Category Archives: Graduate study

Fellowships for Graduate Study in China

A message regarding the China Study Program — a fellowship program for graduate students:

Since 2013, the “China Study Program” (CSP), sponsored by the Center for Language Education and Cooperation, has supported more than 900 international students in areas of humanities and social sciences with their doctoral studies and research in China. As the Secretariat of the Expert Committee of the China Studies Program based at the Renmin University of China, we are writing to introduce the fellowship program to you. We would be grateful if you circulate the letter or encourage students to apply.

CSP provides individualized training programs for each candidate and offers generous fellowships to cover the cost of research, fieldwork, and living expenses in China. By offering opportunities for collaboration with prestigious professors in 18 key universities in China, this program brings in-depth learning and research opportunities. Ph.D. candidates registered in an overseas university are eligible to apply for a “Joint Research Ph.D. Fellowship,” and those who have obtained a master’s degree and are interested in pursuing a Ph.D. degree in China may apply for the “Ph.D. Program in China.”
The application for the 2024 CSP Fellowship is now open and will remain so until Feb 28, 2024. Please visit this website for detailed information: http://www.chinese.cn/page/#/pcpage/csp

We would appreciate it if you circulate this information among your students or recommend students to us. If you have any questions, please contact us via email at hantui@ruc.edu.cn.

I wish you a fruitful spring term!

Sincerely,
Dr. Jing (Cathy) Zhang
Deputy Director
Secretariat of Expert Committee of China Studies Program
Institute for the Promotion of Chinese Language and Culture
Renmin University of China
ADD: Room 516, Guo Xue Guan, Renmin University of China
59 Zhong-guan-cun Street, Beijing, 100872, P. R. China

Tel: 86-10-62513770; 86-10-15120008891

Institute for the Promotion of Chinese Language and Culture
School of Chinese Studies and Cultural Exchange
Renmin University of China

MA Program: Renmin University

Renmin University of China in Being is happy to call for application to their two-year MA program in Chinese Philosophy, Religion and Culture (CPRC) at the School of Philosophy. All courses in the CPRC program are taught in English. It offers students an excellent opportunity to study Chinese philosophy and religion while living in China. Currently there are still scholarships available for students. The application period runs from November 15th, 2023 to April 30th, 2024. Interested students can contact Prof. Jifen Li  or Prof. Dennis Schiling. Please read below for more information about the program.

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Funded Graduate Study Opportunity

The Traditional China Chair at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich is soliciting applications for a Ph.D. position in Classical Sinology (80 % FTE). Work towards the Ph.D. will be carried out under the auspices of the SNSF project “Literary Forms and Epistemic Goals in Early Chinese Texts” (Principal Investigator: Dr. R. Suter). The doctoral thesis will be jointly supervised by Prof. W. Behr and Dr. Suter. See here for more information.

“Non-Western” tenure-track jobs in philosophy

Back in April, Marcus Arvan put out this blog post analyzing which specializations were listed in the 2021-22 jobs posted at PhilJobs. He concludes that “Non-Western Philosophy” was the requested specialization in 5.8% of tenure-track jobs in this past year, which is pretty stable over the past several years. Note that if a job lists two specializations, then that counts as 0.5 of a job for each, and so on for even more potential specializations. He adds that another 6% of the tenure track jobs list Non-Western as a desired teaching competence (“area of competence”). We don’t have numbers ready-to-hand for the number of job seekers with one or another variety of “Non-Western” as an AOC, but I suspect that the ratio of seekers to jobs in this area compares favorably to most other areas of specialization. Which is not to say that getting a job in philosophy is ever easy!

Chinese philosophy in the 2021-2022 Philosophical Gourmet Report

Once every few years, the Philosophical Gourmet Report publishes rankings of PhD programs in philosophy in the English-speaking world. It ranks programs “overall” and by areas of specialization. As one would hope for a report that aspires to be comprehensive and describe the current state of the field, one of those areas of specialization is Chinese philosophy.

You can find a general description of the methodology of the report here. As the member of the advisory board who took the lead in managing the Chinese philosophy area, and who wrote to the other assessors of Chinese philosophy to convene some joint deliberations about the process, I wanted to say a bit more about how we handled the Chinese philosophy section. Continue reading →

English-language MA in Chinese Philosophy, Religion, and Culture at Renmin University

The School of Philosophy at Renmin University of China has for several years offered a two-year M.A. program in Chinese Philosophy, Religion, and Culture (CPRC). All courses for this program (except Chinese language) are taught in English. It offers overseas students who are not proficient in Mandarin a valuable opportunity to study Chinese philosophy, religion, and culture whilst living in China. It also provides opportunities to study Chinese and experience intercultural communication with professors and classmates of diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences.

For more information, see the programs summary poster here, further information here, and the official website here.

For a list of specialists affiliated with the program, read on.

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East China Normal University’s Skills-Based Approach to Chinese Philosophy

Paul J. D’Ambrosio, Dean of the Center for Intercultural Research and Associate Professor in Chinese Philosophy at East China Normal University, writes with some information on ECNU’s English-language graduate programs:

For almost a decade East China Normal University has run a highly successful graduate (M.A. and Ph.D.) program in Chinese philosophy taught in English. In recent years we have begun to implement a method of teaching Chinese philosophy that centers on the practice, or gongfu (“kung-fu”), of doing philosophy with classical texts. The gongfu or “skills-based” approach focuses on developing skills of close reading and interpretation in the original Chinese. We work together to understand, unpack, and explore the interpretive possibilities of specific passages within the context of the traditional works themselves. The core courses ask students to read aloud passages from the AnalectsLaoziMencius, and Zhuangzi in Chinese and then themselves lead investigative discussions of what those passages can mean. The professors guide discussion, helping correct misreadings and drawing on traditional and modern commentaries to elucidate which interpretations have historically proven most influential and (perhaps) why. While aiming to familiarize and inform, the emphasis in class lies on cultivating the skills essential to soundly analyzing the traditional texts.

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