Asian Languages and Civilizations

U.S. teachers explore Taiwan with �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder faculty and outreach program

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 16:04:03 +0000

U.S. teachers explore Taiwan with �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder faculty and outreach program Rachel Sauer Mon, 09/28/2026 - 10:04

Educators from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and the Boulder Valley School District at the Lady Linshui Temple in Tainan, Taiwan.

Katherine Alexander and Lynn Kalinauskas

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder East Asia scholars partner with 14 U.S. secondary teachers to delve into the history and culture of Taiwan

Summer 2026 saw the �鶹��Ѱ��’s Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA) bring 14 secondary teachers from across the country to Taiwan to learn about the country’s history and culture. Included in the group of teachers was Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) teacher Vanessa Carroll, who graduated from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder with an MA in English in 2002.

Katherine Alexander (center), a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder associate professor of Chinese, in front of the Grand Mazu Temple in Tainan, Taiwan.

The two-week program was a collaboration between TEA Director Lynn Kalinauskas and Anne Prescott, director of the Five College Centre for East Asian Studies at Smith College. Both were recipients of a Fulbright International Education Administrator Award to Taiwan, which helped build the ties for this summer study. They were accompanied by Katherine Alexander, associate professor of Chinese in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, who received a Fulbright Student Grant while in graduate school that supported a year of doctoral dissertation research in Taipei, Taiwan. As the scholar in residence, Alexander shared her knowledge and love of Taiwan with the teachers and provided them with background on Chinese history and culture.

Working with the Fulbright Taiwan team, the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholars created a program and itinerary aimed at increasing teachers’ knowledge of the island. The goal was to better equip them to teach about the complex history that has forged today’s Taiwan. The group circumnavigated the island by bus, train and boat, stopping at multiple cities along the way. They were introduced to Taiwan’s indigenous cultures and its historical and political past as well as its more recent transition to democracy and modernity fueled by technological innovation.

The group made its way through historical sites and multiple museums. They wandered through streets and night markets, tasting Taiwanese food, including mango shaved ice, beef noodle soup and dumplings. As they circled the island, they also encountered some fascinating Taiwanese people who helped them understand the impact of past and present policies. The teachers saw Taiwan not only as a place impacted by history but as an ever-evolving, vibrant economic and political locus.

Taiwan’s geopolitics are a hot topic in the daily news, so this is often the first thing that we think about when its name is mentioned. In light of this, on the first day of the visit, the program brought the teachers to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taipei to meet with Liang-Yu Wang, director general of the Department of North American Affairs. Hearing from an official who handles that dossier daily was a wonderful opportunity for teachers who are now better equipped to handle their students’ questions back in the United States.

Educators from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and U.S. secondary schools at the Lady Linsui Temple in Tainan, Taiwan.

Engaging with Taiwan's complex history

Taiwan’s modern democratic government owes a debt to the victims of its authoritarian past, and the stay took participants to many places that now commemorate the tragedies of the Kuomintang martial law period, which lasted from 1949-1987. While visiting Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, the group was escorted by Fred Chin, who was wrongfully imprisoned in the facility and as a political prisoner on Green Island for 12 years. He stood in the room where he had been first sentenced to death and in the cell where he was confined before his commutation and transfer to Green Island, sharing stories with the teachers about his case and how he made it through horrible years of torture and persecution.

“We were all deeply moved by his generosity,” said Kalinauskas. “He took the time to walk with us and answer many questions. He accompanied us all the way back to the bus, waving goodbye until we were gone. He understood that these were teachers who would tell his story in their classrooms so that the horrors of the times would not be forgotten.”

As the group traveled south out of the capital, they first stopped in Changhua, where they met Wu Sheng, a poet, environmental activist and advisor to the president on his family farm. Wu Sheng’s love of his land was obvious from the moment he invited the group out of the hot sun and into the shade of his beloved trees. Alexander, who translated for the meeting, was especially touched by this chance to meet him, as she has a personal connection to him through an old friend from college, another Taiwanese environmental activist who had been on the front lines of protests with Wu Sheng to defend their precious ecosystem.

Boulder Valley School District educator Vanessa Carroll (left) biking in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, with Theresa Illgen (right), a program participant from New Mexico.

“Once he learned this, he welcomed me like a family friend, making me feel right at home again in Taiwan after too many years away,” she reflected. Participating teacher Vanessa Carroll noted after the trip, “Inspired by our day with the Taiwanese poet activist Wu Sheng, I've written a unit called Poetry as Green Activism: Finding Eco-Inspiration in Wu Sheng’s <My Village> which I really look forward to teaching!”

Continuing south, the group spent some time in Tainan, where Alexander guided the group through several places of worship, including two temples established in the 1600s where devotees have worshipped ever since. Alexander remarked, “Teaching teachers about these places was so gratifying because of how excited they were to apply their new knowledge and visit other temples on their own in Tainan the next day and in each new city after that. I can see how they’re always learning, just like their students.”

Exploring Taiwan

Further south in Pingtung County, the group visited the Maya Farm cocoa plantation, where they explored the tree-to-bar process. Cocoa farming is an emerging agricultural field in Taiwan. They tasted the fresh pods, smelled different beans and sipped one of the best cups of hot chocolate they ever had. The teachers learned from the farmers about the land that had been cleared of palm and beetle nut trees to make way for a new industry. They compared this experience with a more traditional farming experience in Maokong, near Taipei, where they visited a tea plantation at which five generations of the same family had worked the land for more than a century.

Caroll used every minute of her free time to explore even more: “I've lived in Boulder ever since I graduated from CU, so obviously I'm into bikes. In Taiwan, at the end of each day, I'd try to find a bike to explore whatever new city we'd ended up at, and once, in massive and beautiful Kaohsiung in the far south, I was balancing between traffic lights and happened to look over and see an older gentleman wearing a University of Colorado polo shirt. We made eye contact, I gestured to my own chest, and it took him a moment, understandably, to realize I was referencing CU. He told me he went there many years ago; he studied civil engineering, and now he’s an architect. I half-joked, ‘Have you designed any buildings I'd recognize?’ and he immediately gestured broadly and turned around in a half-circle saying, ‘Yes, many here in Kaohsiung,’ as if I could throw a stone and hit one of his designs.

“The fact that I encountered this kind and possibly famous Asian architect wearing a Buffs shirt on a random, busy sidewalk roughly 7,000 flight miles from my home shows that the world can be so wildly small even when you least expect it to be, and that Taiwan really is a fascinating fusion of experiences, cultures, identities, and global interconnectivity.”

While indigenous groups, the original residents of Taiwan—before waves of migration from China began in the 1600s—now make up only 2% of the population, their histories and their contemporary ways of life remain important to building a complete picture of Taiwan’s present. Participants met with tribal elders from the Paiwan and Rukai peoples, who generously shared stories about their personal histories and how their communities continue to practice their traditions today in the face of cultural and economic challenges.

While on Taiwan’s east coast, students also visited the National Museum of Prehistory, which details with vibrant exhibits the many indigenous groups that shaped Taiwan's past and how, through these tribes, Taiwan is connected to Austronesia and global indigenous cultures even in the present.

The trip wasn’t always smooth. A typhoon hit the island while the group was in Tainan, closing most businesses and cultural sites. The ferry to Green Island was stomach-churning. And the heat and humidity were intense. But Taiwan is the birthplace of bubble tea, so there was always a way to hydrate and re-energize for yet another adventure.

As teachers start up a new fall semester, the experiences will make their way into AP world history, geography and many other classrooms where students will become more curious about Taiwan, its history and importance.

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder East Asia scholars partner with Boulder Valley School District teachers to delve into the history and culture of Taiwan.

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It’s more than just feeling good or bad

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:23:04 +0000

It’s more than just feeling good or bad Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/31/2026 - 15:23

Rachel Sauer

In her recently published book, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Antje Richter explores health and the art of living through illness narratives of early medieval China

In his masterpiece The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Chinese monk and court librarian Liu Xie observed, “If we melt away our vital energies and cramp the harmonious flow of our vital breath, then holding the writing tablet will hasten our death, and moistening the brush will hack away at our life.”

This might have been a surprising observation from one of the most eminent writers of his time, but nurturing life has long been central to Chinese thought, says Antje Richter, a �鶹��Ѱ�� professor of Chinese in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. In fact, ideas about health and illness significantly shaped the literature and culture of the early Chinese medieval era—about 200 CE to 600 CE. And Liu Xie, who was mainly concerned with writers of literature, may have been the first to present advice about writers’ and knowledge workers’ occupational health.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Antje Richter is a professor of Chinese whose research focus includes early medieval Chinese literature.

In her recent book Health and the Art of Living: Illness Narratives in Early Medieval Chinese Literature, Richter explores how themes of health and illness are woven through the literature of the era, from informal letters between friends to sacred texts and the highly regarded genre of sickbed poetry.

“We as humans are not either healthy or unhealthy,” Richter says. “We are constantly adapting to new states of our body. This is interesting to me as a challenge that we are all facing in one way or the other. And it's not a binary; it's a graduated scale that's constantly evolving.

“In one of the chapters, I write about Sima Qian, the father of Chinese historiography, who was famously emasculated as corporal punishment but chose not to end his life, as was expected of him, but continued working on The Records of the Historian. He didn’t die of the punitive mutilation he suffered, but he coped. He finished this groundbreaking historical work, and everybody in China knows him and his story because we also have one of the letters he wrote. So, I use his example to say adaptation to new states of health is possible and that in the literature of this time we have a very nuanced understanding of what it means to be healthy or well.”

Discovering narratives of health and illness

Richter, whose research focus is the early medieval era in China, came upon this significant theme in Chinese literature while writing her previous book, Letters and Epistolary Culture in Medieval China.

“We have thousands of letters transmitted from that period, and among those letters there was a good portion that mentioned illness, and I found it quite interesting,” Richter explains. “There’s one celebrated calligrapher, Wang Xizhi, and much of what he wrote was transmitted and not thrown away. Even if he wrote, ‘I have terrible diarrhea,’ that letter was preserved.”

During her time researching that book, Richter collaborated with a longtime friend in Boulder, Charles “Chip” Chace, who was a Chinese medicine practitioner, to unlock those letters of Wang Xizhi that deal with illness.

Richter’s research of Wang Xizhi’s letters led her, in 2011, to apply for a grant to study for a semester at the Needham Research Institute, which was founded by famed sinologist and historian of Chinese science Joseph Needham.

“This was when I realized, oh, it’s not only letters that have these illness narratives, but also biographies and poetry and religious texts and stories,” Richter says.

“It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the hallowed writers of old clearly understood themselves as living, thriving, aging and, often enough, also suffering bodies,” says Antje Richter.

Richter points to the painting on the cover of her book to describe her main intentions in writing it. The painting, held in the Smithsonian’s collection, shows the beloved early medieval poet Tao Qian—also known as Tao Yuanming—being carried in a basket because he was suffering from a foot illness and could not walk on his own. This detail of Tao Qian’s life is reported in early biographies, and in later centuries became popular in painting as well.

Richter says that to her mind, this episode shows that illness sits right in the middle of life and in the middle of Chinese literature and culture—and that she wanted to emphasize this fact and to help connect medieval Chinese studies to the global medical humanities.

How to live

Surviving texts of the literature of early medieval China, including letters, indicate that openly discussing topics of health or illness carried little or no taboo in certain genres, such as letters, Richter says, while high-register poetry only alluded to mundane or graphic physical aspects of life.

Further, Richter believes that the growing esteem of the literary genre of sickbed poetry in medieval China was inspired by Buddhism, particularly the Vimalakirti Sutra, a Buddhist text expounding on ideas of emptiness and the appearances of the world as mere illusions.

Several chapters of the Vimalakirti Sutra are set at the sickbed of a lay Buddhist, who feigns illness so people will come to his bedside and he can preach.

“Then, he and the visitors that come to his sickbed have conversations about, oh, this body is like a bit of foam that cannot be grasped, this body is like a cloud which changes and disappears in an instant, and Chinese poets were very inspired by that,” Richter says. “So, we have this genre of sickbed poetry that first only reflects on the joys of sick leave and the company of friends during this time, but later also on illnesses that ravaged the body and the illusion of existence, the temporariness of our existence.”

Richter notes that while a significant body of illness narratives from the early medieval era have survived, they generally are the narratives of wealthy and connected men. Despite these limitations, Richter says, illness narratives wove with common threads of human experience.

She says she hopes that readers will come away from the book with a strong sense of the lived reality in the Chinese Middle Ages. “It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the hallowed writers of old clearly understood themselves as living, thriving, aging and, often enough, also suffering bodies,” she says.

“We share many of their concerns: how easy it is to overwork ourselves, how there are points in our lives and biographies where health and illness take center stage, how we are looking for a way to accept illness as part of the human condition. Trying to empathize across centuries and cultures is a good way to practice other types of empathy as well.”

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In her recently published book, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Antje Richter explores health and the art of living through illness narratives of early medieval China.

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Top illustration: Scene of poet Tao Qian being carried from scroll "The Lotus Society." (Illustration: Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art)

Lunar New Year begins auspicious, perhaps fertile, Year of the Dragon

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 18:45:27 +0000

Lunar New Year begins auspicious, perhaps fertile, Year of the Dragon Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/08/2024 - 11:45

Rachel Sauer

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Asian languages faculty Yingjie Li and Yu Zhang reflect on what some consider the luckiest year in the Chinese zodiac

An interesting thing happened in 2012: China’s steadily declining national birth rate experienced something of a boom. While 2011 saw a birth rate of 13 per 1,000 people, the following year that number jumped to 15—and dropped back down to 13 in 2013.

While it may be impossible to pinpoint a single reason for the surge, a lot of people have a pretty good idea: dragons.

That year, 2012, was a Year of the Dragon on the Chinese zodiac. As the only mythical creature among 11 other real animals, dragons occupy a place of particular esteem not only in the zodiac, but in Chinese culture and imagination. For some, dragon years are so auspicious that they time their family planning accordingly.

Yingjie Li (left) is a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder teaching associate professor of Chinese and Yu Zhang (right) is a teaching assistant professor of Chinese.

When Lunar New Year begins Saturday, initiating a new Year of the Dragon, some experts anticipate—or even hope for—another dragon-year rise in Chinese birth rates, however slight.

“Dragon years are definitely considered some of the most auspicious,” explains Yu Zhang, a teaching assistant professor of Chinese in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. “Maybe among younger generations, the (Chinese) zodiac isn’t as important as it used to be, but I would say there’s still a preference for dragon years.”

In fact, research published in 2020 suggests that beliefs about dragon-year children being destined for greatness and good fortune can become self-fulfilling prophecies. The researchers found “that parents of Dragon children have higher expectations for their children in comparison to other parents, and that they invest more heavily in their children in terms of time and money.”

Descendants of the dragon

Though historians and archaeologists have long debated when the dragon first gained prominence in Chinese culture, a tomb discovered in 1987 in China’s Henan Province revealed a 2-meter dragon statue dated to Neolithic times between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago.

Celebrate Lunar New Year

What: Spring Festival Carnival

When: 2-4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 9

Where: CASE E380

More information

Some archaeologists theorize that dragons came to prominence as Chinese agriculture developed. Dragons symbolized thunder as a harbinger of rain.

“Many people consider that phenomena like rain or thunder are related to the dragon, and in the past China was a farming country,” says Yingjie Li, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder teaching associate professor of Chinese and Chinese language coordinator.

“Rainfall is very important for farming, for the harvest, so people formed the impression that the dragon is related to our life; the dragon somehow is related to whether we can earn a good living this year or not.”

Some fables hold that Huangdi, the famed Yellow Emperor who is mythologized as ancestor to all Han people, was taken into the afterlife by a dragon when he died in the second millennium BCE. And when Liu Bang became first emperor of the Han Dynasty around 200 BCE, stories were told that his mother had consorted with a dragon.

As the dragon became the symbol of emperors, it became the symbol of empire. It also evolved as a creature unlike dragons in Western myth and folklore.

Lunar New Year begins Saturday and welcomes a Year of the Dragon, considered one of the most auspicious years in the Chinese zodiac.

“The Chinese dragon is very different from the Western dragon,” Li says. “The Western dragon can be an evil image or a scary image; it lives in caves and comes from below. The Chinese dragon comes from the sky, and it’s considered very lucky and very auspicious. It’s a powerful symbol and some Chinese people even say that they are descendants of the dragon.”

In fact, she added, when she was growing up a popular song, especially for her parents’ generation, was called “Descendants of the Dragon (Long De Chuan Ren),” which was rerecorded in 2000 by pop artist Leehom Wang.

While China, like many countries and cultures, is seeing a decline in the importance of longstanding customs and traditions among younger generations, “during Lunar New Year certain traditions become very important,” Zhang says. “I would say younger generations have a lot less connection to the lunar calendar than older ones, but during Spring Festival we’re doing things like paper cutting and writing traditional characters—these are small things that I used to do in school, traditional customs.

“For my family, no one’s very good at calligraphy, but we will definitely buy well-written characters meaning happiness, we’ll buy well-written couplets, and hang them by the door on New Year’s Eve day. We’ll hang the red lanterns in the evening during Spring Festival, and these are very old customs.”

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Asian languages faculty Yingjie Li and Yu Zhang reflect on what some consider the luckiest year in the Chinese zodiac.

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Isn’t it strange? That human is actually an animal

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 21:51:50 +0000

Isn’t it strange? That human is actually an animal Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/12/2023 - 14:51

Rachel Sauer

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher Antje Richter studies early medieval Chinese records of the strange to understand how literature explores what it means to be human

It may seem like a wholly modern affliction, but replacement anxiety has haunted the human condition for a very long time—the worry that not only could someone or something else fill our roles, but possibly do a better job.

In medieval China, the privilege that was perceived as inherent to being human could be convincingly undermined by, of all things, animals—at least in the popular literature of the day. Called “records of the strange,” these largely forgotten narratives are tales of mistaken identity in which an animal successfully impersonates and replaces a human until it is eventually found out.

These stories, which have frequently been denied the esteem granted to the poetry and other “serious” literature of the time, nevertheless touch on important issues of identity and privilege: What is required to exist, or even just pass, as human? How is personal identity conceptualized across gender and species? How can literature illuminate “true” identity?

Antje Richter, an associate professor in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, has researched themes of identity and privilege in Chinese records of the strange.

These are themes Antje Richter, a �鶹��Ѱ�� associate professor of Chinese, explores in a recently published paper that focuses on three particular records of the strange. In it, she highlights how the political and social changes that shook early medieval China raised important questions about ethnic, social and personal identity—and records of the strange were an accessible medium in which to address them.

“This literature has tended to be compartmentalized by scholars because it’s not ‘high’ literature,” Richter explains. “’High’ literature is poetry, it’s historiography, it’s several other genres that get taken seriously, while these texts are often regarded as leftover literature.

“But they enjoyed enormous popularity in the period they were written, though so many of these story collections have been lost. But the area of animal studies has really grown more prominent in the last 10 to 15 years, and scholars are looking to these records of the strange to learn more about how people thought about the human-animal boundary and what these stories had to say about species and social class.”

The human-animal barrier

Throughout her scholarship, Richter has been fascinated by records of the strange, especially the ones that venture beyond the most common trope of “animal spirits impersonating women in order to have sex with men, which is a whole different can of worms,” she says.

Richter instead focused on records of the strange from the collection Records of an Inquest into Spirit Phenomena, compiled by Jin Dynasty historian Gan Bao, and Latter Records of an Inquest into Spirit Phenomena, generally attributed to poet Tao Qian. Her focus is male protagonists, since at the time men could aspire to a broader range of social roles and activities.

In the story “The Old Yellow Dog at Kuaiji,” an inattentive, frequently absent husband named Wang returns to his deeply unhappy wife one day and is much more loving and attentive. A suspicious servant sees this and reports it to the real Wang, who challenges and fights the imposter, eventually revealing it to be an old yellow dog. Wang beats it to death, and his wife is so ashamed that she grows sick and dies.

In “The Old Raccoon Dog at Wuxing,” two sons mistake their father for a demon and kill him, only to have the demon return to their home in the appearance of their father. For many years, the imposter lives in their home until a ritual master recognizes the evil, utters a spell and reveals their “father” to be an old raccoon dog. The sons then capture and kill it.

The third story Richter highlights, “The Brindled Fox Scholar,” involves a fox who passes as a highly respected scholar until it, too, is revealed and eventually boiled to death.

“Each of these stories is told not from the perspective of the animal, but by a human narrator, and an important aspect of the human-animal boundary is this question of what constitutes human identity,” Richter says. “It’s exploring the difference between ‘passing’ and ‘being.’

“I think an important point is the human struggle with animals and drawing lines between us and them. Animals are either working for us, like dogs, or they are, like foxes, habitually crossing over from the wilderness into areas populated by humans in a way that can feel very threatening.”

Questions of identity

The records of the strange that Richter highlights also reflect the upheaval and changes in Chinese society during the early medieval period, which is generally considered to have begun with the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 CE.

I feel that these kinds of uncertainties and insecurities, these questions of identity, are expressed in these stories. This is still a very relevant theme today.”

“A large part of the northern Chinese aristocracy was driven south because of invasions by northern ‘barbarians,’ and they then were living together with people of different cultures, different looks, different preferences,” Richter says. “For people originally from the north, the area south of the Yangtze River, in early China, was not regarded to be highly civilized.

“I feel that these kinds of uncertainties and insecurities, these questions of identity, are expressed in these stories. This is still a very relevant theme today.”

Records of the strange also can be interpreted as a commentary on principles of meritocracy—which then, as now, were frequently more ideal than reality.

“In these stories we see this aspiration to rise,” Richter explains. “The aspiration may have been there, but success was reserved only for certain people. We see it in the fox posing as a scholar, this idea of ‘how dare you seek to live in this realm where you do not belong.’ Being denied access was very likely a very common experience for quite a lot of people.”

Top image: "Six Horses" ink and color on paper handscroll, by unknown artists in the 13th and 14th centuries CE.

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher Antje Richter studies early medieval Chinese records of the strange to understand how literature explores what it means to be human.

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Learning culture through beautiful brush strokes

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 22:03:33 +0000

Learning culture through beautiful brush strokes Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/27/2023 - 16:03

Rachel Sauer

At an evening of Chinese calligraphy, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder students studying Chinese practiced an art whose history dates back millennia

Learning a language is not just a matter of memorizing vocabulary and verb tenses or, in the case of Chinese, using the correct tone. It is not merely a matter of time spent in the classroom.

“Language is also a part of culture,” says Yingjie Li, a �鶹��Ѱ�� teaching associate professor of Chinese and Chinese language coordinator in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. “It’s living tradition.”

For students of Chinese, this means learning to write a body of characters whose history dates back more than 3,000 years, to oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty. Rather than letters, many of the characters were visual representations of what they expressed. Echoes of those original characters can be found in the modern ones that evolved from them.

Thursday evening, almost two dozen first-, second- and third-year Chinese students gathered to practice Chinese calligraphy, which elevates Chinese writing to art.

“This is a way for students to get deep into the culture,” Li says. “What we’re doing in the workshop relates to what they’re learning in class, but it’s a more hands-on way to learn a really important part of Chinese culture.”

Led by Runqing Qi, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder teaching assistant professor of Chinese who began the workshop with, “Let’s learn something interesting together,” students first practiced with water on special paper that allows each brush stroke to emerge in vivid black and then gradually disappear. Then they graduated to ink.

“It looks simple, but it’s actually not,” said Claire Kennedy, a third-year advanced Chinese student who is majoring in psychology and speech, language and hearing sciences.

In written Chinese, each stroke has a name and the strokes in each character are written in a specific order. And to do that beautifully?

“I think I’m going to need a lot more practice,” said Gregory Del Bene, a first-year Chinese student and math and computer science major.

“This is something fun for students that’s also a tangible connection to Chinese culture,” said Yu Zhang, a teaching assistant professor of Chinese, adding that faculty in the Chinese language program organize activities throughout the semester highlighting various aspects of the culture. The next will be a Chinese board game night, including mahjong and Chinese chess, at 5 p.m. Nov. 11.

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At an evening of Chinese calligraphy, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder students studying Chinese practiced an art whose history dates back millennia.

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Five staffers are named A&S employees of the year

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 16:25:03 +0000

Five staffers are named A&S employees of the year Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/30/2022 - 10:25

Asuka Morley, Stacy Norwood, Lia Pileggi, Michael Shernick and Alicia Turchette recognized for going well above and far beyond the call of duty

Five outstanding staff members have been named employees of the year by the College of Arts and Sciences at the �鶹��Ѱ��.

The honorees are:

Asuka Morley, administrative assistant and graduate program assistant in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations.
Stacy Norwood, program coordinator at the Department of Theatre and Dance.
Lia Pileggi, digital imaging and technology coordinator in the Department of Art and Art History.
Michael Shernick, program coordinator in the Stories and Societies Residential Academic Program.
Alicia Turchette, program manager for the Department of Women and Gender Studies.

Colleagues nominated each of the awardees, bestowing high praise in all cases.

Asuka Morley

Morley joined Asian languages and civilizations in December 2017. R. Keller Kimbrough, professor of Japanese and chair of the department, says she is the “eminently professional, all-knowing and ever-kind face of our graduate program.”

Kimbrough added that Morley has consistently exhibited outstanding performance in all areas of her position, whether it be course scheduling, classroom assignments, maintaining the department’s webpage, consulting with faculty and students about rules and procedures, keeping track of students’ required courses and paperwork, meeting with visitors and prospective students, organizing and overseeing graduation ceremonies and other departmental events, “and even carrying books and boxes when faculty need help with an office move.”

Jackie Coombs, program assistant in the department, concurred, adding that Morley is “instrumental in fostering an environment of exceptional support to enhance student learning and the mission of the university.”

Coombs added: “She has demonstrated leadership and innovation in an abnormally strenuous time that has delivered obstacle after obstacle due to the challenges of the pandemic. Asuka truly is a rare find and our department would not be what it is today without her contributions.”

Stacy Norwood

Norwood came to the department after a career as a professional stage manager, and that experience as “the person responsible for everything” is evident in her current role, said Bruce Bergner, interim chair of theatre and dance.

Bergner went on to quote colleagues who praised Norwod in many ways, including these:

"She goes beyond the call of duty, creating a nurturing and proactive atmosphere in the front office—her office door is filled with encouraging quotes and tear-off words of encouragement should anyone need a bit of a lift. She is inspirational."

"In our regular meetings, (Norwood) is the glue that holds our committees together—almost like a sage guide."

Lia Pileggi

"Stacy was the safe harbor during the storm of COVID, keeping the office running when we were scattered all over Colorado, always facilitating working communication channels."

Pileggi joined art and art history in 2015 and has in recent years gone “truly above and beyond to help the department and its members thrive,” said Jeanne Quinn, professor and chair of the department.

Quinn noted that Pileggi stepped in to fill a critical need: Students needed to photograph their work, but there was no system of helping students. “Lia took it on, acquiring backdrops, lights and other necessary equipment, found space, fitted it properly and began working with faculty to integrate the teaching of this skill as part of our undergraduate program,” Quinn said, adding, “It has paid great dividends for our students and is a much-used and appreciated facility.”

Last year, Quinn added, Pileggi served on the department’s diversity committee, which worked “as never before to address issues that had been brought to the committee by concerned students and alumni.”

The committee met 22 times over the course of the year, conducting multiple “listening sessions” to hear and record the experiences of students, staff and faculty regarding DEI issues. “Lia scheduled the meetings, kept records of the meetings and listening sessions, and essentially kept the committee moving forward,” Quinn said.

Michael Shernick

Shernick is a longtime staff member whose service to residential academic programs is “broad, deep and multi-faceted,” said Eric Stade, professor of mathematics and director of the Stories and Societies Residential Academic Program (RAP).

Stade included a dozen bullet points highlighting instances in which Shernick provided key contributions. More generally, Stade noted, Shernick’s genuine affinity “for helping people and for making them feel like they belong helps to instill a spirit of inclusivity in our RAP and Sewall Hall.”

Additionally, Shernick has frequently helped English-language learners among the housekeeping staff read, interpret and respond to various documents written in English, Stade said.

Stade added: “Just this week, a student in SRAP/Sewall Hall, unfortunately, experienced a traumatic event. The student immediately came looking, not for me or the hall director or an RA, but for Michael. And of course, Michael was there. That’s who he is.”

Alicia Turchette

Turchette has been with women and gender studies for 13 years and is the “glue that has held the department together” through staff changes and the pandemic, noted Julie Carr, chair of the department and a professor of English and creative writing.

Even during turbulent times, Carr said, “Turchette is unfailingly thorough in her work: managing the finances of the department; handling course scheduling; understanding and responding to pedagogic needs; communicating with students and staff about events and updates from campus, the college and the department; administrating the LGBTQ certificate program; administrating the (department’s graduate) certificate program; and helping me to understand the department by-laws and ongoing projects while keeping me on track for all administrative deadlines.”

“She is somehow able to do the job of two (or three) people at once, though indeed she never should have had to,” Carr said. “She takes on this extra labor without a hitch, as she cares deeply about all aspects of our department. She is a joy to work with: thoughtful, careful and considerate of others’ feelings. She takes authority for what she knows (which is often more than anyone else in the room) and openly offers clear advice.”

Asuka Morley, Stacy Norwood, Lia Pileggi, Michael Shernick and Alicia Turchette recognized for going well above and far beyond the call of duty.

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Seventeen students are named 2022 Van Ek Scholars

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 19:56:20 +0000

Seventeen students are named 2022 Van Ek Scholars Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/28/2022 - 13:56

The award, considered one of the College of Arts and Sciences' highest honors, is given to students for academic achievement and service

The College of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Jacob Van Ek scholarship, one of the college's highest honors, to 17 exceptional undergraduates.

These students were nominated by faculty at the �鶹��Ѱ�� for their superior academic achievement and service to the university, the Denver and Boulder communities, or larger national and international communities. The five-person Van Ek Scholars Award committee selected the winners, who receive a $230 award and a certificate of recognition.

They have done so much for the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder community, as well as in their respective communities."

"We had amazing nominations submitted from faculty this year," says Brenda Navarrete, scholarship coordinator in the College of Arts and Sciences. "They have done so much for the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder community as well as in their respective communities."

"They are very deserving, and I am excited to see the amazing things they will achieve after graduating!”

The award is named for Jacob Van Ek, who arrived at �鶹��Ѱ��as a young assistant professor shortly after earning his doctorate at what is now known as Iowa State University in 1925. Within three years he was a full professor and, by 1929, he was dean of the College of Liberal Arts, serving until 1959.

The following students are this year’s Jacob Van Ek Scholar Award recipients:

Areyana Janae Andrea Proctor, journalism
Elicia Azua, psychology
Evi Judge, linguistics and speech, langauge and hearing sciences
Jack Barker, environmental studies
Julia Hoa Leone, international affairs and Jewish studies
Kelila Rose Fitch-Cook, women and gender studies
Kathryn Hoesly, Chinese
Leen Salah Eldin Abbas, integrative physiology
Mackayla Coley, political science
Morgan Knuesel, physics and mathematics
Megan Lenard, psychology and sociology
Michelle Tracy Leung, environmental studies and ecology and evolutionary biology
Nicole Bouzan, molecular, cellular and developmental biology
Noopur Naik, molecular, cellular and developmental biology
Ruth Woldemichael, ethnic studies and international affairs
Sophia Choubai, integrative physiology
Ty Donovan McCaffrey, ecology and evolutionary biology

The award, considered one of the College of Arts and Sciences' highest honors, is given to students for academic achievement and service

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Grad student lands teaching position at prestigious Peking University

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 23:09:52 +0000

Grad student lands teaching position at prestigious Peking University Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/14/2022 - 16:09

Doug McPherson

Christian "Payne" Hennigan named assistant professor in the School of Economics, where he will also utilize Chinese fluency gained at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder

Christian "Payne" Hennigan, who will graduate with a PhD in economics from the �鶹��Ѱ�� this May, has just been named assistant professor in the School of Economics at Peking University—considered one of the most prestigious universities in China.

Hennigan, who will start the position on Sept. 1, 2022, in Beijing, said he considers it an honor to be part of Peking University and a “privilege to be in the capital city of such a dynamic” country.

At the top of the page: The West Gate of Peking University (Wikimedia Commons). Above: Christian "Payne" Hennigan.

“I will be around some of the best minds and best students in the world all engaged in the same kind of research that I am doing, with the support and community that comes with that,” Hennigan says. “More generally, I have found that many people in China are very optimistic about the future and full of hope in life. There will be more things going on than I could ever hope to fully experience.”

A few years ago, Hennigan, who also earned his master’s degree in economics at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in 2017, spent two months in China visiting a friend who had gone to Peking University.

“The friend took me to visit the campus,” Hennigan says. “I remember thinking at the time how beautiful the campus was. It was winter and the famous Weiming Lake at the center of campus was frozen over, and people were ice skating over the top of it. I remember thinking how nice it would be to study there, let alone be a part of the institution.”

In 2017, Hennigan began studying Mandarin Chinese and Japanese languages in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. He’s now fluent in both languages.

“As a PhD student, I was fortunate enough to be able to take any course in exchange for teaching classes, and so I began to take Japanese and Chinese language classes,” he says.

Keller Kimbrough, professor and chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, said Hennigan took a course in classical Japanese with him last fall, and that Hennigan also studied advanced modern Chinese with teaching professor Yingjie Li in 2020 and 2021.

“To have secured a job there as an assistant professor is an extraordinary achievement, and it speaks to the global opportunities that may be awaiting our students—both graduate and undergraduate—who choose to study less commonly taught languages at CU,” Kimbrough says.

Kimbrough adds that many students in his department wonder what to do after they graduate.

“This story shows that there are opportunities beyond the U.S. for those who think globally, take risks, and pursue their interests, even if those interests diverge from one’s expected path, such as studying Chinese and Japanese while earning a PhD in economics.”

Hennigan praises both Kimbrough and Li, along with other professors in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations.

“They really kept me motivated and went above and beyond encouraging me to do independent writing and research. The work I’ve done for these classes is some of the most rewarding I’ve ever done, and it has kept me balanced with all of the math and economics classes.”

This story shows that there are opportunities beyond the U.S. for those who think globally, take risks, and pursue their interests, even if those interests diverge from one’s expected path."

Hennigan adds that his interest in the two languages happened completely by chance.

“While in college, I enjoyed walking through the library, going to a section I’d never been to before, and randomly choosing a title based on what cover I found most interesting. I happened to pick up a book of Japanese literature—a novel named “Sanshiro” by Natsume Soseki. I loved the novel and kept reading more and more Japanese literature and eventually Chinese literature. In the end I wanted to read them in their original languages.”

In addition to teaching at Peking University, Hennigan says he’ll be researching ways to develop better economic policies “that can help people in a real way.”

His dissertation explores how central banks should jointly think about monopolistic pressures in an economy, distortions associated with inflation when creating policy, and applying new computational techniques.

“This kind of approach makes economic research the most fun I think, in that I’m not adding complexity just to have a new paper, but building new techniques to answer classic, difficult questions.”

Christian "Payne" Hennigan named assistant professor in the School of Economics, where he will also utilize Chinese fluency gained at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

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Senior wins prestigious language scholarship

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 20:34:35 +0000

Senior wins prestigious language scholarship Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/14/2021 - 14:34

Doug McPherson

Chinese and international affairs student to study in Taiwan with the help of a fully funded program from the U.S. Department of State

When Lindsey Quint, an undergraduate student at the �鶹��Ѱ�� studying international affairs and Chinese, decided to enroll in a beginning Chinese course in sixth grade, she had no idea just how much it would become a part of her life.

But the work that followed that decision was anything but easy.

“I remember hating it in middle school. It was so hard and I always felt like I was never as good as everyone else, but it was never something I felt like I could give up. I had dedicated so much time and energy to it and it slowly became a part of my identity.”

At the top of the page: Tainan, Taiwan. Above: Lindsey Quint

And her tenacity paid off nicely this March, when she was awarded the Critical Language Scholarship, a fully funded program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, that allows American students to learn languages critical to national security and economic prosperity.

As part of the scholarship, Quint will attend the National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan this summer. “I’m looking forward to improving my language skills and experiencing Chinese culture firsthand,” she said.

The process to win the Critical Language Scholarship, though, has been anything but easy. “The first time I applied, I was waitlisted. I remember thinking, ‘What's the point? I dedicated so much time and energy to this language, and it didn't feel like it mattered.’”

Quint said she spent hours on the application scouring over every written response with her mom.

“Instead of giving up, I just decided, ‘Well, if they think I'm not ready for this program, then I’m not.’ In order to be a better applicant next time, I decided I was going to grow as much as I could for the next time I applied. I challenged myself through harder courses and took on additional internships as well.”

Quint said studying Chinese has boosted her perseverance.

Chinese has taught me to embrace difficult things … it forced me to embrace struggles."

“When something hard comes their way, I think people’s first instinct is to avoid it. Chinese has taught me to embrace difficult things … it forced me to embrace struggles.”

Quint said watching Chinese dramas helped her learn the language. “I’d highly recommend watching them for language improvement. It was something I mentioned in my Critical Language Scholarship application. While they’re dramatized and not super reflective of reality, you learn a lot about the Chinese language in a conversational setting. I would recommend Here to Heart on Netflix, I loved it.”

After her time in Taiwan this summer, Quint plans to attend the University of Michigan for a master's degree in international and regional studies with a Chinese specialization.

“I’m hoping to study blame rhetoric between the United States and China,” she said. “I just completed an honors thesis that addresses how the United States uses blame rhetoric towards China to address U.S. economic shortcomings. I’m hoping to continue researching how historical legacies influence present-day foreign policy between China and the United States.”

Quint plans to earn a PhD and teach at a university. But before that, she would like to work as a foreign policy analyst for the Congressional Research Service.

Chinese and international affairs student to study in Taiwan with the help of a fully funded program from the U.S. Department of State.

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Kubi, a helpful robot, lets students take classes remotely

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 17:07:07 +0000

Kubi, a helpful robot, lets students take classes remotely Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/26/2018 - 11:07

Sarah Schleifer

There is a new way to be virtually active in the classroom, and it’s via a robot named Kubi, an innovation of the Office of Information and Technology at the �鶹��Ѱ��, which helps students take classes on campus while they are abroad or otherwise physically unable to attend.

Kubi itself is a robotic neck, often attached to a tripod, that holds an iPad through which a student can be video-conferenced into a classroom. With Kubi’s help, the remote student can control the iPad’s direction and focus.

Mona Attway, at right, speaks with a class that includes a student using a Kubi. File photo by Glenn Asakawa.

Mona Attwa, an Arabic language instructor at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, has used Kubis to help teach students who were studying abroad or had limited mobility. She says the Kubi is most effective when used with Zoom, a videoconferencing service. By using both tools, the student can utilize the audio, video and split-screen services of Zoom while benefitting from the mobility of Kubi.

Attwa finds that a multi-platform approach to the Kubi experience worked best for her and her students. By creating a shared Google Doc where a student studying abroad could submit assignments despite being in a drastically different time zone, Attwa could stay equally on top of students’ work, despite a lack of availability for office hours and face-to-face interactions.

Attwa endorses Kubi to teach students who cannot be physically present, but acknowledges that, especially in a foreign-language classroom, it’s better to learn face to face.

Especially when studying abroad, Attwa notes, “mentally, you need a student who is totally focused,” due to external pressures that might arise from studying in a foreign country. Time-zone differences and the fickleness of technology, for example, could easily diminish an interpersonal relationship between student and instructor.

Attwa mentions that Kubi is most effectively used for students studying abroad who want to keep up with semester-specific courses that may not be available when they return. As of now, Attwa has taught with Kubis for three semesters, sometimes even having two Kubis to one classroom.

“If there were ever issues, it was usually on my end, internet-wise; otherwise it worked pretty well.”

Two of Attwa’s current students, Lauren Hartshorn and Ashly Villa, have used Kubi in previous classes with her. Both were planning to study abroad, but needed to keep up with their Arabic classes so as not to fall behind.

Hartshorn, who studied in France, recalls that every night at 6, “I would sit down and take my 50-minute class over Kubi.” She adds, “If there were ever issues, it was usually on my end, internet-wise; otherwise it worked pretty well.”

Hartshorn acknowledges that it might be more convenient to take a class in person, “but a lot of the time that’s not an option” and describes Kubi as “really nice and easy to use.”

Hartshorn is confident that learning via Kubi did not affect her performance in the class, but did add that “it does require a bit of give from the teacher,” and is thus “deeply appreciative” of Attwa’s willingness to cope with time zones and technological snafus.

Villa, another of Attwa’s students, studied in Chile and echoed Hartshorn, but emphasized the shortcomings that accompany virtually learning a foreign language.

Though she calls Kubi “very convenient,” she also adds that it was sometimes difficult to engage with students in a class-wide discussion. Side conversations were just as clear to her as her instructor’s voice, meaning she “really had to focus” on what Attwa said.

Villa, like Hartshorn, says she did the same amount of work she would anticipate doing in an in-person class, but calls scheduling Skype sessions with an instructor in place of office hours “difficult.” Because of this, she advises that students considering Kubi “should feel confident” to handle the coursework on their own in case obstacles prevent a close student-teacher relationship.

Attwa, Hartshorn and Villa praise Kubi’s convenience and ease while acknowledging the drawbacks of learning a language without face-to-face interaction.

There are ways to compensate for this, such as when Villa sought out conversations with Arabic-speakers in Chile. She encourages those considering a similar Kubi experience to immerse themselves in the language as much as possible “with what you have around you.”

There is a new way to be virtually active in the classroom, and it’s via a robot named Kubi, an innovation of the Office of Information and Technology at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

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