Recent and Forthcoming Events

Opening Ceremony of Nationa Base for International Culture Trade Held in Beijing On the morning of Aug. 25th, the opening activities of National Base for International Culture Trade （Beijing） and Beijing Yianzhu Comprehensive Bonded Zone were held in Beijing. Cai Wu, Minister of Culture, Wang Anshun, Deputy Party Secretary and mayor of Beijing Municipal Government, Sun Yibiao, deputy director of General Administration of Customs, Shen Baochang, vice chairman of Beijing Municipal CPPCC and Xu Deming, the president of Gems ＆ Jewelry Trade Association of China attended the ceremony.     

Recent and Forthcoming Events

Meet in Beijing Arts Festival kicks off The ＂Celebrating the 5Oth Anniversary of China-France Diplomatic Relations Concert＂ ~pened the 14th Meet in Beijing Arts Festival on April 28, 2014. Well-known French conductor Philippe Entremont attended the concert together with symphony orchestras and choruses from China National Opera House.     

Recent and Forthcoming Events

AsiaChina and Pakistan Sign Memorandum on Translation and Publication of Classics China and Pakistan signed a memorandum on translation and publication of class...     

Recent and Forthcoming Events

Peking Opera feast kicks off in Bangkok
The ＂Face to Face with the Opera Masterpieces＂ event opened at the Chinese Cultural Center in Bangkok on Aug 23, aiming to introduce traditional Chinese opera to the Thai people and to promote fine, traditional Chinese culture. The event lasted till September.     

Recent and Forthcoming Events

The exhibition “Buryat＇s Spirit： Rus- sian Artist Dashi Namdakov＇s Works” was recently on view at the World Art Museum in Beijing. The exhibition displays the artist＇s 68 masterpieces that he created in various periods, in- cluding 56 sculptures and 12 paint- ings. As a descendant of Buryat peo- ple, Dashi creates works that depict subjects of Lamaism, Shamanism, Buryat epics and Siberian myths. His sculptures unveil a mysterious world, mix decorative and symbolic elements of folk art with academic approaches of realism, and show interaction be- tween Eastern and Western cultures. The exhibition will last until January 4, 2015.     

Recent and Forthcoming Events

Story of Xinhua and other fourteen productions each supported with 1 million yuan
Qinqiang opera The Story of Xinhua and other fourteen productions were each supported with 1 million yuan （$167,000） by the National Classic Stage Works Project.     

Recent and Forthcoming Events

The 4th Chinese Film Festival opened officially in Paris
On May, 12nd, the 4th Chinese Filrn Festival was officially opened in Gaumont on the avenue of Champs- Elysees. Zhai .luan, Ambassador of China to France, Yin Fu, Director of China Cultural Center in Paris and Chairperson on the part of China of this festival, special guest Catherine Deneuve, Xia Zitong and Liu Xiaoguang, the leading actress and producer of the film ＂The Monkey King＂ and other guests attended this opening ceremony.     

Recent and Forthcoming Events

On September 6th, the Confucius In- stitute Headquarters/Hanban, and Renmin University of China co-hosted the opening of the fourth World Con- ference on Sinology on RUC campus. Vice Premier Liu Yandong attend- ed the opening ceremony and subse- quently welcomed the foreign Sinolo- gists. This conference marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of Con- fucius Institute, with over 200 schol- ars of varying disciplines coming from 38 different countries and regions to discuss and exchange views on Sinol- ogy.     

Recent Television Scholarship and “Democratic” Evaluation

Television Culture. John Fiske Television and the Crisis of Democracy. Douglas Kellner Demographic Vistas: Television in American Culture. David Marc One Nation Under Television: The Rise & Fall of Network TV. J. Fred MacDonald     

Recent advances in intergroup contact theory

Recent advances in intergroup contact theory and research are reviewed. A meta-analysis with 515 studies and more than 250,000 subjects demonstrates that intergroup contact typically reduces prejudice (mean r = −.21). Allport's original conditions for optimal contact - equal status, common goals, no intergroup competition, and authority sanction - facilitate the effect but are not necessary conditions. There are other positive outcomes of intergroup contact, such as greater trust and forgiveness for past transgressions. These contact effects occur not only for ethnic groups but also for such other groups as homosexuals, the disabled and the mentally ill. Intergroup friendship is especially important. Moreover, these effects typically generalize beyond the immediate outgroup members in the situation to the whole outgroup, other situations, and even to other outgroups not involved in the contact. They also appear to be universal - across nations, genders, and age groups. The major mediators of the effect are basically affective: reduced anxiety and empathy. And even indirect contact reduces prejudice - vicarious contact through the mass media and having a friend who has an outgroup friend. Of course, negative contact occurs - especially when it is non-voluntary and threatening. Criticisms of the theory and policy implications are also discussed.     

三十年来中国陶瓷考古发现与研究述略

自上世纪70年代末以来，我国的陶瓷考古发现颇丰，围绕这些发现而展开的研究也逐步深入和细化。本文拟对主要的发现与研究进行梳理，以期初步展现三十年间我国陶瓷考古的整体面貌。     

热点透视与学科建设:近年来的中国口述历史研究

近年来,口述历史受到了中国大陆学界的普遍重视,也受到了社会各界的广泛关注,口述历史研究呈现出方兴未艾之势.口述历史的兴起不仅拓展了史料收集的范围,将活生生的口述史料整理并保存下来,为史学研究提供了必要的线索及必备的资料,而且扩大了历史文本的写作队伍,对口述史有兴趣的非历史专业的新闻记者、社会调查者及作家,纷纷加入口述历史访谈及研究的行列,出版了一批较有影响的口述历史作品.这些作品主要有三类:社会学家用田野调查方法整理的成果、文学工作者用新闻采访的方法采制创作的口述作品、历史工作者用口述访谈方法整理的口述史著作.如何看待目前中国大陆兴起的口述历史研究热潮?口述历史研究能否给予"历史的真实"?目前中国大陆的口述历史发展的基本趋向怎样?出现了哪些有代表性的成果?研究过程中存在着哪些主要问题?解决这些问题的基本思路何在?中国口述历史能否建设成一门新兴学科?如何建构有中国特色的口述历史学科?这些问题是本文关注的重点.     

Latins and Georgians and the Crusader Kingdom

Partly because the First Crusade had weakened the Seljuk Sultanate in 1097–1099, David III of Georgia was able to extend his power over much of the Caucasus. The rulers of the Crusader States who stood in need of Eastern Christian allies sought to co-operate with him. Yet although some Western knights served in his army, the practical difficulties of co-ordinating joint action against the Islamic powers of north Syria and Anatolia in the twelfth century proved insuperable. In the thirteenth century the Georgian crown offered an alliance to the leaders of the Fifth Crusade: their forces would attack the northern provinces of the Ayyūbid Empire while the crusaders were invading Egypt. This strategy was sound, but the rise of the Mongol Empire prevented it from being implemented. Nevertheless, the desire for military collaboration between Georgia and the Western powers persisted until the mid-fifteenth century.     

Perceptions of national identity and attitudes toward immigrants and immigration in Canada and Germany

In the current research, we examined whether promoting an inclusive national ingroup that includes both immigrants and nonimmigrants would improve attitudes toward immigrants and immigration among members of receiving societies. We also determined whether one's nation of citizenship and individual differences in social dominance orientation would moderate the effects. Participants were 126 Canadian students and 282 German students, who completed a measure of social dominance orientation and were then asked to respond to a series of questions designed to heighten the salience of national identity (national identity), promote a national ingroup that includes immigrants (common national ingroup), or irrelevant questions (control). The dependent measures included attitudes toward immigrants and immigration, and subtle prejudice toward immigrants. Results revealed that the manipulation of a common national ingroup successfully promoted more positive attitudes toward immigrants and immigration among higher social dominance oriented Canadian participants, but tended to have detrimental effects on the attitudes of higher social dominance oriented German participants. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of considering the context in which groups are situated, as well as implications for developing strategies to promote harmony between immigrants and members of receiving societies.     

Public and Popular: British and Swedish Audience Trends in Factual and Reality Television

The research in this article examines audience responses to a range of factual and reality genres. It takes as a starting point that television audiences do not experience news or documentary or reality TV in isolation but as part of a range of factual and reality programmes. Factual and reality programming includes a broad understanding of non-fictional programming on broadcast television, satellite, cable and digital television. The breakdown of factual and reality programming into specific genres includes news, current affairs, documentary, and reality programmes, with further sub genres applied within each of these categories. This article critically examines genre evaluation. The quantitative research in this article is based on two national representative surveys conducted in Britain and Sweden. In both Britain and Sweden, programme makers have moved towards a reliance on popular factual genres. In Britain this is across all channels, and in Sweden this is mainly concentrated on commercial channels. Whilst there is still a commitment to news, there is an increasing use of hybrid genres in an attempt to popularise factual output. The impact of this changing generic environment on audiences is that in both countries viewers have reacted by drawing a line between traditional and contemporary factual genres. It is precisely because of the redrawing of the factual map that viewers rely on traditional ways of evaluating genres as public and informative, or popular and entertaining. The data provides evidence that contributes to existing debate on television genre, public service broadcasting, and media literacy skills. The central argument in this article is that genre evaluation is connected with wider socio-cultural discourses on public service broadcasting and popular culture, and that these are common social and cultural values that are shared by national audiences in two Northern European countries.