Category: Freedom Lab: News & Events

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Student Research Project: Meixuan Wang’s “The Feminine Fabulation: An Interdisciplinary Reading of Female K-Pop Idols’ Star Texts”

Meixuan Wang is one of the nine winners of 2022 Freedom Lab’s Shirley Graham and W.E.B Du Bois Award.

Her research project is highlighted below. Read other student researcher’s projects here >>

MEIXUAN WANG
Supported by Professor Jung Choi

Project title:
The Feminine Fabulation: An Interdisciplinary Reading of Female K-Pop Idols’ Star Texts

Project summary:
This project presents an interdisciplinary examination of the complex and in-depth dimensions of society manifested in visual and entertainment culture by focusing on female K-Pop idols’ star texts in the globalization era. It shall revisit the potential of feminine qualities through female idols’ embodied dialogues with particular social and cultural ideologies. Ultimately, the findings on these postmodern star texts will be approached as fabulations that bring together “archaic and contemporary, as well as documentary and fictional” to produce collective storytelling, and in turn, contributes to “the making of a people” (Chow 2007, pp.25). Continue reading “Student Research Project: Meixuan Wang’s “The Feminine Fabulation: An Interdisciplinary Reading of Female K-Pop Idols’ Star Texts””

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Student Research Project: Shuyuan Zhou’s “My Great Grandmother, My Grand Aunt, My Grandmother, My Mother and I: A Family Album”

Shuyuan Zhou is one of the nine winners of 2022 Freedom Lab’s Shirley Graham and W.E.B Du Bois Award.

Her research project is highlighted below. Read other student researcher’s projects here >>

SHUYUAN ZHOU
Supported by Professor Zairong Xiang

Project title:
My Great Grandmother, My Grand Aunt, My Grandmother, My Mother and I: A Family Album

Project summary:
Shuyuan’s signature work will be an exploration of female intergenerational relations in a patriarchal context.  By using photography as her main artistic medium, she draws from her own and her family’s experiences to present a personal, first-person perspective on social issues related to gender and generation in China over the last century. The long-term goal of this project is to use art to focus on intergenerational relationships of women in a patriarchal setting. By focusing on her own past and complex family structure, she hopes that her artworks will interact with the static patriarchal art world and draw the viewer’s attention to two long-neglected social issues: aberrant gender inequality and intergenerational relationships in Chinese society. Continue reading “Student Research Project: Shuyuan Zhou’s “My Great Grandmother, My Grand Aunt, My Grandmother, My Mother and I: A Family Album””

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Student Research Project: Reika Shimomura’s “College Students’ Perception of COVID-19 Emergency Response on Campus – Delphi Study on Duke Kunshan University Students Class of 2022 to 2025”

REIKA SHIMOMURA is one of the nine winners of 2022 Freedom Lab’s Shirley Graham and W.E.B Du Bois Award.

Her research project is highlighted below. Read other student researcher’s projects here >>

REIKA SHIMOMURA
Supported by Professor Daniel Weissglass

Project title:
College Students’ Perception of COVID-19 Emergency Response on Campus – Delphi Study on Duke Kunshan University Students Class of 2022 to 2025

Project summary:
Students or the members of an institution are placed in a disadvantaged position in the situations of infectious diseases’ emergency response and interventions. In this study, the ethical issues regarding the power dynamics of the relationship between the institution and the members of the institution are addressed. This study will give an opportunity for the voices of the members to be heard by the upper-level decision makers of the institution and have actionable content that can be considered in future emergency-related policies. Continue reading “Student Research Project: Reika Shimomura’s “College Students’ Perception of COVID-19 Emergency Response on Campus – Delphi Study on Duke Kunshan University Students Class of 2022 to 2025””

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Student Research Project: Zhiyuan (Zack) Liu’s “Exploring attentional biases towards foreigners’ facial expressions of pain in Chinese observers”

Zhiyuan (Zack) Liu is one of the nine winners of 2022 Freedom Lab’s Shirley Graham and W.E.B Du Bois Award.

His research project is highlighted below. Read other student researcher’s projects here >>

 

ZHIYUAN (ZACK) LIU

Supported by Professor Shan Wang

Project title:
Exploring attentional biases towards foreigners’ facial expressions of pain in Chinese observers

Project summary:
Facial expression is a dominant nonverbal channel for pain communication that is often incorporated in clinical pain assessment. Given the importance of nonverbal communication between foreign patients and doctors, understanding the role of sufferers’ race is of great significance. Essentially, prior to recognize and assess pain-related facial expressions, observers will first allocate their attention to the faces. The study aims to examine Chinese observers’ attentional bias on pain-related facial expressions of foreigners from multiple racial backgrounds by tracking the eye-gaze, skin conductance, and behavioral reaction time. Continue reading “Student Research Project: Zhiyuan (Zack) Liu’s “Exploring attentional biases towards foreigners’ facial expressions of pain in Chinese observers””

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Student Research Project: Weiran Li’s “Herb and Beauty: Aromatic Female in ‘Dream of the Red Chamber'”

Weiran Li is one of the nine winners of 2022 Freedom Lab’s Shirley Graham and W.E.B Du Bois Award.

Her research project is highlighted below. Read other student researcher’s projects here >>

WEIRAN LI
Supported by Professor Wenting Ji

Project title:
Herb and Beauty: Aromatic Female in “Dream of the Red Chamber”

Project summary:
Through a close reading of the poems and descriptions of Daguan Yuan’s female in Dream of the Red Chamber, I mainly explore two questions in this project: How does herb in Dream of the Red Chamber construct female identity? How does the nature-female correlation narrative style embody the feminine space and feminine discourse in the book? Theories related to sensory experiences, eco-feminism, and traditional Chinese medicine will also be referred in the project. Continue reading “Student Research Project: Weiran Li’s “Herb and Beauty: Aromatic Female in ‘Dream of the Red Chamber’””

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Humanities Research Center Current Research Projects

The Humanities Research Center proudly announces the current research projects being conducted by the HRC labs. We invite you stay in touch with updates on each of these projects by checking the news sections of our website and following our weekly newsletter.

ANTHROPOCENE XR LAB

PROJECT 1
Title: The Neganthropocene and Arts (Case studies in China)
Who: Prof. Jung Choi, Meixuan Wang, Yujia Zhai
Project summary: Inspired by the notion of Neganthropocene by a French Philosopher, Bernard Stiegler, the study explores innovative tactics by Chinese emerging artists that challenge the human-centered logic of understanding the world.

PROJECT 2
Title: DKU Augmented Reality (AR) Campus
Who: Prof. Xin Tong, Prof. Jung Choi, student researchers Qingyang He, Tony Ren, Weiran Li, and Ruiqi Chen
Project summary: In the research, we are creating an AR mobile app, DKU AR Campus, and investigating how augmented reality technology can support spatial digital co-creation and social interaction. We aim to understand multi-users’ social dynamics and examine their co-creation behaviors in an embodied AR context and derive design implications to shed light on future research. Continue reading “Humanities Research Center Current Research Projects”

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Congratulations to Jesse Olsavsky on his new book “The Most Absolute Abolition Runaways: Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Revolutionary Abolitionism, 1835–1861”

Jesse Olsavsky

Congratulations to Jesse Olsavsky, Assistant Professor of History and Co-Director of the Freedom Lab at the Humanities Research Center at Duke Kunshan University!

His new book, The Most Absolute Abolition, “tells the dramatic story of how vigilance committees organized the Underground Railroad and revolutionized the abolitionist movement. These groups, based primarily in northeastern cities, defended Black neighborhoods from police and slave catchers. As the urban wing of the Underground Railroad, they helped as many as ten thousand refugees, building an elaborate network of like-minded sympathizers across boundaries of nation, gender, race, and class.

Continue reading “Congratulations to Jesse Olsavsky on his new book “The Most Absolute Abolition Runaways: Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Revolutionary Abolitionism, 1835–1861””

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Congratulations to Recipients of the 2022 Shirley Graham and W.E.B Du Bois Award!

Freedom Lab is thrilled to announce the following 9 recipients of the 2022 Shirley Graham and W.E.B. Du Bois Award. The Award (5000 rmb per recipient) will help with our DKU juniors on their Signature Work projects, including book purchasing, art installations, photo printing and exhibits, archival research, and field work.

Congratulations to all! Continue reading “Congratulations to Recipients of the 2022 Shirley Graham and W.E.B Du Bois Award!”

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Freedom Lab: Call for Faculty Research Projects

The Freedom Lab is excited to announce that it will support two to four faculty-student research projects. All faculty members are welcome to apply.

Research projects should relate very broadly to the Lab’s theme of “freedom” and “unfreedom.” Please see the Freedom Lab Website for a sense of the kind of work the lab does https://sites.duke.edu/dkuhumanities/category/labs/freedom-lab/freedom-lab-events/. All research projects must include student researchers, as the funding will be primarily allocated in the form of student research assistantships. Apart from maintaining their research agendas, Faculty and student RA’s must actively participate in the lab’s activities.

To apply, please send a one-page proposal briefly describing your project, the kind of research it requires, and the kind of work student RAs will do.

Proposals can be sent to Selina Lai Henderson (slai.henderson@dukekunshan.edu.cn) and Jesse Olsavsky (jesse.olsavsky@dukekunshan.edu.cn) by Monday, April 25th.  

So far, the Freedom Lab has funded four faculty projects and eight student RA’s, leading to conference presentations, student Signature Work projects, and publications. We hope to continue this support of student and faculty research!

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Freedom Lab Calls for Student Signature Work

Freedom Lab is excited to announce the W.E.B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois Award to DKU juniors whose Signature Work projects examine themes related to Freedom Lab. The Lab will fund up to ten projects, 5000rmb each, in order for students to explore their work in the spirit of WEB Du Bois and his wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois—two of the most consequential figures of US history who had left behind a legacy of human freedom and justice across the globe.

Students who pursue projects in relation to notions of freedom and unfreedom on any of the topics below are encouraged to apply: Continue reading “Freedom Lab Calls for Student Signature Work”

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