Professor Fan-Sen Wang visits Peking University
Nov 18, 2019
Peking University, Nov. 11, 2019: At the invitation of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Peking University, Professor Fan-Sen Wang, a renowned historian who holds the title of Academician at Academia Sinica, Taiwan, visited Peking University and gave lectures from October 7 to November 7.
During Wang’s sojourn, he delivered two public lectures. The first one, “Personality and History”, focused on the subtle and important connection between historical figures’ personality and relevant researches. In the second one, “History as a Mind-Expanding Study”, Wang’s discussion centered the utility aspect of history. He believed that history could help people avoid the collective loss of memory, thus emancipating our minds.
Fan-Sen Wang during the Personality and History lecture
On October 12, the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences held the “Tschen Yin Koh and Modern Chinese Academic Research” seminar, at which Wang gave a speech about Tschen’s studies of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Wang mainly talked about Biography of Liu Rushi, the most controversial work by Tschen Yin Koh. He regarded this work as Tschen’s experimental work, which contained Tschen’s profound knowledge of history and attentive observation over human life.
Wang during the seminar
Wang and his students
Before Wang departed, he said that among the research institutes to which he had been, the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences of PKU resembled the Institute for Advanced Study of Princeton University the most. Yet the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences possesses a more active academic atmosphere. By quoting Zhi-Fan Chen, a famous Chinese writer, Wang described the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences as “a hotel for sages”. He wished this platform could help more scholars to communicate in the future.
Written by: Chen Ching Shan
Edited by: Wang Nini
Source: PKU News (Chinese)
