We are pleased to welcome you in Iasi to the CRVP International Conference Cultural Borders and Border Cultures on November 2-3, 2018.
As part of RVP Iași Center’s project Re-Learning to be Human for Global Times: The Role of Intercultural Encounters, this conference will investigate the specificities of border cultures and the various experiences of cultural borders and beyond.
For a preview of the culturally diverse approaches to this topic, see the conference program below:
As part of our 2018 Invited Lecture Series, Ven. Jampa Lungtok from the Centre for Higher Tibetan Studies in Switzerland will speak of his intercultural experience of Tibet and Buddhism.
On October 23, a public lecture on Thinking and Meditation: A Buddhist Perspective will be held at the Central University Library. The event will be moderated by Prof. Dan Chitoiu, with Romanian translation available.
On October 24, a lecture on Translating Tibet will be given at the Faculty of Letters, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi.
Iasi RVP Center participated in the 24th World Congress of Philosophy: Learning to Be Human held in Beijing on 13-20 August 2018 with a panel titled Re-learning to Be Human for Global Times: The Role of Intercultural Encounters.
The panel, which was moderated by Prof. Dan Chitoiu, featured a presentation of the Center’s activity and included discussions of concepts such as strangification and cultural translation in an attempt to better grasp the role of intercultural encounters in (re)learning to be human.
Re-Learning to be Human for Global Times: Cultural Borders and Border Cultures
November 2-3, 2018, RVP Iași Center at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Romania
As part of RVP Iași Center’s project Re-Learning to be Human for Global Times: The Role of Intercultural Encounters, this conference proposes an investigation into the meaningful experiences of cultural borders and the complex realities of border cultures.
We invite academics from around the world to share their experience and understanding of intercultural encounters within, across and beyond cultural borders. Contributions could refer to the following issues:
– Re-examining cultural borders
– Bridging cultural differences
– Cross-identities and hybridization
– Border cultures: narratives from within
– Cultural and intercultural values in re-learning to be human for global times
Please send 300 words and a brief C.V. to Professors Dan Chițoiu [dan811@yahoo.com] and Oana Cogeanu [oa_na_co@yahoo.com] and cua-rvp@cua.edu by September 30, 2018. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings.
The Power of Words in Intercultural Encounters
International Workshop, Iași, April 27-28
Last year’s workshop approached the role of intercultural encounters in the contemporary world and in rediscovering what it means to be human by discussing the complex role played by artefacts in producing or facilitating such encounters. The workshop this year aims to explore the role of words in the dynamics of intercultural encounters.
Intercultural encounters are complex events involving what it means to be human in its entirety, including our perceptions, interpretations and representations, as shaped by and expressed in our languages. It is within and through language that we formulate the encounter with the cultural other, and on such occasions language can function as a bridge or a barrier. Words, as projections of a culture within its own horizon, are powerful instruments with multiple facets and the extent to which the meaning(s) of certain words can reach beyond that horizon determines the dimensions of intercultural encounters. Words can commnicate more or less, increase or eliminate distance, enhance or reduce difference. Cultures usually seek to translate themselves for the other to understand and tend to identify with certain words that remain untranslatable. Hence the power of words in intercultural encounters derives from their their potential to express and create shared meaning.
This workshop proposes an investigation from different, intercultural and interdisciplinary, perspectives of scenarios where words reveal their power in facilitating or hindering intercultural encounters. It aims to evaluate how encounters in and through words can contribute to our re-learning to be human for global times and possibly for a global language.
The workshop will consist of a series of discussions and case studies, to be announced. Please send in your expression of interest by April 20.
This is our activity report for 2017, thank you all for your great contributions!
We look forward to consolidating and enhancing our project in 2018.
The map below illustrates the global network of RVP Iasi Center, built in the development of the project Re-Learning to Be Human for Global Times: The Role of Intercultural Encounters.
The intercultural encounters engendered by the project this year, both in the online environment and in several offline meetings and events, are part of a rewarding process of mutual discovery. By bringing diverse people together in free dialogue, the project is reshaping the world(s) we live in through reflection and action.
May we learn further!
Today’s Saint Andrew celebration brings forth a meditation on the unifying message of religion and spirituality. The founder and first bishop of the church of Byzantium, Andrew is the patron of several cities and countries, including Romania.
In Romania, the Christian holiday of St. Andrew overlaps a traditional celebration associated with wolves and winter, when it is believed that animals can speak and the sky opens at midnight.
This is one example of syncretism leading to a popular contemporary holiday that blends in ancient beliefs and practices. More such examples and comments are invited.
Join CRVP’s International Conference organised in Iasi, Romania by the RVP Center at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University on October 27-28, 2017 under the title:
Re-Learning to Be Human for Global Times:
How Intercultural Encounters (Re)Shape the Contemporary World
As intercultural encounters both home and abroad have become a common event, they bring together individuals and communities, leading to a confrontation of cultural differences and humane similarities. Beyond their challenges, such interactions may generate a new awareness of the other and of the self and an enhanced understanding of what it means to be human.
This conference proposes to investigate the different forms and effects of intercultural encounters, both real and virtual, and to discuss how they shape the contemporary world and their possible impact on re-learning to be human. It aims to find out whether intercultural encounters could produce new forms of communication and revise cultural definitions.
Abstracts can still be submitted by mid-October. More details about the conference are available here on CRVP’s website.
What is a journey without a tale? Whether we take a package tour or venture off the beaten track, to a nearby location or in a distant foreign country, we return with a story to tell. Travellers are storytellers by default, making up their own tale on the way.
What could be the story behind the photos below?
One possible story: A country that rewrites itself every 5 years. Can you imagine returning every few years to a city that is periodically erased and rebuilt from the ground up? What remains of it?
RVP Iasi Center 