The Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council issued a circular a few days ago, which listed the newly approved degree awarding programs in 2020. The School of Foreign Languages and Cultures of Chongqing University has been officially approved to award doctoral degrees under the first-level discipline Foreign Languages and Literatures. Students will be admitted as of the spring of 2022.
In our school the discipline of Foreign Languages and Literatures consists of four research areas: Foreign literature, foreign language linguistics and applied linguistics, comparative literature and cross-cultural studies, and language, cognition and intelligent computing. The research of foreign literature focuses on Western classics, British and American literatures, and Western literary theory. The area of foreign language linguistics and applied linguistics mainly studies lexicology, functional linguistics, second language acquisition, and language for specific purposes. The area of comparative literature and cross-cultural studies features interdisciplinary studies combining literature and the media, visual culture, economy, and law, in addition to comparative studies of Chinese and Western literatures and cultures and research in European intellectual history. Our studies of language, cognition and intelligent computing also are interdisciplinary, comprising language testing and assessment, corpus linguistics, cognition and language learning, and language research in the big data context.
With sustained efforts by our staff and the support from Chongqing University and sister universities, our first-level discipline, Foreign Languages and Literatures, has been approved as a doctorate awarding program. It has been recognized as a key discipline in the 12th, 13th, and 14th Five-year Plans of Chongqing. During the 13th Five-year Plan period, major breakthroughs were made in terms of national-level talent programs, Social Science Awards of the Ministry of Education, and major projects supported by the National Social Science Foundation. We have also seen great advancement in our academic programs, research projects, as well as international cooperation and exchange.
Chongqing is a connecting node of the “Belt and Road Initiative” and “Yangtze River Economic Belt”; it is also a strategic pivot in China’s Western Development Policy. Meanwhile, our city is in the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle. In that favorable context, the School of Foreign Languages and Cultures will strive to develop a distinctive doctoral program and enhance its academic reputation, which will contribute to the “Double First-Class” drive of Chongqing University.
