The Plenary Session 2018 and the Awarding Ceremony for new academicians of European Academy of Science and Arts were held in Salzburg, Austria on the morning of March 3 (European time). During the ceremony, Prof. Cao Shunqing, Dean (academic affairs) of Sichuan University's College of Literature and Journalism, Outstanding Professor in liberal arts of Sichuan University, and Distinguished Professor under the Chang Jiang Scholars Program, was awarded the title of "Academician of European Academy of Sciences and Arts" for his great contributions to the field of comparative literature.
Mr. Cao has an array of titles including but not limited to: Outstanding Professor of Sichuan University; Dean (academic affairs) and Doctoral Supervisor of the College of Literature and Journalism; Distinguished Professor (comparative literature) under the Chang Jiang Scholars Program sponsored by the Ministry of Education (MOE); winner of the National Teaching Master Award; member of the Discipline Review Group of the Academic Degrees Committee under the State Council; judge of the National Social Science Funds; member of the Undergraduate Teaching Evaluation Committee under the MOE; Vice Director Member of the Advisory Board of Chinese Language and Literature Teaching under the MOE; Vice Chairman of Sichuan Federation of Social Science Associations; academic leader in the nation's key disciplinary areas of world literature and comparative literature; member of the Trans-Century Training Program Foundation for the Talents under the MOE; winner of the Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation; recipient of Chinese doctoral degree who has made outstanding contributions; specialist granted with the State Council Special Allowance; President of Chinese Society of Comparative Literature; Vice President of Chinese Ancient Literary Theory Society; Vice President of Chinese and Foreign Literary Theory Society; President of Sichuan Comparative Literature Association; visiting scholar to Cornell University, Harvard University and Chinese University of Hong Kong; guest professor of Taiwan's Nanhua University, Fo Guang University and Tamkang University; head of the national-level teaching team for comparative literature, national-level courses in comparative literature, a number of major projects such as the "Comparative Study on the Development of Chinese and Foreign Literature" sponsored by the National Social Science Funds, and major project "Chinese and foreign literature as well as Popular Culture" under the "10th Five-Year Plan" (of the National Social Science Fund) and "211 Project"; winner of numerous national-level teaching achievement awards, the MOE's Scientific Research Outstanding Achievement Award for Higher Learning Institutions, and Sichuan’s Outstanding Achievement Award and Teaching Achievement Award in Philosophy and Social Science.
He is also a member of the Editorial Board of Literary Criticism; member of the Editorial Board of Chinese Comparative Literature; Editor-in-chief of Cultural Studies and Literary Theory (CSSCI-source journal); and Editor-in-chief of English journal Comparative Literature: East & West. He has published more than 20 books and over 100 academic papers, including Chinese and Western Comparative Poetics, History of Comparative Literature, History of Chinese and Foreign Comparative Literary Theories, Chinese Culture and Literary Theory, Annotation of Literature Theories of Western Han and Eastern Han, Anthology of Oriental Literary Theories, New Explorations of Comparative Literature, Discourse upon Ancient Chinese Literary Theory, Cross-cultural Comparison of Chinese and Foreign Literature, Comparative Literature Theory, Comparative Literature Theory,Comparative History of World Literature, The Science of Comparative Literature, Comparative Literature Course, and Chinese Culture.
The "Variation Theory of Comparative Literature" proposed by Prof. Cao Shunqing brings forward a new concept, a new category and a new expression that is easy to be understood and accepted by the international field, and has set off a wave of research and discussion among the international academic filed. The theory has been widely acclaimed by reputed scholars in the United States, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, India and other countries, and have had a worldwide impact. Prof. Cao's English-version monograph The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature has been published by Springer in Germany, and his representative work in Chinese, Comparative Chinese and Western Poetics, has been translated into Russian and published in Moscow. In recent years, he has served as guest editor-in-chief for A&HCI journal Comparative Literature & Culture of Purdue University as well as A&HCI journal European Review, and has co-sponsored an international journal titled Comparative Literature & World Literature with the University of Arizona and acted as the first editor-in-chief. In recognition of his outstanding academic performance and remarkable achievements in comparative literature and cultural studies, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts has granted him the honor of Academician.
Site of the Plenary Session 2018 and the Awarding Ceremony for new academicians
The "Variation Theory of Comparative Literature" put forward by Prof. Cao is aimed to solve the disciplinary crisis and construct a discourse system for nationality theories based on the global crisis of comparative literature and the "aphasia" state of Chinese literary theories. In the field of global comparative literature, there exists incommensurability among different cultures. We can not fundamentally solve the legitimacy issue concerning the comparison between Eastern and Western literature by merely seeking common points. The "Variation Theory of Comparative Literature" exactly serves a major breakthrough to solve the above predicament by creating a new concept, a new category and a new expression easily understandable and acceptable to the international academic field. The "Variation Theory" confirms that differences are also comparable, and bases the rationality of comparison on heterogeneity and variability. Therefore, the "Variation Theory of Comparative Literature" has become a disciplinary theory with universality, which enables comparative literature to go beyond, at least to some extent, traditional influence studies and parallel studies, as well as the so-called oriental and western perspectives, and get rid of cultural conservatism and chauvinism, so as to facilitate the realization of this discipline's research goal of "World Literature and General Literature".
This theoretical achievement is concentratedly reflected in the Prof. Cao's "The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature" published in 2014, which immediately attracted the attention of the international comparative literature circle. It was published by Springer, a world renown publisher, in Heideberg, London and New York simultaneously. Douwe W. Fokkema, Professor at the University of Utrecht and former President of the International Comparative Literature Association, wrote a preface for this English-text book. A&HCI journal Comparative Literature & Culture of Purdue University even published a feature article, Variation Theory and Comparative Literature: A Book Review Article about Cao's Work, to speak highly of this book; the book has also received particular attention from The Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Review, an authoritative magazine for the evaluation of research outcomes in the domain of international comparative literature.
The European Academy of Sciences and Arts is an interdisciplinary academic organization located in Salzburg, Austria. With more than 1,900 academicians, among which, some 10% come from non-EU countries, and 33 have won Nobel Prize, it is one of the academies of sciences with the highest proportions of Nobel Prize winners, thus deserved to be a world-class one. There are 9 academicians with Chinese nationality or Chinese origin, including Prof. Charles K. Gao, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics and former Vice-Chancellor of Hong Kong University; Prof. Irene M. C. Lo at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Zeng Zhilang, President of the University System of Taiwan, and Academician of "Academia Sinica"; and Prof. Zhuo Xinping, President of the Chinese Association of Religious Studies, member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Director of the Institute of World Religions, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
