The Department of Chinese Literature, National Taipei University, was preceded by the Chinese Division of Common Education, College of Law and Business, Taiwan Provincial Chung-Hsin University, and established on February 1, 2000. By that time, the department was first named “Department of Chinese Language and Literature.” Later in 2007, the department founded the master program. In 2009, the department changed its name to “Department of Chinese Literature,” and in 2015, the Graduate Institute of Chinese Bibliography & Textual Criticism merged with our department. To this date, the teaching and research structure of the department has been developed more and more comprehensively.
Since the department was established, with the knowledge scale of the traditional department of Chinese as the basis, we have set our development goals and features: “the modernization of Chinese” and “the informatization of Chinese.” Accordingly, we seek to cultivate contemporary Chinese talents with a global vision and remodel the international perspective of Chinese intellectuals in the new age. In March 2020, in order to meet the contemporary expectation for the cultivation of the ability of Chinese students, we further renewed our three directions of development as “classics interpretation,” “creative writing,” and “digital humanities.” “Classics interpretation” emphasizes digesting, understanding, and vitalizing the spiritual essence of Chinese classics, philosophy, and culture. By facilitating a dialogue between the ancient and the modern, we aim to develop contemporary interpretations of the traditional texts and thus create significance in the current society. On the other hand, in terms of “literature writing,” with the extensive reading under the Asia-Pacific framework and the courses on the writing of modern poetry, essay, novel, and drama, students are trained to cultivate their writing ability and grasp the development of Chinese literature over the century. Lastly, “digital humanities” dedicates to cultivating students’ skills for various mainstream application software. By assisting the students to put their knowledge of Chinese literature and philosophy into practice after graduation, we strive to enhance our students’ competitiveness in the workplace.
In January 2021, we set the research on “Asia-Pacific Chinese poetry” as our first medium and long range academic development priority. Conducted with an Asia-Pacific macroscopic vision, this research integrates our faculty’s research capacity of both classical and modern Chinese poetry in the pan-Asia-Pacific region. By offering new courses on Chinese poetry, conducting research projects, holding academic conferences, and publishing scholarly journals on special topics, the research on “Asia-Pacific Chinese poetry” becomes one of our research strengths.
Stressing both teaching and research, our department has conducted curriculum reform several times in order to assist our students in entering the workplace more smoothly and successively and linking up with the global society. We publish the Journal of Chinese Language and Literature of National Taipei University regularly. Meanwhile, we have held many series of academic conferences, including “The International Conference on Contemporary Interpretation of Chinese Literature and Philosophy,” “The Conference on Literature and Informatization,” “The International Conference on Chinese Literature and Culture,” and “The International Conference on Asia-Pacific Chinese Literature,” and have conducted different kinds of small international academic forums as well. Over the years, we have accumulated considerable academic achievements.
Though our department has a relatively brief history, we will keep growing and improving.