history of the center for transcultural studies
The Center for Transcultural Studies was founded as the Center for Psychosocial Studies in 1973. Drawing from the faculties of the University of Chicago and the Chicago Psychoanalytic Association, its first director was Professor Robert LeVine, now at Harvard University; its first chairperson was Paul Yvilsaker, dean of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, and later president of the Council of Foundations. The Center was created as a private not-for-profit research institution dedicated to fostering multidisciplinary research in the humanities, psychology and the social sciences, and also committed to applying such research to public policy. Within this mandate, the center supported specific projects which resulted in over two dozen books and several hundred articles on applied, empirical and theoretical issues at the forefront of psychology, linguistics and anthropology. Because of its interest in comparative work, the Center began to build up an international network of colleagues.
In 1986, the Center received a series of grants from the Roosevelt, MacArthur and Rockefeller foundations to develop projects focusing on the internationalization of culture and communication. It also initiated projects with other centers in the United States and abroad. The Center established a research center at the University of Foreign Studies in Beijing in 1988, and began a series of projects with colleagues in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, Russia, India, France, Germany, England and Canada.