Category: Small Projects

Report by Delfin Kaplan, class of 2027 

On November 1st, 2024, Dr. Xin Zhang, assistant professor of Chinese and Intercultural Communication from the Langauge and Culture Center at Duke Kunshan University(DKU), and Dr. Peiru Tong, associate professor of International Education at Wuhan University (WHU) co-hosted the Forum and Exhibition on Multimodality in Multilingual and Intercultural Education. A collaboration between DKU and WHU, the forum and exhibition took place in-person at DKU, though it was also attended by audience online through Zoom and on Spot, the latter being a metaverse exhibition. The one-day forum consisted of invited talks, workshops, and faculty lightning talks by professors across multiple acclaimed universities beyond DKU and WHU, including Duke, University of Sydney, the Ohio State University and University of HongKong, and a student-led artwork exhibition.

The forum started with a welcome speech by the senior director of Language and Culture Center (LCC) Dr. Don Snow, followed by Dr. Peiru Tong’s introducation of the “Multimodal Intercultural Education Interdisciplinary Innovation Platform”, co-funded by the WHU and DKU Joint Research Platform Seed Funding and the Kunshan Municipal Government Research Funding, and the DKU HRC Small Event Grant.

The talks and workshops on Multimodality in Multilingual and Intercultural Education were led by nine accomplished professors: Dr. Francis Troyan from Ohio State University and Dr. Zhenjie Weng from Duke Kunshan spoke about the development of language teacher identity through photo-elicitation in TESOL teacher education, which is a reflection technique used to explore the connection between emotions and the teachers’ identities. They also shared some reflections from participating teachers. Dr. Yan Liu gave a speech on the multimodal approaches to teaching Chinese, focusing on the power of visual arts, followed by a collaborative presentation between Dr. Xin Zhang from Duke Kunshan University and Dr. Peiru Tong from Wuhan University on the visual narratives of international students’ multilingual identity (co)construction during their long-term studies abroad in China. After that, Dr. Hongzhi (Veronica) Yang from the University of Sydney shared her insights on the use of generative AI to create multimodal language learning resources.

After a lunch break to allow participants to explore the exhibition and discuss the contents of the morning presentations, Dr. Mari Noda and Dr. Galal Walker from the Ohio State University led a pedagogy workshop on applying performance watch tasks in language and culture classrooms. Dr. Tai, Kevin W.H. from the University of Hong Kong, led the a second workshop on research methodology for understanding the construction of translanguaging spaces in multilingual classrooms, focusing on insights from combining multimodal conversation analysis with interpretative phenomenological analysis. Another highlight of the forum was the faculty-led lightning talks which showcased various teaching and research projects by faculty in the Language and Culture Center at DKU, and faculty from peer institutions including Wuhan University and University of Sydney.

The student artwork exhibition consisted of artwork and reflections created by DKU, WHU, and University of Sydney (USYD) students, as part of a collaborative research project between Dr. Xin Zhang and Dr. Peiru Tong. Student participants were asked to reflect on their identity as international students in an intercultural student cohort and their experiences with multilinguality over two months with weekly check-ins, which were then processed through an extensive selection process and displayed by two student workers, Delfin Kaplan and Davit Kavkasyan, supervised by Dr. Xin Zhang. Both students responsible for the exhibition were also part of the preliminary artwork collection process in 2023.

Throughout the weeks leading up to the exhibition, Delfin and Davit individually inspected every single one of the dozens of artworks and the accompanying reflection and chose around 30 final artworks to be presented in the exhibition. The forum attendees could view these posters on the day of the exhibition, and they will remain visible in the foyer outside Performance Cafe in CCTE for another month. The artwork can also be viewed virtually via a metaverse exhibition.

In curating the exhibitions, the two student workers independently handled the budget, acquired the materials, communicated with the creators of the artworks, set up the exhibition, and they gave a short speech in the forum to talk about their experience and what they’ve learned. Both students reported that seeing the perspective of other international students was ‘eye-opening’ and that this exhibition was especially important to them due to both of them being the only students from their countries.