Institute for Advanced Study in European Culture

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

800 Dongchuan Road, Minhang District

Shanghai, 200240, China

Letter of Invitation

Object: Official Invitation to the International Forum on “Modernity: Culture Tradition and Morality Reconstruction”.

Dear Distinguished Invested Professors,

We sincerely invite you to attend the International Forum on “Modernity: Culture Tradition and Morality Reconstruction”, organised by the Institute for Advanced Study in European Culture, in Shanghai Jiao Tong University (IASEC-SJTU) on 12-13, April, 2014, China.  

China is experiencing the transformation from traditional society to ‘post-traditional’ society or ‘modernity’. Such process has not just changed China’s future, but the world’s too. The modernisation in China is embedded in its long history and rich culture. In the history of modernisation all over the world, every nation faces more or less the conflicts between its culture tradition and the reconstruction of morality. But in every culture, there are always great thinkers who, starting from their traditional culture where they received rich heritage, by actively sensing and piecing the codes of the new era, stand up to the challenges and become pioneer leaders in the modernisation of their own cultures. In Europe, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment are two aspects inseparable from the modernisation. In China, since the end of the 19th century, the Chinese began to introduce eagerly all the western modern thoughts, starting from technologies, then expanding to laws, politics, philosophies and even religions, to cooperate with our traditional thoughts. And the introduction of the western thoughts is a main cause for all the revolutions or chaos in the 20th century in China. By the beginning of the 21st century, China finally restored her figure as a steady, prosperous and developing country, which became again an important economic, cultural and political power in the world. But the modernisation in China is far from finished. It is a theme that we need to keep on researching and studying.

To manifest thoroughly the complex relations between tradition and modernity in the modernisation of every culture, the Forum proposes a multiple-perspective inspection—philosophical, historical, anthropological, sociological, literary, psychological, psychoanalytical, etc., to reveal the difficulties that every culture suffers and the possibilities of the morality reconstruction.

We accept papers written in English, French, German and Chinese; however, the official language used in this Forum will be English, French and Chinese. Please sent back the confirming receipt before 1st, December, 2013, the title and abstract of the paper before 1st, January, 2014, the complete paper before 15th, February, 2014. The paper will be published in China as a corpus in its original languages with translation in Chinese, except the Chinese papers with translation in English. Please prepare a separate brief presentation in English for your standard academic paper, for 20 to 30 minutes.

Best regards!

Yours sincerely,

Professor Gao Xuanyang

Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in European Culture

Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China