Humanities+: Korea University-UC-Riverside holds a workshop on Interdisciplinary Thinking in Humanities

The KU CORE business project team together with the University of California Riverside Campus (UCR) held a joint workshop on “Interdisciplinary Thinking in Humanities” from November 17 to 22. A total of 12 students from seven interdisciplinary majors of the College of Liberal Arts (Science and Technology Studies, EML, LB&C, GLEAC, Humanities and Justice, Humanities and Creative Industry, and Medical Humanities) alongside UCR undergraduate students gave presentations and discussed the significance and future prospects of interdisciplinary thinking in humanities. This workshop established a venue for open exchange for students from both universities.

The workshop started off with a special lecture by Professor Juliet McMullin of the UCR Medical Humanities and a reception, which was followed by special lecture given by Professor Nam-hee Lee of the UCLA East Asian Studies department. In addition to listening to lectures, students also took part in various activities such as visiting institutions related to the Center of East Asian Studies and relevant majors. Students also listened to a special lecture entitled “Approaching Humanities,” in which they spent time meeting KU alumni residing in LA at the LA KU Alumni Association.

The workshop was held based on the continuous relationship between KU and the UCR that began earlier this year. In order to make this workshop successful, students participated in pre-training sessions where they showed enthusiasm working on creating a discussion and presentation agenda in advance. KU and the UCR students’ participation and achievements in the workshop were so impressive that this event was covered in the UCR student newspaper. Discussions were conducted from various perspectives on topics including “Humanities is the key to K-pop’s success in Latin America” and “Reading human emotions through deep learning.” Such discussion contents were reported in the local journal named INSIDE UCR.