal, India
The goal of the 2018 seminar is to facilitate the study of religion and public life in China and India by American scholar-teachers who seek to broaden their fields of expertise and deepen their knowledge of these Asian societies and cultures.
Seminar Details
The itinerary will begin with a full week in Hong Kong, drawing on the academic resources of several universities in the Hong Kong America Center/Fulbright consortium. The second week will move onto China’s mainland with three days in the booming city of Shenzhen. At the mid-point, we will fly to Kolkata, India and then travel into the northeast of India. The contrasts between China and India with regard to religion and modern society are very striking. We will spend a week in northeast India, including Darjeeling, Sikkim and Guwahati in Assam state. The four religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity are all critical to the ethnic and social structure of this mountainous region on the southern tier of the Himalaya peaks.
The major text and jumping-off point for our work will be Chinese Religious Life (CRL), edited by D. Palmer, G. Shive and P. Wickeri, published by Oxford University Press in 2011, and funded by a generous grant to the Hong Kong America Center from the Henry Luce Foundation. A new, extensive, bilingual website of teaching materials, produced at Hong Kong University and based on the CRL, will augment this book as our curriculum framework for the China portion of the program. See https://religiouslife.hku.hk.
Post-trip Videos:
Itinerary
Participants
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation granting mission is to strengthen and sustain institutions and their core capacities, rather than be a source for narrowly defined projects. As such, they develop thoughtful, long-term collaborations with grant recipients and invest sufficient funds for an extended period to accomplish the purpose at hand and achieve meaningful results.
ASIANetwork, a consortium of approximately 150 North American colleges, strives to strengthen the role of Asian Studies within the framework of liberal arts education to help prepare succeeding generations of undergraduates for a world in which Asian societies play prominent roles.