Throughout the 20th Century, there was one hidden rule that dominated the communities of humanities and social sciences—“The world equals the West.” Within a century, this knowledge structure has been firmly established which narrows the analytical framework, excludes the multi-histories beyond the West and venerates the Western mode of knowledge production as the only paradigm. However, history has proven that the Western knowledge system can not effectively understand, capture and explain our own living environments.
Compared to the “globalized” structure of feeling dominated by U.S. power as of the late 1980s, the trends of shifting to various political-economic zones in the past ten years seem to signal the end of a mono system. The once assured and solid body of knowledge and its firm values are all rapidly collapsing. Thus the interpretation frameworks based on Euro-American historical experience are facing unprecedented challenges.
Many discourses from the third world have been questioning the Euro-American-centered mode of knowledge production -- for example, Edward Said’s Orientalism and Mizoguchi Yuzo’s China As Method. However, Euro-American-centrism is still dominating Taiwan and other third world countries’ academic research and teaching. How to put the above reflections of knowledge production into practice and how to create the kind of knowledge production and reproduction mechanism fundamentally challenging the Euro-American-centrism, this is the core goal of establishing this International Master’s Program in Inter-Asia Studies.
Following the so-called “economic miracle” of “Four Little Dragons of Asia” in the 80s’, “The Rise of China” since the 90s has made Asia the world’s spotlight once again. As political, economic, cultural and civil exchanges have been increasing, Asia’s subjectivity is also emerging. On the threshold of emerging Asia as a subject, Shih Hsin University is going to establish the International Master’s Program in Inter-Asia Studies to engage international students and to provide courses lectured in English which aim at developing a new generation of scholars with perspectives of Asian subjectivity.
The Inter-Asia studies of Shih-Hsin University is different from the Asia study from the framework of “Area Studies.” The traditional “Area Studies” limit their scopes of research and analysis in a geo-spatial point of view, which focus on Asia as marked in maps or the nation-states in the geographical Asia. Our new graduate program, however, is based on the thesis: Asia as the method and the world as object. We want to break the hidden rule in academia that views the West as the world. We aim to construct the structure of feelings that perceive the world histories as composed by both the East and the West histories.
To establish a mode that can explain Asia effectively, we must reveal the particularities of Asia as well as the West. In fact, the West is not the world, and the West’s historical explanation can apply d to itself. We believe that we should make the historical experiences of different areas as the reference point of each other through the interaction of intellectuals from different sub-areas in Asia, which helps us see each other. Only when we transform the existent reference point, that is, the Euro-American-centric framework, with multiple points of view can we create a new and convincing system of knowledge. When we establish the truly multiple visions, the world history is then to exist. This is what we call “Asia as the method and the world as object.”
To establish a new academic paradigm needs a long and collaborative road to achieve the goal. The establishment of this graduate program is not only for inspiring students from all over the world with new visions, but also aiming to build a platform where future scholars can refer to various historical experiences with each other and gradually breed a different body of knowledge. To broaden the vision of our students, in addition to the required and elective courses, we invite renowned scholars from all over the world to give guest lectures and arrange workshops for professors and students different institutes with similar visions in other Asian countries,to discuss specific issues and encourage international collaboration in research and teaching.
Application period：February 1, 2012-April 30, 2012
Admission results posted on the SHU website：June 15, 2012
Acceptance/Non-acceptance letters sent to applicants：June 18, 2012
Reply deadline for accepted applicants：July 25, 2012
Final results sent to waitlisted applicants：July 26, 2012-August 20, 2012
Start of the semester: September 2012
Admission results posted on the SHU website：June 15, 2012
Acceptance/Non-acceptance letters sent to applicants：June 18, 2012
Reply deadline for accepted applicants：July 25, 2012
Final results sent to waitlisted applicants：July 26, 2012-August 20, 2012
Start of the semester: September 2012
Contacts
TEL: 886-2-2236-8225 ext. 63512
FAX:886-2-2236-5732
Email: e62@cc.shu.edu.tw
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