A delegation of the Institute of Foreign Literatures (IFL) at the ChineseAcademy of Social Sciences (CASS) visited CFLC on October 26. The visitors included Wu Xiaodu, IFL Vice President and Research Fellow; Hou Hongwei, Deputy Director and Research Fellow of IFL’s Russian Literature Research Division; and Hou Dan and Xu Le, both Associate Research Fellows of the Division. The delegation met with CFLC Dean and Professor Zhang Longhai, Vice Dean and Professor Xu Qi, Japanese Department Chair and Professor Wu Guanghui, English Department Vice Chair and Professor Lin Bin, and European Languages Department Vice Chair and Associate Professor Fang Housheng, as well as other faculty members of the various departments at CFLC.
At the beginning of the meeting, CFLC Dean and Professor Zhang Longhai extended a warm welcome to the delegation. IFL Vice President Prof. Wu Xiaodu stated that IFL and CFLC have been solid partners for many years, engaged in close exchanges and cooperation, and that CFLC was the host of the annual meeting of the editorial board of the IFL-run Foreign Literature Review ten years ago. Prof. Zhang briefed the visitors on CFLC’s developments in recent years and conveyed his appreciation for IFL’s support over the years.
IFL is the foremost research institute in China for foreign literatures. Its Foreign Literature Review and World Literature are among the most prestigious scholarly journals in China for foreign literatures, literary criticism, and translation.
The visitors are all experts in Russian literature. Professor Wu is an accomplished scholar in Russian and Soviet Union literary theory and arts, especially the scholarly thought of Viktor BorisovichShklovsky and Mikhail MikhailovichBakhtin. Research Fellow Hou is engaged in the research of post-Soviet Union contemporary Russian literature. And Associate Research Fellows Hou Dan and Xu Le are prolific researchers in the study of Russian writers of the “school of nature”, such as Anton PavlovichChekhov and Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol-Anovskii.
The delegation’s visit was to find out more about CFLCL’s syllabuses for foreign literatures and students’ reading of canonical works of foreign literatures. CFLC Professors Xu Qi, Lin Bin and Wu Guanghui made a presentation of the situation for Russian, English and Japanese literature, respectively.
CFLC lays a strong emphasis on foreign literature studies, and at each department, the literature course is a compulsory course. The English and Japanese Departments each semester give students a list of canonical works of literature that they must read, and students are required to write a full-length review on at least one of the books they have read.
The visitors also discussed with CFLC professors the challenges and new issues in the teaching and research of foreign literatures. The delegation’s visit concluded with a lecture on foreign literature studies by Prof. Wu Xiaodu.
