BOYS Exhibition: I Am No Different Than You

Exhibition Name: I Am No Different Than You

Date: 22nd – 27th March

Venue: Water Pavilion

“BOYS” Curation Statement

I Am No Different Than You is an exhibition that features one of Daniel Adams’ photography projects titled “BOYS” created in 2020. Adams is a conceptual portrait photographer based in Malaysia. Through his lens, we explore the letter G from the term LGBTQ+. The LGBTQ+ community is an umbrella term for gender, romantic, sexual, and queer minorities. This represents members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning community. It additionally includes many other subcultures like pansexual, asexual, and pangender. In Malaysia where expression of sexual orientation is restricted, we see those brave souls who fight back and show who they are. The gay men represented in this series have fun colorful makeup that highlights their facial features. Each featured personality is designated their own color highlighting their prominent features and matching their auras. The bright rainbow colors bring out the uniqueness of each individual, yet they look no different than you and I. BOYS is a powerful series paying tribute to those who are fighting to truly be themselves. Continue reading “BOYS Exhibition: I Am No Different Than You”

Literature Lunch JAM

Excited about a great book you just read and wanting to share it with more people? Come join our first Literature Lunch JAM. It doesn’t get any better than bonding with like-minded faculty, friends and souls over a free meal and books we love!

When: March 25 (Thursday) @ 12pm

Venue: AB Cafe

Please rsvp with Prof. Selina Lai-Henderson

slai.henderson@dukekunshan.edu.cn

DKU Health Humanities Laboratory Request for Proposals: Health Humanities Projects

Information Session

On Friday, March 19th at 10am (China Time) the Health Humanities Lab will host an information session via Zoom to give an overview of health humanities, the types of projects students and faculty might consider proposing, and guidance on the proposal development process.

Health Humanities Lab Information Session

Date and Time: March 19th, 2021 at 10am (China Time)

Zoom Meeting Link: https://duke.zoom.us/j/93477581121

The Health Humanities Lab seeks proposal submission for projects that focus on the interdisciplinary areas of Health Humanities. In our era of rapid globalization and interdependence, the sociocultural aspects of daily life create an important context for how we view and manage health among people and societies. A clear example: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has raised many questions that cannot be addressed with science alone. As such, students and faculty are invited to submit project proposals to address an important health question that incorporates a humanities perspective. Proposals may examine this humanities-oriented question using methodologies from different disciplines.

Potential topics for proposals should concern aspects of individual or population health. Students who would like to submit proposals are required to find at least one DKU faculty member to mentor the project. Faculty who submit a proposal must incorporate at least one student role as part of the project team and teams featuring multiple student roles are highly encouraged. Proposals that include or consist of signature work projects are welcome.

Funding Amount

Maximum funding per project is 10,000 RMB. The project budget should adequately fit the scope of work being proposed and be well-justified. The proposal review committee may request a budget revision or additional justification.

Eligibility

All DKU students and faculty are eligible to apply for funding. Student applicants are required to identify at least one DKU faculty member, from whom they have received an approval for supervision. Faculty must propose at least one student role as part of the project team.

Proposal Format

The proposal should be no longer than 2 pages in length with single-spaced 12-point Arial font. The proposal should include “Title”, “Participants”, “Summary”, “Background”, “Approach” and “Budget” sections.

Title: should be concise and should give an overall idea about the project.

Participants: list all participants (students and faculty) and their roles. Faculty proposals must identify a student role, but need not identify particular students who will fill that role. The HHL will help faculty of accepted proposals find interested students to staff their projects if needed. Likewise, the HHL can offer some assistance to student projects in search of a faculty advisor, although students interested in submitting a proposal are very much encouraged to seek out faculty on their own.

Summary: functions as an abstract for the proposal. It should go over the nature, scope, and aims of the project from a broad perspective without going into much detail.

Background: is a section for you to discuss prior research on the issue directly related to your work. Here you should provide your motivations for conducting research or designing a project in your area of interest and include necessary information to understand the fundamentals of the issue. Please indicate in this section why and how the issue you wish to work on is a good fit for Health Humanities.

Approach: should specifically describe how you intend to work on the issue explained in the Background. You should include your procedure and methods here with explicit attention to interdisciplinarity where appropriate.

Budget: please specify the estimated cost of your project or research and identify the components. You should provide a brief justification for each proposed cost.

Project Timeline

Accepted proposals will be expected to be executed on one of two possible timelines: either during academic year 2021-2022, or over the summer in 2021. If your project team is interested in being physically in residence at DKU over the summer and the project you propose is designed to be completed in the summer, you may be considered for summer funding, which would include housing and board costs in addition to project funding (these additional expenses should not be added to the project budget). Indicate your interest by specifying that the project proposal is for Summer 2021. Otherwise indicate that your project proposal is for AY 2021-2022.

Submission

Submission will be through e-mail. Please send your proposals to Chi ZHANG (chi.zhang323@dukekunshan.edu.cn) and copy all affiliated individuals (students and faculty members). Proposals must be submitted by April 16th, 2021.

Criteria for Selection

Projects will be selected for support based on whether they meet the criteria introduced in this RFP, feasibility, clear fit within Health Humanities, and fit within the context of the set of projects the HHL supports.

Third Space Lab Guest Speaker Series Report | Whose Karate? Language and Cultural Learning in a Multilingual Karate Club in London

By Sihan Wang

Class of 2023

The third talk of the Third Space Lab Guest Speaker Series happened on the eve of Lantern Festival in China. We had the great honor to invite Dr. Zhu Hua, Chair of Educational Linguistics in School of Education from University Birmingham and the director of MOSAIC Group for Research in Multilingualism. In tune with the concept of Third Space, Dr. Zhu introduced the key theoretical notion developed by Kramsch in 2009, where she brought forward the “third culture” created through cultural translation from the language users’ point of view, playing an important role in language teaching and learning. This translation, different from its literal meanings, illustrates “a way of thinking how languages, people, and cultures are transformed as they move between different places”. Consequently, culture translations bring values and practices that have evolved in one specific community to another and expect adaptation, appropriation and changes. Continue reading “Third Space Lab Guest Speaker Series Report | Whose Karate? Language and Cultural Learning in a Multilingual Karate Club in London”

Student Seminar Series: Your Chance to Teach

By Hajra Farooqui

Class of 2022

DKU undergraduate program is starting a new series to pilot in Session 4 of Spring 2021. Based on Duke University’s House Courses, the Student Seminar Series aims to be a series of student-led seminars in which students design and teach short courses introducing new topics of academic interest. Apply to the program here.

[Watch the recording]

The formal seminars can range from one to three 75-minute sessions on a topic of student’s choosing under the supervision of a faculty member. Intended to target subjects and themes not covered in the DKU curriculum, the chosen seminar idea needs to lie outside the DKU course syllabi in some way. It is encouraged that the seminars are also interdisciplinary. This approach can include teaching topics that lie between existing disciplines, fields or courses, topics that integrate knowledge from existing disciplines, and topics that apply knowledge from existing disciplines to another domain. Students can participate in this pilot project as either student leaders or as seminar members.

Student Leaders can design a single seminar or a series around a topic of their choosing. This opportunity will allow them to gain useful skills and experiences in leading seminars, conducting discussions, and facilitating learning. It provides an avenue of academic inquiry into a subject of interest and allows students to integrate and apply knowledge from different courses to a specific theme. Through leading these sessions, students can raise awareness regarding topics of personal importance while also getting helpful feedback from others participating in these sessions. The series provides juniors with a chance to work through and present their Signature Work project ideas.

Participating in these seminars as members allows students to learn something outside a traditional classroom setting, facilitated by their peers. Furthermore, it is an opportunity to continue learning a subject of interest through an interdisciplinary focus and see what their peers have been learning in other courses. This process can also provide a good basis to lead their own seminars in the future.

Proposals to lead seminars during Session 4 can be submitted by Friday, March 12th. Once approved, Student Leaders are to attend sessions led by others as well. This group of students will form a student-led working group that will evaluate the pilot series in Session 4 and make recommendations for a formal launch of this series in the next academic year (2021-2022). Tentatively the seminars are scheduled for Friday afternoons during Session 4. They are designed to be small group sessions of approximately twelve participants each. The UG program plans on conducting these seminars in a hybrid model depending on the location of the students. The center will also make these sessions available for asynchronous participation.

Wind Verification: an art installation by Guo Cheng

Wind Verification
an art installation by Guo Cheng

On show: from 5th March to 9th March AB Auditorium Foyer

Thursday March 4

  • 15:30-17:30 Workshop with Guo Cheng, AB Auditorium Foyer

工作坊(由郭城指导),学术楼一层东南侧中厅

Friday March 5

  • 10:30-11:30 Symposium with Guo Cheng (in conversation with Vytas Jankauskas, Ivan Mura, and Zairong Xiang), IB 1010 / Zoom: 770 275 7156

与艺术家对谈, 创新楼1010 / Zoom: 770 275 7156

  • 11:30-12:00 Inauguration of the Installation  (with Guo Cheng, James Miller, Zairong Xiang, Vytas Jankauskas and Bi Xin), AB Auditorium Foyer

开幕, 学术楼一层东南侧中厅

Artist Guo Cheng, recipient of the 2020-2021 CAC://DKU Research & Creation Fellowship supported by the Humanities Research Center under the theme: WWW – World Wide What co-curated by Vytas Jankauska, head of research at CAC and Zairong Xiang, associate director of art, will come to DKU to show his installation Wind Verification this Friday.

The installation will be officially inaugurated by James Miller (co-director of HRC), Bi Xin (executive director of CAC), and Vytas Jankauska at the AB Auditorium Foyer.

A symposium with Guo Cheng, Vytas Jankauska, and DKU professors Ivan Mura and Zairong Xiang of DKU will be hosted on Friday March 5th 10:30 – 11:30 at IB 1010 (zoom: 770 275 7156). Please come to find out more about the exciting works of Guo Cheng and Wind Verification in particular, which addresses: ‘the relationship between the common perception of social media as altered, selective representation of reality, and art as means for collective “peer-review” of the unverified viral, in an attempt to provide alternative visions to what post COVID-19 “World Wide What” could become.’

计算机视觉算法开发:邱伟豪( UCSB博士生)

Computer vision algorithm development: Weihao Qiu(PhD student, UCSB)

短视频搜集:亢丹茗、王美璇、荀紫(昆山杜克大学本科生)

Short video collection: Danming Kang, Meixuan Wang, Zi Xun(Undergraduate student, DKU)

Spring into Literature Reading Series Presents: Ricardo Alberto Maldonado

12pm China Time March 4th, Thursday (11pm EST March 3th, Wednesday)
IB 2028 / Zoom: 614 954 2152

Ricardo Alberto Maldonado was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He is the co-editor of Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press) and the translator of Dinapiera Di Donato’s Collateral / Colaterales (Akashic Press / National Poetry Series). His first collection of poems is The Life Assignment (Four Way Books), one of  Remezcla’s 2020’s Best Books by Latine or Latin American Authors. A recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Queer|Arts|Mentorship and CantoMundo, he serves as the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center’s Managing Director.

At Thursday’s event, he will read from The Life Assignment and new work. He will discuss his process of including “translations and intentional mistranslations” in the book, and how he refused to make “concessions … to the language of (our current) Empire,” as well as answer student questions.

Third Space Lab Brown Bag Lunch Research Talk: A Conversation About Independent Language Learning

Third Space lab (TSL) invites you to attend the upcoming Brown Bag Lunch Research Talk by Dr. Don Snow (Language and Culture Center) on A Conversation About Independent Language Learning at noon on Friday March 5, 2021 (China Standard Time).

Abstract: You are invited to a conversation about independent language learning! Don will kick things off by briefly sharing some thoughts, hopes and dreams about how we might further promote independent language learning at DKU; he will also talk a little about the current state of the How Do You Learn A Language? book project. (Amidst this all, theory will make occasional cameo appearances, but mainly the focus will be on what we might actually try to do.) Don’s ruminations will be followed by a free-wheeling and stimulating discussion involving anyone who has ideas to share and/or questions to ask.

Please RSVP by 5 pm China Standard Time Thursday March 4 :
https://duke.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9GoIWgZ9EymV3kV

Location: CC 1095. Zoom link will be sent to remote participant. Bring your own lunch and enjoy the inspiring conversation! Light snacks and bubble tea provided—please be sure to RSVP.

ABOUT THE EVENT

The TSL brown bag lunch research talk is open to all members of the DKU community who are interested in discussing and engaging in a conversation about research projects, either a published work or a work-in-progress, broadly related to languages, cultures and intercultural communication.

If you are interested in participating either as a speaker or as audience, please fill out this survey with your availability and potential topics/work you’d be interested in discussing: https://duke.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bj9cfFmbMBwF80Z. Students speakers are welcome but are encouraged to consult the TSL co-directors first. We will arrange in-person and hybrid sessions depending on the responses. Contact Thirdspacelab@dukekunshan.edu.cn or Dr. Zhang Xin (xz261@duke.edu) for inquires.