Fu Jen Journal of Foreign Languages: Linguistics, Literature, and Culture is listed in 2012~2014 Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences Evaluated Disciplines
Fu Jen Journal of Foreign Languages: Linguistics, Literature, and Culture,
Volume 20, Volume 21 Call for Papers
Fu Jen Journal of Foreign Languages: Linguistics, Literature, and Culture, which resulted from the merger of Fu Jen Studies: Literature and Linguistics and Fu Jen Journal of Foreign Languages: Linguistics, Literature, and Culture, is published by the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures (CFLL) at Fu Jen Catholic University. FJJFL welcomes general submissions and submissions for the feature topic. Volumes 1~17 are published once a year in July, and starting from Volume 18, the journal is published twice a year in February and July. The journal is indexed in the Taiwan Citation Index (TCI), and readers can access full-text articles on the FJJFL website and through Airiti Library. The feature topic of volume 20 is “Humanities for the Future: Knowledge Translation and SDGs Talent Development.” The feature topic of volume 21 is “Never-ending endings.”
Fu Jen Journal of Foreign Languages: Linguistics, Literature, and Culture, Volume 20 (FJJFL 2023)
Feature Topic: Humanitics for the Future: Knowledge Translation and SDGs Talent Development
In this era of knowledge economy, global issues and the rapid development of AI technologies affect all aspects of life and call for changes in various industries, creating a major challenge for the humanities labor market as higher education needs to respond to the changes in both teaching and learning. Oudeweetering and Voogt (2018) compiled the concepts of twenty-first century skills proposed by international organizations such as Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union (EU), the U.S. Advance Technology Consulting Service (ATCS), the North Central Regional Education Laboratory (NCREL), and the Partnership for Critical Competencies in the 21st Century (P21), and conducted a surve of approximately 2800 school teachers’ perception of the above-mentioned skills. The results suggest that the following six competences are of cardinal importance: (1) digital literacy, (2) innovative thinking, (3) critical thinking and communication, (4) digital citizenship, (5) self-regulated learning, and (6) (computer-supported) collaborative learning. In other words, to develop future talents and promote social well-being, classroom activities must be designed to enhance students’ digital information literacy, develop their independent and innovative thinking skills, guide their collaboration, communication, participation in voluntary work, and nourish their sense of social responsibility.
In Taiwan, likewise, the Curriculum Guidelines of 12-Year Basic Education (implemented in 2019, hereafter 108 Curriculum), sees the core competencies as the main framework for curriculum development, emphasizes human-centered education, and promotes individualized instructions to help students adapt themselves in their present lives and face future challenges. Aiming at cultivating self-directed lifelong learners with civic responsibility, the 108 Curriculum seeks to guide students to develop the competencies they can use in different fields, instead of being limited to specific subjects. Divided in three aspects–self-directed action, communicative interaction, and social participation (Chen 2017), the nine competencies roughly correspond to the 6 competencies categorized by Oudeweetering and Voogt (2018), with the difference being the 108 Curriculum’s specification of communication media. To follow up on this educational reform of basic education, universities in Taiwan now seek to integrate competence-based learning into subject-specific learning, to continue what has been started by the 108 curriculum: “(1) [igniting] their motivation and passion; (2) [guiding] them to develop interactions with self, others, society, and nature; (3) [helping] them apply learning in practice, experience the meaning of life, develop commitment to a sustained development of society, nature, and culture; and (4) [obtaining] common good” (Chen 2017 2).
The term “knowledge translation,” derived from medical and health sciences, refers to the generation of effective knowledge transfer and facilitation of communication. Wahl et al. (2022) points out an urgent need to bridge the theory-practice gap in health literacy in the post- pandemic world. Health care providers must possess adequate humanistic literacy to understand patients’ social and educational backgrounds, daily habits, attitudes and values in order to be able to effectively provide medication and health knowledge, thereby achieving effective knowledge translation and doctor-patient communication. In the field of humanities, knowledge translation has been developed for many years. Yang, Hung-Jen (2012), for instance, introduced the concept of locality and cultural translation to promote community building and development. In addition, David (2019) introduced a translingual pedagogy approach (the TRANSLATE protocol) to four teachers in monolingual classes in order for them to integrate translingual routines into their own instructional practices and then, through classroom observation, analyzed how pedagogical translation happened as these teachers made locally situated design choices. In the context of the pandemic, furthermore, the rapid advances in digitalization pose a challenge to teachers. They need to pool their knowledge and help students not only made use of technological developments but also develop creativity and transmit knowledge to their target groups in various literature and culture courses.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are not a new concept, yet have received increasing attention in recent years. In 2004, the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) suggested in its annual report that we should contemplate how to foster social learning and spread the knowledge of social and environmental sustainability within the context of global environmental issues (Chen, 2007). In Taiwan, Academia Sinica established the Center for Sustainability Science in 2015. Researchers from the three divisions of the Academy, the Physical Sciences, Life and Medical Sciences, and Humanity and Social Sciences are encouraged to engage in interdisciplinary collaboration to solve problems related to ecological and environmental changes and their impact on human well-being (CTRC Center for Sustainable Science, n.d.). Fuente (2022) compiled 12 examples that involve content-based learning (CBI) and education for sustainability development (ESD) in language teaching and curriculum design, thereby incorporating the SDGs into foreign language learning. These examples include not merely project-, problem-, and task-based approaches, but also incorporate educational strategies such as field work, debate, and reflective pedagogies aimed at enhancing students' awareness of and engagement with sustainable development issues, as well as constructive suggestions for educators to design curricula.
All the three issues taken together, it is indeed a good time for the humanities to speed up its self- transformation and cross-disciplinary collaboration in order to address the issues of today. Institutional transformation aside, there is also an urgent need to consider how to nurture humanities students with interdisciplinary communication skills such as digital storytelling, data science skills, communication and organizational skills, execution skills, and innovative skills. With global sustainable development in view, we need to enhance students' understanding of global issues, promote meaningful intercultural communication, and encourage them to integrate digital technology, independent thinking, and interdisciplinary cooperation, so that they can solve social problems with creativity and empathy.
“Humanities for the Future: Knowledge Translation and SDGs Talent Development," the feature topic for Volume 20 of FJJFL, welcomes papers by scholars and educators from all universities to examine how, in response to the post-pandemic era, curriculum transformation stimulates the development of 21st century skills and achieves knowledge translation in humanities and SDGs through the lens of foreign languages, translation, literature, and culture. We expect these shared research insights will provide practical solutions that help nurture foreign language talent and create a sustainable society.
Possible issues include but are not limited to:
Perspectives, practices, or research on foreign languages, literatures, and cultural knowledge translation
Perspectives, practices, or research on foreign languages, literatures, and cultural production
Perspectives, practices, or research on sustainability and development of the humanities (with a focus on foreign languages)
Perspectives, practices, or research on interdisciplinary interaction between foreign languages and other disciplines
Perspectives, practices, or research on digital media and foreign language development and application
Format: APA 7th edition or MLA 9th edition
In addition to the feature topic, FJJFL Volume 20 (2022) also welcomes general submissions addressing issues related to the teaching of foreign languages, literatures, and cultures. General submissions can be in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, or Spanish, while articles for the feature topic can be in Chinese or English.
Submission deadline: October 30, 2022.
Publication date: February 26, 2023
For more information about formatting requirements and formatting details, please see General Submission Guidelines
Fu Jen Journal of Foreign Languages: Linguistics, Literature, and Culture, Volume 21 (FJJFL 2023)
Feature Topic: Never-ending Endings
The feature topic for Volume 21 (2023) of FJJFL is “Never-ending Endings,” featuring research reflecting on history, culture, literature and the arts in the context of an endless series of crisis (epidemiological, financial, geopolitical, climatic, alimentary, etc.) whose addition, accumulation, succession and superposition went with the ending of lives, relationships, jobs, projects, and hopes.
But the real crux of this special issue is not “simply” to inquire into how and why new cultural, linguistic and literary forms of expression have emerged to describe, narrate and conceptualize individual or collective grief in an age of multifactorial polycrisis. The complementary aim of our volume 21 special issue is to address a deeper transformation to our relation to endings themselves. It’s not only that endings never ends, it’s also, and more importantly, that any sense of ending is in itself coming to an end. The fact that “the End” has to come an end is the most structural and sea-changing manifestation of never-ending endings. Everything that was supposed to put an end to an History of continuous, unpredictable, irreversible, unwelcomed changes has just ended.
Among all the many things that seem to have suddenly run out of steam and stopped to carry any meaningful explanatory power are “postological narratives”. By “postology” here we mean, all the discursive strategies pointing to “an era of ending” to describe our contemporary mode of relation to the world: post-modern, post-hegemony, post-colonial, post-structural, etc. It’s not an accident of intellectual life but the expression of a historical, existential and ontological change in our ways to relate to reality that recently we have witnessed a proliferation of “trans-”: transcultural studies, transgender sexuality, transhistorical museums, etc. The era of postology, which asserted that from today on we will be living in an endless present, now belongs itself to the past.
Going back two or three decades before, it was claimed that with globalization we had the end of it: the end of parochial particularism, the end of religious separatism, the end of isolated kingdoms and cultural autarky. But if we look at the reality of the world today, it will appear that the only thing which remains truly global is deglobalization itself: economic, technological, and intellectual decoupling is all the rage. While being fully integrated to the global economy, the PRC, with its separation from Western virtual network (no Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, LinkedIn), its financial insulation (no convertibility for the yuan), its own peculiar version of 20th century history and its relativization of universal norms (Asian values, Chinese specificity), has become the leading figure of this trend. However, in an era of transnational challenges, such as transnational criminality (mafias), climate change and global environmental disruptions, this re-nationalization of every aspect of life (be it Trump’s “America first” or PRC “dual-circulation”) is worrying.
Going back two or three decades before, it was famously claimed by Francis Fukuyama that, with the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the 9th November 1989, History was coming to an End. From this day on, there will be only one (social-economic) game in town: liberal democracy – supported by international laws engraved in international institutions (WTO, UN, etc.). However, the dislocation of the Soviet Union never led to a process of modern liberalization; it went with the ascent of a neo-imperial mentality called Eurasianism (Slavic exceptionalism). Then, as a logical consequence of an irredentist ideology, war came again to Europe. The 24th February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine makes it “official” in terms of historical records: it’s the end of the end of history.
More generally, the never-ending of endings is nowhere best manifested than in the radical changes that we have come to accept as the “new normal.” The normalization of the exception means that we all know (though we are reluctant to admit it) that disruptions that were said to belong to the past, to be exceptional or to be accepted only as “temporary” (states of emergency due to global epidemics, regional wars, or climatic catastrophe) will haunt our present forever. Willingly-nillingly, we need to come to term with the fact that the path going “back to normal” is lost to us.
“Never-ending Endings” as the feature topic for Volume 21 (2023) of FJJFL will ask contributions coming from researchers with diverse academic background to address the following questions:
1. Meta-Theoretical: to what extent recent conceptual changes and new emerging perspectives in your own field of study has achieved a new kind of momentum that has made irrelevant and preposterous past assumptions about the purported theoretical closure achieved in your academic field of research? In other words, what are the most recent disruptive theoretical innovations challenging the dominant paradigm or prominent narrative that, in your field of study, was supposed to provide stability, achievement and completeness to all future researches and forthcoming inquiries? And, in what sense, this end of something that was supposed to end all debates and uncertainties can be related to this existential feeling of never-ending endings? What is the Ending that has ended for you?
2. Transdisciplinary: What are the cultural, artistic, visual, literary expressions of never-ending endings in recent works of art? What new forms of the expressions of grief, trauma and recovering can be found in recent novels, plays, movies, TV series, anime, or essays that can be associated to diverse and contemporary experiences of endless, repeated, fragmented, inchoate, liquid endings? To what extent these artistic and intellectual productions can be related to any of the events related to the End of the End of History previously mentioned or others such as: Deglobalization, Ending of Universal Norms (Human Rights, Nuclear Peace, etc.), Normalization of the Exception (Massive Deaths due to: Emerging Disease, Neo-imperialist Wars, or Ecological Collapse). What in recent works of art express this feeling that not only endings have come to an end, i.e. that the reassurance of closure is lost, but also that this end of endings entails not so much a fresh start than a beginning carrying with it the dread and weight of its own looming ending?
Format: APA 7th edition or MLA 9th edition
In addition to the feature topic, FJJFL Volume 21 (2022) also welcomes general submissions addressing issues related to the teaching of foreign languages, literatures, and cultures. General submissions can be in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, or Spanish, while articles for the feature topic can be in Chinese or English.
Submission deadline: March 1, 2023
Publication date: July 31, 2023
For more information about formatting requirements and formatting details, please see General Submission Guidelines
Contact:
Editorial Assistant: Scarlett Hung-chen LU
College of Foreign Languages, Fu Jen Catholic University
No. 510 Zhongzheng Road, Xinzhuang District, New Taipei City
24205 Taiwan (R.O.C)
Tel: 02-2905-3808
Fax: 02-2905-2174
Email: fujenstudies@gmail.com