Rudolf Wagner presented with funding for E-Journal

After a short welcome address by
Prof. Monica Juneja and
Prof. Barbara Mittler, the second CATS Open Forum opened with a musical introduction by Wang Yizhou, Anne Joksch (Heidelberg) and Lei Ping (Berlin). The day’s program was scheduled in honor of
Prof. Rudolf G. Wagner’s 75th birthday and his lifelong commitment to Chinese and Transcultural Studies. Thus, the program included discussions and lectures that covered different areas that have been of interest to Rudolf Wagner during his many years of research.
Looking back over ten years, Barbara Mittler called Rudolf Wagner the “hidden sagely uncrowned king 貓朝玄聖素王” of the recently opened
Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS). The expression is used for Confucius who, while being considered one of the greatest sages of all times, never took on office and never served as a Platonian-type sage ruler to the great detriment of his country.
As one of the founding directors of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context,” Rudolf Wagner brought together a passionate commitment to high quality scholarship with a mission to create an institutional environment where intellectual creativity can flourish. This principle of his has laid the groundwork for the transition of the Cluster into a sustainable Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS).
One significant index of this “transcultural turn” that Rudolf Wagner initiated in the Humanities is the
open access journal Transcultural Studies, which has been in existence for ten years. To honor his efforts especially in Taiwan Studies, the Taiwanese writer and cultural critic Lung Ying-tai convinced the two philanthropists Barry Lam, the founder of Quanta Computers, and T.H. Tung, the co-founder of Asus, to support the Journal of Transcultural Studies with a sum of 100.000 Euro. The sum will be used to extend the editorial positions at the HCTS and continue with the e-journal.
The CATS Open Fora are intended to serve as central moments of exchange and contestation between specialists in different regions and disciplines. They assemble scholars, artists, activists and professionals from Heidelberg and elsewhere to engage in provocative exchanges of ideas between disciplines, regions, generations, and approaches. The Open Fora offer dialogic formats of scholarly engagement. They consider different concepts, languages and methodologies arising from different regions and disciplines and test their utility by drawing on sources and data in diverse formats and languages.

© Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, Photographer: Susann Henker