Discussions of ethnicity in Roman late antiquity (third-seventh century) focus almost exclusively on “barbarians,” primarily the Germanic armies who settled in the western provinces but now also on Arabs and others in east. “Ethnogenesis” is the technical term for the process by which these heterogeneous groups, by coming into contact with the Roman empire, acquired their own discrete ethnic identities. But what about the Romans themselves? Historians do not treat them as an ethnic group, but as a political-legal category of subjects (or citizens) of a vast multi-ethnic empire. Yet later on, in the Byzantine period, the Romans of the east are recognizable as an ethnic group. How did this come about? This lecture will attempt to identify the processes by which the Romans of the east also acquired an ethnic identity during late antiquity.

Speaker
Prof. Anthony KALDELLIS
Department of Classics, University of Chicago

ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183
Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

Rhodes was an area of cultural cross-fertilization and a unique venue where long-established disciplines (such as philosophy, rhetoric, and philology) blended together. A long list of intellectuals in every field are known to have worked there; all the philosophical disciplines were present, the rhetorical schools created a distinctive mix of Attic and Asianic oratory, and pioneering developments in science and engineering were made. Rhodian scholarship also had a major impact on the development of Roman culture: famous Latin authors such as Cicero, Caesar, Brutus, and Vitruvius cited and used the works of Rhodian antecedents.

This talk will use literary, archaeological, and epigraphic evidence to demonstrate the intellectual climate on the island during this period, show how Rhodes was a finishing school for Greeks and Romans, and outline its role in the development of Graeco-Roman culture.

Speaker
Dr. Thomas R. P. COWARD
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Naples

ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183
Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

The lecture presents a critique of current transhumanist positions in two steps:
1) In its radical variant – “mind-transfer”, “mind-upload”– transhumanism is based on an untenable concept of consciousness. The human mind is not an ensemble of digitalizable algorithms and information, but constitutively alive and embodied. Selfhood or personal identity cannot be reflected in a set of data.
2) In its transformative variant, i.e. the fundamental genetic or technological transformation of the body, transhumanism becomes self-contradictory: namely, it abolishes the basis from which this self-remodeling is only possible in a meaningful way. For the ideas of the good, which all enhancement or re-engineering of human nature is ultimately intended to serve, can no longer be meaningfully conceived without this embodied basis of nature.
 

Speaker
Prof. Thomas Fuchs
Karl Jaspers Professor for Philosophical Foundations of Psychiatry, University of Heidelberg

Meeting ID: 96285687600
No registration is required. All are welcome.

武威唐代吐谷渾王族墓葬群位於武威市南山區，可分為「大可汗陵」、「陽暉谷」、「白楊山」三大陵區。墓群整體呈現出「大集中、小分散」的分佈特徵和「牛崗僻壤、馬鬣開墳」的選址特徵。以唐代葬制為主，兼有吐谷渾、吐蕃、北方草原等文化因素。該墓群的發現，揭示了吐谷渾民族逐漸融入中華文明體系的歷史史實，為增強民族文化自信，築牢中華民族共同體意識研究提供了典型案例，為「一帶一路」倡議的實施提供了考古學支撐。
 

講者
陳國科博士
陳國科，1980年生，博士，文博研究館員，甘肅省文物考古研究所所長。主要研究方向為絲綢之路考古。主持國家社科基金重點項目1項，「考古中國」重大研究項目1項，主持完成敦煌寒霞玉礦遺址、天竺吐谷渾王室墓葬等考古發掘30餘項，獲全國十大考古新發現2項，中國考古新發現3項，田野考古獎1項。出版考古報告10餘部，發表論文40餘篇。

This presentation serves to introduce students to avant-garde art movements in Japan’s interwar Taishō and Shōwa periods. Our goal is to locate these “new art” movements in their historical and media environments, in particular situating avant-garde art movements like Japanese Futurism, Mavo, and Japanese Surrealism within modern Japan’s print culture. We will end with a brief discussion of how such a media studies approach may be useful for understanding certain contemporary Japanese artists as well.

Speaker

Dr. Kyle Austin PETERS (Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University)
Kyle Peters is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. He earned his PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in August 2021. His research focuses on Japanese cultural criticism and media studies—especially modern Japanese philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and print culture as it intersects with Critical Theory.

*No registration required.

3:30—4:40PM
Lecture 1
Poverty & Wealth in Roman Empire: Ancient and Modern Inequality

4:50—5:50PM
Lecture 2
Four Early Christian Explanations of Poverty and Wealth: Why are some people rich and many people poor?

8:30—9:45PM
Summary, Response and Q&A
Respondents: The Reverend Professor SUN Poling (Adjunct Professor, Tainan Theological College) and Professor Alex IP(Associate Professor, Divinity School of Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Speaker
Professor Steven J. FRIESEN (Louise Farmer Boyer Chair in Biblical Studies Emeritus, Department of Religious Studies, The University of Texas Austin)

Steven Friesen is the Louise Farmer Boyer Chair in Biblical Studies Emeritus. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary, and a B.A. from Fresno Pacific College. Prior to arriving at UT-Austin, he taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. He also held a three-year fellowship in the Cultural Studies Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

Friesen's research field is early Christianity, with particular interests in the book of Revelation, poverty in the Roman Empire, and archaeology of religion in the eastern Mediterranean. His publications include Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins and Twice Neokoros: Ephesus, Asia, and the Cult of the Flavian Imperial Family. His current research examines the economic ideas and practices of the apostle Paul and his communities.
 

This lecture explores the political, economic, demographic, and ideological links between the Neo-Assyrian state’s territorial expansion on its frontiers on the one hand and its capital building in its heartland on the other. The lecture will be divided into two parts. The first part will be devoted to exploring the economic model, military strategies, urban and regional governance, deportation and resettlement, and communication and surveillance involved in the imperial expansion of the Neo-Assyrian state. The second part of the lecture will focus on the (re)building of imperial capitals, discussing issues related to the location, urban form, labour management, political and religious motivations and objectives involved in these national building projects.
 

Speaker 
Prof. Yi Samuel Chen
Associate Professor, School of Humanities &
Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong
https://history.hku.hk/staff-y-chen.html

This presentation will discuss how a specifically Scottish variety of Standard English came into being in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As a corollary, the ‘decline’ of Scots as national (or even native) language during this period will be analysed.

 

Speaker
Prof. Robert McColl MILLAR (University of Aberdeen)
Robert McColl Millar is Professor in Linguistics and Scottish Language at the University of Aberdeen. He has published widely on issues concerned with Scottish language, linguistic contact and the sociology of language. His most recent books include Modern Scots (2018) and A Sociolinguistic History of Scotland (2020). A History of the Scots Language will be published next year. Before arriving in Aberdeen in 1996, he held academic posts in Canada, Finland, Austria and Norway. He is a native speaker of Scots.

Cover letters and CVs are the first things hiring committees review and the most important part of a job application. Join us for this 90-minute session, during which Profs. Benny Lim and Xuenan Cao, from the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, share their tips and strategies on how to write effective cover letters and CVs. The session will consist of a 60 minute sharing session by Profs. Lim and Cao, followed by a 30 minute Q and A. All are welcome!

Speaker 
Prof. Benny Lim
Associate Professor of Practice in Cultural Management
Department of Cultural and Religious Studies

Prof. Xuenan Cao
Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies
Department of Cultural and Religious Studies

The winning proposal, titled Chinese Studies of Formal Semantics and Theoretical Innovation of Formal Semantics, has been awarded RMB800,000. This five-year project aims to establish a comprehensive Chinese research database of formal semantics and carry out a more precise and detailed investigation of Chinese major linguistic phenomena using formal semantics tools. Based on Chinese linguistic facts, the research project will critically evaluate current theoretical assumptions and existing analytical frameworks of formal semantics, point out the limitations and deficiencies of existing theoretical analyses of natural languages especially Chinese, and propose new analyses and theories, which will further promote the theoretical development of formal semantics in China.

“I am thrilled to hear that our research team has won the bidding for the major project,” said Professor Pan. “Our preparation for the bidding started earlier last year. As the project leader, I have organized online meetings and exchanged ideas frequently with five other  researchers from Mainland China and Britain, who will be responsible for five important subprojects, covering the semantics of Chinese nominal phrases and Wh-phrases, intensionality and indexicals, information structure (topics, focus), conditionals and negative expressions.”

“This funding will allow us to solve problems in the major areas of Chinese semantics research, to build a more complete and more explanatory semantics theoretical framework, and to revise and verify existing Western formal semantics theories, which will have a long-term impact on Chinese semantics research in China.”

The major projects of the National Social Science Fund in 2022 issued a total of 343 bidding topics, including not only basic theoretical research but also applied and interdisciplinary research, and covered 23 research disciplines of Philosophy and Social Science. For each bidding topic, only one research proposal will be selected in principle, which will receive a funding level of RMB800,000 in five years.