About

ISSN: 2709-5479

The CJD Project

 

The ICCS’s CJD digital platform was envisioned as a project to encourage grad students to act as public intellectuals in the spirit of literary communism and the free association of young scholars from around the world.

The CJD project started in 2018 as a sub-project of the MOE SPROUT Project led by the International Center for Cultural Studies (ICCS) –“Conflict, Justice, Decolonization: Critical Studies of Inter-Asian Societies.” We believe that knowledge production should originate from the critical consciousness of the urgent issues that we face in our societies: different forms of conflict, injustice, and social inequality. We situate our inquiries in the Inter-Asian societies’ arena within the global context because we recognize that all forms of contemporary conflict result from the past’s complex historical process. We need to engage with the re-assessment of the geopolitical and geo-historical factors of colonialism, the Cold War regime, and the rapidly changing economic system of the 21st century. We consider the intellectual interventions and critical analysis of existing systems, institutes, laws, and ideologies as rigorous epistemic decolonization practices.

We regard our grad students as our researchers and appreciate their projects that have enriched the scope of our intellectual endeavors. The editorial board is composed of our doctoral student researchers associated with ICCS. Our contributors are MA and Ph.D. students from the Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies (SRCS) and the International Program of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (UST), based in NCTU, Taiwan. These young scholars are from different countries, including S. Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Spain, Poland, Belgium, France, South Africa, DR Congo, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Our students shared their analysis and critiques of their home societies, collaborate among themselves as team works, and expose themselves to the challenges from diverse disciplinary and cultural backgrounds. The converging points of their concerns are featured through the tags on the platform: Covid-19, Racism, Nationalism, Capitalism, Colonialism, Cold War, BRI, Southeast Asia, Labor Migration, Social Movement, Artistic Intervention, Media and Society, War and Politics, Marginalized People, Gender and Sexual Minority, etc. We’ve seen many talented and sharp minds from the contributions in the past four years.

So far, the CJD editorial team has published four booklets:

  1. Pandemic Politics: Disruption and (Re)action
  2. Social Movements in a World of Backsliding Democracy
  3. Rethinking the Failed Project of Equality
  4. The Contested Space of Media in Society

These titles also reflected the focus of their engagement at this stage. I’m genuinely impressed by the editorial team’s self-initiated and self-organized research teamwork and am proud to present this achievement here. We also welcome contributions from grad students or junior colleagues from other countries so that more people can meet at this exciting digital corridor.

 

Joyce C. H. Liu

Professor Emeritus, Specially Appointed Professor, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, NYCU
Director, International Center for Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Director, International Institute for Cultural Studies & International Program in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, University System of Taiwan