Dr. Ren Wei, Chair of the Cultural Relic Bureau in Henan Province, will present the latest advancements in cultural heritage preservation and public education initiatives within the region. Against the backdrop of Henan Province's burgeoning economic development, this talk will delve into the exploration of innovative strategies in cultural heritage conservation, offering insights into the dynamic landscape of heritage preservation in Henan Province.

Event Page: https://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~ant/activities/activities-calendar/

Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13684197

All interested are welcome.

Co-organizer: Henan Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage

Organizers: New Asia College, CUHK

Centre for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Studies, CUHK

This international, interdisciplinary conference aims to uncover emergent frameworks and methods for the interpretation and analysis of literary, filmic, and cultural texts relating to the profound transformation of cities around the world across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Interdisciplinary in focus, our conference invites participants from both the humanities and social sciences working with texts and practices across historical periods and cultural contexts, from a diversity of disciplines and subfields including literature, film and media studies, architecture, geography, urban studies, gender studies, and anthropology. Participants interested in exploring intersections with gender, race, indigeneity; migration and the circulation of things, cultural texts, ideas, people, information; climate, ecology, and the nonhuman; and Asian urban practices and poetics are especially welcome.

Kindly send a proposal with a 400-500-word abstract and a one-page CV to urbanmediations24@gmail.com by 15 May 2024. As the goal is to produce an edited volume, accepted papers are expected to represent new, unpublished work.

Abstract:
What were Hong Kong crime films like before they became a local, regional, and eventually global success story? How did colonial film censors influence the development of Hong Kong genre cinema, and the crime film in particular? And how can we think through the relationship between crime films and their social context? In this talk, Dr. Kristof Van den Troost will discuss these and other topics covered in his new book, Hong Kong Crime Films: Criminal Realism, Censorship and Society, 1947-1986 (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).

At the ceremony, four Choh-Ming Li professors and one Wei Lun professor were appointed, while 31 CUHK members were presented with teaching and research awards.

The Faculty sends our heartfelt congratulations to our awarding scholars for their outstanding contributions and remarkable achievements:

Choh-Ming Li Professor of Cultural and Religious Studies - Professor Pang Lai Kwan (Department of Cultural and Religious Studies)

Vice-Chancellor’s Exemplary Teaching Award 2022 - Professor Ying Fuk-tsang (Department of Cultural and Religious Studies)

Young Researcher Award 2022 - Professor James Morton (Department of History)

Postgraduate Research Output Award 2022 - Mr Sun Yifan (Department of Philosophy)

The different philosophical traditions as well as the different therapeutic concepts agree that they are based on "therapeutic principles" both theoretically and practically. My contribution would like to emphasize this connection, especially as it is usually ignored or at least undervalued in philosophical debates. And this is despite the fact that the two original scenarios - literarily by Sophocles’ "Oedipus" and philosophically by Socrates in Plato's "Art of Dialogue" - still vividly elaborate the basic chords of human existence, even if this is only noted in the double meaning of the Latin "laborare" as "simultaneously" of "to suffer" and "to work".
It is therefore not surprising that conceptual self-explanations and lucid horizons of thought on the one hand, and practical dialogue spaces between therapist and patient on the other, are not as different in terms of path and goal as one might initially assume.
In this sense, "therapies" are supports, promotions, even liberations of the human being with regard to its individual, intersubjective and social deep structures. This is not only obvious in the so-called Western hemisphere; this connection also proves to be fundamental in (East) Asian contexts.
With this in mind, my lecture follows a number of routes in which topoi such as 'I' and 'Self', 'We' and 'Others' or 'Strangers', 'Existence' and 'Meaning', 'Situativity' and 'Deep Structures' in their reciprocal conditional forms and above all with regard to their phenomenologically instructed "constitution processes". References to the decidedly therapeutic concepts of Viktor E. Frankl and Kimura Bin in particular would like to point out, among other things, that these foundations and insights are not only of cross-cultural relevance, but also actively contribute to the opening and shaping of 'intercultural and transcultural constitution processes'.

Online
No registration is required.
Meeting ID: 969 8769 8344
Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/96987698344

Face-to-face
Register by 21 March 2024
Link: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13685376

The human brain is remarkably efficient in language comprehension, capable of actively predicting upcoming semantic content and inferring implied communicative intentions. A fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience of human communication is understanding the neural dynamics that support the formation of these internally generated semantic/pragmatic interpretations. Although we know this process relies on a hierarchy of increasingly abstract representations and involves multiple cortical areas, the way these different system levels interact to achieve efficient comprehension is not fully understood. Our series of studies have shown that both semantic anticipation and intention interpretation consume time or cognitive resources, and are flexibly operated based on their relevance to the current communication task; the intentional level of meaning is not only (at lease in some situations) inferred from the intermediate-level representation generated during understanding but also mutually influences this intermediate representation later on; the coupling of the right TJP with other control, memory, and sensory brain areas plays a critical role in the processes of semantic anticipation and intention comprehension. These results suggest the critical role of active top-down generation processes in language comprehension and elucidate their specific cognitive processes and neural foundations.

I offer a new metaphysical account of what it is for an object to persist through change. On my proposed view, when an object undergoes change, this involves the object’s essentially having a determinable property (e.g., shape), which property is differently determined at different times (e.g., first as straight, then as bent). I argue that this account has advantages over existing accounts of persistence through change (including endurantism and perdurantism), including that it makes sense of how objects can be 'wholly present' at each time they exist, without inviting contradiction.

Joining the Talks Face-to-Face:
Public lecture: Register by 4 April 2024 | Seminar: Register by 18 Apr 2024
https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13684365

Joining the Talks Online (No registration is needed):
Zoom Meeting ID: 957 0183 7605
https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/95701837605

The question of whether AI systems of sufficient complexity are conscious has been much in the news of late, especially as regards large language models such as LaMDA, ChatGPT, and GPT-4. But can we know or justifiably believe that a given AI system is conscious? Here I canvass strategies offered in response to the problem of other minds — the question of how we can warrantedly establish that persons or other animals are conscious — and argue that these strategies won't work for the case of AI, for reasons that appear to be insuperable. I conclude that we are not now, and will likely never be in position to warrantedly establish of any AI system that it is conscious.

Joining the Talks Face-to-Face:
Public lecture: Register by 4 April 2024 | Seminar: Register by 18 Apr 2024
https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13684365

Joining the Talks Online (No registration is needed):
Zoom Meeting ID: 957 0183 7605
https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/95701837605

This workshop attracted participants across disciplines who are eager to advance their academic careers. Professor Puk Wing Kin, Head of the Graduate Division of the Department of History, and Professor Teresa Kuan from the Department of Anthropology delivered key insights. Complementing these insights, Ms. Evelyn Pei (PhD Student in Translation) and Ms. Miao Zixin (PhD Student in Chinese Studies), who successfully moved from the Faculty's master’s programmes to PhD studies, shared their valuable experiences and advice regarding the transition from TPG to RPG (research postgraduate) studies.

Professor Jette Hansen Edwards, Associate Dean of Arts (Education), emphasised the workshop provided a valuable opportunity for the faculty to directly tackle the concerns and inquiries of TPG students contemplating further research studies via direct conversations. Discussion topics were comprehensive, covering the selection criteria for RPG candidates, preparation strategies for application, motivations for pursuing a research degree, and how research aligns with career and learning goals. These discussions were both engaging and enlightening, offering crucial guidance to the attendees.

The Faculty of Arts at CUHK is dedicated to supporting the academic and research ambitions of students globally. We welcome individuals who are interested in advancing their studies to contact us for more programmes infromation.

This presentation focuses on infertility and utilizes the theory of medical pluralism and its framework to discuss pluralistic medical strategies and their relationships to the local infertile women in Guangxi, China. The social  and cultural environment has created a local fertility culture, in which fertility not only ensures the continuation of the family line but also defines a woman's role and life meaning. Infertility is considered as "different", which leads to women having low self-esteem, having damaged social relationships, and living in a precarious marriage. As a result, pursuing reproductive success becomes the center of the infertile women's lives. In the medical pluralism of the local infertile women, Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) occupy a core position, and Traditional Chinese Medicine and Sacred Treatments are important supplements to ARTs. ARTs repair the body's "obstacles", Traditional  Chinese Medicine regulates the body's balance, and Sacred Treatments relieve psychological anxiety. Indeed, they complement each other, giving infertile women the confidence they need to continue treatment and contributing to reproductive success.