News & Events

Meet director Feng Xiaoning 冯小宁, one of China's most popular filmmakers, watch his most recent blockbuster 1894: The Sino-Japanese War at Sea, which was named Best Picture in 2012 by the China Movie Channel, and engage in a dialogue with the filmmaker himself, who will conduct a Q & A following the screening.

This epic war drama is set in the late 19th century and aims to reinterpret the historical facts of the War of Jiawu between China's Manchurian Qing Empire and Japan. In light of the recent
Sino-Japanese island dispute in the South China Sea, this film provides important historical context for current events.

This event is free and open to the public.
October 23, 2012, 6:00PM - 8:30PM
100 Rapson Hall Auditorium, East Bank, U of Minnesota

This event is co-sponsored by Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, the University of Minnesota and US-China Cultural Media Group.

Students in our Chinese Program walked away with almost all the first and second prizes in the regional Midwest Chinese Bridge Speech Contest at Northwestern University this May. In fact, every ALL student sent to the competition placed either first or second. There were fifty-five contestants from nine Midwest universities in the competition. Joel Brown, first prize winner in the third level, will be one of the two representatives from our region sent to compete in the world-wide speech contest in Beijing, China later this year.

Each contestant presented a short prepared speech (without referring to notes), and then performed a Chinese cultural talent. The students in our program presented a variety of talents such as: singing, dancing, performing a short play, and acting out a talk show. Each competitor's final score was based on their weighted combination of the speech (80%) and the talent (20%). The competition was judged by high-school teachers from the Chicago, IL, area.

Pictured left to right: Joshua Quinn, Luke Jerviss, Ling Wang, Chi-ping Li, Yefei Jin, James Thomas Lein, Joseph Carl, Joel Brown

The winners are:
1st-year:

• Joshua Quinn (first prize)


• Joseph Carl (first prize)


• James Thomas Lein (second prize)

• Luke Jerviss (first prize)

3rd-year:

• Joel Brown (first prize)

4th-year heritage student:

• Yefei Jin (second prize)

Arrangements for trip to Northwestern University were supported by the Confucius Institute and the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures.

With forty contestants from ten Midwest universities in this Chinese language competition, our students all (ALL!) took first prizes in their categories. Joel Peter Wagner won the only first prize of Level One; Level Two granted two first prizes, our students, Anthony Dodge and Heather Kaus, won both of them. In other words, our three students won all the first prizes for level one and level two. Heather was also chosen to go to China and represent the University in the 10th "China Bridge" international language competition.

Pictured Heather Kaus, Joel Peter Wagner & Anthony Dodge

This is a tribute to both the students and teachers in our Chinese language Program, led by Director Ling Wang.

The Second College Student Chinese Speech Contest of the Midwest Area was held at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, on April 23, 2011 with forty graduate and undergraduate Chinese language students from ten universities competing in this showcase of Chinese language programs from the region. The event was supported by Hanban and the Consulate General of PRC to Chicago, and was organized by the Confucius Institute and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Purdue University.

Hong Wei, Director of Confucius Institute at Purdue University, sent a congratulation letter, saying "Your students made a foremost impression on each of us, with their extraordinary speech and performance talents." "Associate Vice President and Dean Meredith McQuaid says, "What wonderful news -- we are not surprised, but we are delighted. They have had excellent instruction and they are obviously very smart people."

Arrangements for trip to Purdue were supported by the Confucius Institute and the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures.

Guests gather to watch "Pray for Japan."

On May 6, the Japanese Language Program hosted a charity event "Arigato 'Thank you'" to help the Japan earthquake tsunami relief effort. The event, which was held at Nolte 140, started at 6:00 pm and the room was immediately packed with over 150 people.

Since the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on March 11, the Japanese people and those who have a connection with Japan have been receiving support from all over the world. The instructors and TAs in the Japanese Language Program decided to hold an event where they could express their appreciation, and also support the Japan relief effort.

Despite the short period of time to prepare and in the midst of the busy teaching schedule, the event was a big success. The event started with a YouTube slide show "Pray for Japan", followed by beautiful music by the band "Julight" from the Oriental Music Club (U of M student organization). After that, Mu-min (Japanese women's chorus group in the Twin Cities area) sang several Japanese songs. The audience sang "Ue o muite arukoo 'Let's walk facing up'" aka "Sukiyaki song" together, led by Mu-min.

At the event, attendees wrote a message to Japan on their cherry blossom pedal shaped program and made a big cherry blossom tree together. Outside the room, there was a bazaar where people enjoyed searching for good deals.

The Japanese Language Program is grateful for the help from their friends, without which the event could not have happened. The thank yous go to:

• The Department of Asian Languages and Literatures for being a sponsor for the event
• "Julight" and "Mu-min" for the beautiful music performances
• AJI (Asobou! Japanese Immersion Club), JSA (Japan Student Association), NDJ (N-Dimensional Japan) for working so hard at the event
• JASM (Japan America Society of Minnesota) for donating a beautiful piece of art for the silent auction
• Members of the Support Group formed by ISSS (International Student & Scholar Services) staff for participating from the beginning
• Kikugawa at Riverplace for providing a generous portion of food
• Sushi Do for delicious sushi
• Friends from the Japanese community for bringing food and items to sell at the bazaar
• Friends and students for participating

The total of the donated money was $1,109.75. The money was collected and sent to the Japanese Red Cross by the Japan Student Association.

Arigato!

Our Ph.D. in Asian Literatures, Cultures and Media (ALCM) offers training in Asian texts, film, and critical theory. Our faculty include scholars in various disciplines across the Humanities. In this program, students pursue extensive coursework in a particular Asian literary or cultural tradition (including emergent, non-canonical cultural forms) while addressing political, theoretical, and methodological concerns. We are open to comparative work as well as new questions concerning discursive constructions of Asia. Faculty interests include poetic and theatrical traditions, film studies, feminist thought and postcolonial theory.

Languages of Concentration: Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Japanese, Korean

We are very pleased to announce the establishment of a new graduate student fellowship in honor of Richard B. and Virginia Mather. Over the last sixty years, Richard and Ginny have been dear colleagues and good friends through the many manifestations of Asian studies at the University of Minnesota. During that time, Richard emerged as one of the world’s most important scholars of Chinese literature of the early medieval period.

In his research Richard drew broadly on the literatures of Asia, including Japanese and Sanskrit. So it is particularly appropriate that this new fellowship is available to graduate students in our PhD program in Asian Literatures, Cultures and Media, now entering its fourth year.

To contribute to the Mather Fellowship, please visit Asian Languages & Literatures’ Make a Gift or contact Jill Kane at CLA External Relations.

Richard B. Mather was born in 1913 in Baoding, China. He grew up in northern China speaking Chinese and came to the United States to study art and archaeology at Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude in 1935. He then began the study of religion at the Princeton Theological Seminary where he met his future wife Virginia Temple, who was a student at the Westminster Choir College. Richard was ordained as a Presbyterian Minister, whereupon he and Ginny went to Belle Haven, Virginia to begin his pastoral duties. Ginny was a music major and brought the gift of music, including her singing, wherever she went. On their way back to China to begin new pastoral duties, the Mathers’ journey was interrupted on the West Coast. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Richard and Ginny began their graduate studies in Chinese at the University of California at Berkeley under the great sinologist, Peter A. Boodberg.

The Mathers came to the University in 1949, whereupon Richard, fresh with a PhD in Oriental Languages, began the Chinese language program. His first Chinese class had only three students, only one of whom was officially registered! Quite a legacy, considering that this year’s Chinese language program had 582 registered students.

In the early years Richard also taught Chinese literature, Chinese history, and Chinese art—an early sign of his renaissance-like learning. Over the years he emerged as one of the most important scholars in classical Chinese literature. Richard retired in 1984, but even after that he kept up a vibrant life of teaching and scholarship.

In addition to his dedication to undergraduate and graduate teaching, including mentoring numerous PhDs over the decades, Richard conducted deep and extensive research in early Chinese literature, specializing on detailed studies of early Chinese poetry and Buddhism. His early book, Shih-shuo Hsin-yü : A New Account of Tales of the World (University of Minnesota Press, 1976) is a classic in the field of sinological scholarship (and reissued in 2002 by University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies). His book, The Poet Shen Yueh (441-513): The Reticent Marquis, was published by Princeton in 1988. Then in 2003 Richard published the annotated translations of the complete works of three poets of the Yung-ming period in two volumes totaling 900 pages: The Age of Eternal Brilliance: Three Lyric Poets of the Yung-ming Era (483-493) (Brill). This work is another tour de force in bringing broad scholarship to bear on this literature. Tellingly, these last two books were dedicated simply “To Ginny.�?

Over the last few years, the U of M has witnessed a virtual revamping of South Asian studies. New exciting courses, influential faculty members, a very dynamic bi-weekly seminar series, strong graduate students, and critical language offerings have all made the U of M a leading institution in the country for the field of South Asian studies.

ALL is happy to announce key developments that enhance our offerings in the South Asia field for the 08-09 academic year. These include courses in one of the most important languages in not only the Asian sphere, but the classical world as a whole: Sanskrit. Students will also be able to take new courses on religion in modern South Asia, women writers, and popular culture, including film.

We encourage students to learn about one of the most dynamic regions of the contemporary world, one which has since ancient times shaped the nature of global cultural flows.

We are very pleased to announce that Jason McGrath, Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Film, has just had two significant achievements, both related to his study of film.

First, Jason’s new book Postsocialist Modernity: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age has been published by Stanford University Press (March 2008). Andrew Jones of the University of California - Berkeley has said "This is the most lucid, engaging, and theoretically acute account of contemporary Chinese cultural production to have emerged in recent years from the Western academy."

Second, Jason has just won a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship (2008-2010) for his project “Inscribing the Real: Chinese Cinema from the Silent Era to the Twenty-first Century.�? This is one of the University of Minnesota’s most prestigious awards. The major purpose of the McKnight Professorship program is to nurture the careers of the University of Minnesota’s most promising junior faculty members in order to strengthen the faculty for the future. Jason is the only scholar in the Humanities to win the award this year (of 13), and one of only two people in the Humanities in the last three years.

Congratulations Jason, twice.

Jason’s book, Postsocialist Modernity: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age, examines Chinese culture under the age of market reforms. Beginning in the early 1990s and on into the new century, fields such as literature and film have been fundamentally transformed by the forces of the market as China is integrated ever more closely into the world economic system. As a result, the formerly unified revolutionary culture has been changed into a pluralized state that reflects the diversity of individual experience in the reform era. New autonomous forms of culture that have arisen include avant-garde as well as commercial literature, and independent film as well as a new entertainment cinema. Chinese people find their experiences of postsocialist modernity reflected in all kinds of new cultural products as well as critical debates that often question the direction of Chinese society in the midst of comprehensive and rapid change.

The name of the project for which he received the McKnight, “Inscribing the Real,�? is a literal translation of 写实 (xieshi), a Chinese rendering of the Western term “realism.�? For Chinese artists, the term (in fact a neologism borrowed from Japan in the early twentieth century) was intimately linked to modernity itself, and in particular to the concepts of a modern nation and its citizenry. The research project will connect the modern discourse of “realism�? in Chinese culture with the debates over cinematic realism in film theory. The latter can shed much light on Chinese film history and its relation to modern Chinese cultural history in general, but at the same time a detailed exploration of the Chinese case will lead to a reevaluation of “realism�? in the field of film studies—which, in a globalizing world said to be entering a new “Chinese century�?—must expand beyond its basis in American and European film history and allow for the diverse film cultures of non-Western societies to inform its central concepts.