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CATS officially opens with Sheba Chhacchi and Ai Wei Wei
On Tuesday, June 25, the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS) will officially open its doors. The opening ceremony, which is organised and hosted by the Baden-Württemberg State Office of Property and Construction, is sourrunded by a day of events and discussions associated with Asian and transcultural studies.
CfA: Double Doctoral Degree Program in Asian and Transcultural Studies
The Joint Doctoral Degree Program in Asian and Transcultural Studies between the Faculty of Philosophy at Heidelberg University and the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, welcomes applications from Heidelberg students for a stay in Venice from 6 to 10 months in the upcoming academic year.
CfP: "New Directions in Transcultural Studies"
The Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies calls for panel proposals for its conference "New Directions in Transcultural Studies," which will take place on October 31, 2019. The conference will mark the completion of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" and its transition into the Heidelberg Centre of Transcultural Studies.
CfA: Conference on Transcultural Connections
Prof. Harald Fuess, the professor of Cultural Economic History at the HCTS, is organizing the conference "Transcultural Connections: Migration in Asia, Europe and the Americas." It will take place on June 21-22 in cooperation with key partners of the HCTS: Ca' Foscari University Venice, Hebrew University, Kyoto University, and Yale University.
Card Game for Tibetan language invented at HCTS
Helen Koch, student of the course Colloquial Tibetan, taught at the HCTS by Dr. Camille Simon, invented the card game “The lineage of Thönmi”. The innovative and playful approach towards language learning will be one of the many highlights at the Tibetan Culture Day that will take place on June 1, 2019.
Workshop and Lecture with Bruce McCoy Owens
On May 22 and 23, Bruce McCoy Owens, associate professor of Anthropology at Wheaton College, visited the HCTS to participate in a workshop on DANAM and to give a lecture on “Intangible Heritage and Visual Repatriation”. He was hosted by the NHDP project and the professorship of Visual and Media Anthropology.
New volume co-edited by Nikolas Jaspert
The volume “Queens, Princesses and Mendicants: Close Relations in a European Perspective” was edited by Prof. Nikolas Jaspert, co-director of the HCTS, and Imke Just, doctoral student at Heidelberg University. It was published with LIT Verlag and is comprised of twelve articles by scholars from seven European countries.
Michael Radich receives DFG grant
Prof. Michael Radich, the professor of Buddhist Studies at the HCTS, was awarded a DFG Sachbeihilfe grant for his project "Intertextuality in the Chinese Buddhist Canon: Computational-Philological Assessment of Sources, Authorship/Translatorship, and Style." The project will run for three years, from October 2019 to September 2022.
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Short News
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By the invitation of the professorship of Cultural Economic History, two Visiting Fellows will stay at the HCTS until the beginning of August: Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer (Yale) is an anthropologist focusing on contemporary Japanese society and culture and transnational migration. She will teach a block seminar about the global Japanese diaspora with MATS students. Robert Hellyer is Associate Professor of History at Wake Forest University and a specialist in the history of the Edo and Meiji periods. Together with Prof. Harald Fuess he will conduct research on Japan’s modern transition in a global context.
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On 10-11 May, Dr. Takahiro Yamamoto, assistant professor of cultural economic history, was invited to present a paper at Reopening the "Opening of Japan", an international conference at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford, UK. His paper ‘A backdoor wide open: Japan’s passport regime and marine animal hunters in the Kuril Islands’ examined the transcultural encounters of people in the north Pacific rim that developed in tandem with the emergence of the modern Japanese state in the late nineteenth century.
Media Reports
Prof. Barbara Mittler and Prof. Axel Michaels wrote an article about CATS for the IIAS newsletter.
SWR4 interviewed Prof. Christiane Brosius about her Nepal Heritage Documentation Project (NHDP).
Deutschlandfunk interviewed Prof. Barbara Mittler for "Tag für Tag."
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an article by Prof. Christiane Brosius.
SWR2 featured Prof. Joseph Maran in radio report.
WDR interviewed Takuma Melber on Pearl Harbor.
Deutschlandfunk broadcasted an interview with Prof. Monica Juneja.
Research
Heidelberg Research Architecture
The Cluster brings together a multicultural, multilingual scholarly community for purposes of research in an interdisciplinary field. Efficient collaboration among the researchers in the analysis of transcultural flows requires an IT infrastructure for data storage and exchange, communication and on-line team-work, and, importantly, for information retrieval and analysis.
Graduate Programme for Transcultural Studies
The Graduate Programme for Transcultural Studies (GPTS) offers a structured PhD programme within the interdisciplinary research environment of the Cluster. The doctoral programme offers (a) an introduction to theories and methodologies of transcultural studies, (b) access to a well-equipped work environment supported by European and Asian institutions, (c) participation in the gathering of textual and nontextual source material, (d) support of PhD projects which are linked to the broad research fields pursued by the Cluster.
Read more about the Graduate Programme ...
Read more about the Current Graduates and their Projects ...
Research Area A: Governance & Administration
This Research Area deals with the cultural flows through which concepts, institutions and practices that have to do with governance and administration are transferred across cultures locally, regionally, or globally, and are reconfigured in a continuous but non-linear historical process.
All projects in Research Area A
Research Area B: Public Spheres
Central themes of Research Area B are public spheres - as media, events and spaces - that have been and are built by political and cultural flows between Asia and Europe. There are three research foci: a) aspects of mediality, visuality and textuality, b) aspects of public life, events and performance, and c) aspects of public space and urbanity.
All projects in Research Area B ...
Research Area C: Knowledge Systems
Research Area C focuses on the transfer between Asia and Europe of practices concerning, institutions for, ideas about, and perceptions of health and environment. Practice is the privileged point of access in this Research Area because the processes underlying both health and environment are juxtaposed here with the often pressing need to find a working solution.
All projects in Research Area C ...
Research Area D: Historicities & Heritage
This Research Area analyses different concepts of histories as competing interpretations of time and space. Instead of focusing on models of unified universal or world history, it puts the emphasis on the entanglement of multiple historicities with different cultural background through cultural flows in the way in which history, memory, and their trajectory are handled.
All projects in Research Area D
Upcoming Events
Workshop: "Engaging Translations and Circulations Across Asia and Europe"
Conference: "Local Knowledge and Global Problems: a transcultural approach"
HeKKsaGOn Conference: Humanities and Social Science Working Group
Conference: 8. Forum Ostasiatische Kunstgeschichte im Deutschsprachigen Raum
PhD Workshop: "Asian and North African Studies in a globalized and interconnected world"