Greetings from the Chair/Director

The Department of Transnational Asian Studies and the Chao Center for Asian Studies welcome you back to campus after what we hope was a restful and productive summer.

This is an exciting time for the Department and Center. In the fall of 2023, we welcomed the very gifted faculty in Asian languages into the Department of Transnational Asian Studies, allowing us to include Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language studies within our curriculum. This relationship has expanded our programming to include more opportunities and approaches to Asian Studies. The undergraduate major in Asian Studies is now divided into two concentrations. The first is our long-standing and popular research-based Major Concentration in Transnational Asian Studies. The second is a new Major Concentration in Asian Language, beginning in Fall 2024. Both are flexible and complement a wide range of interests.

Our department is growing even larger with the addition of our new Assistant Professor of Transnational Asian Studies, Chang Xu, who is joining us as a recent PhD from Washington University. Dr. Xu is a social historian at the intersection of medicine and empire, focusing on medical practices, medicines, and the body in early modern China. She will be teaching a wide range of classes on the history of medicine in Asia. We are very excited to have her joining us at Rice.

Finally, we invite you to drop by to visit our new offices. The Department and Chao Center have moved to the center of campus and are now located at 305 Herring Hall.

Some of our upcoming events include:

On September 6 at 5 pm, the Chao Center for Asian Studies Frank and Cindy Liu Distinguished Visitor Series, Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, and Rice Global will be co-hosting Dr. Shashi Tharoor, fourth-term Indian Member of Parliament and former United Nations Under-Secretary General, in conversation with Ambassador David M. Satterfield, Director of the Baker Institute, discussing: "The New World Disorder? India's Role in Global Governance.” There will be a reception before the event at the Baker Institute, from 4:30 pm. Register today.

On September 9, the Chao Center’s Tai Event Series in Cross-Cultural Studies will host art historians Chelsea Foxwell (UChicago) and Bradley Bailey (MFAH) in conversation about the Meiji Modern exhibit, currently showing at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. The event, “Meiji Modern: Curatorial Perspectives on 19th and Early 20th-Century Japanese Art,” will be in Kraft Hall 110 at 4 pm.

On October 3, the Chao Center’s Houston Asian American Archive, with support from the Robert Ho Foundation, will bring Musiqa’s performance of “Vibrant Voices: Musical Portraits from the Houston Asian American Archive,” 7:30-9 pm at the Asia Society. Register today.

We are excited to continue our Transnational Asia Speaker Series in 2024-25. Look for our email updates for specific dates and locations. This Fall, we will be hosting Susan Hwang (UC Santa Barbara), “South Korea’s Song Movement” and Andy Schonebaum (U Maryland), “Classifying the Unseen: Curiosity, Fantasy and Common Sense in Early Modern China”. In the Spring, we will be hosting Eiichiro Azuma (U Penn) as a part of the Mellon-Dissertation Seminar and Gray Tuttle (Columbia). More details to follow.

The Center for Languages and Intercultural Communication is hosting a conference on “Equitable, Just, and Inclusive Practices in Language Education” on Rice Campus October 11-13, 2024, co-sponsored by the Department of Transnational Asian Studies. Register today. Please send any inquires to clic-conferences@rice.edu.

Professor Sonia Ryang will be hosting a conference, “Race in Transnational Asian Studies: Focus on Japan and Korea,” on Rice Campus February 17-18, 2025. Among the speakers will be Han Sang Kim (Ajou University), Sohoon Yi (Korea University), Kristin Roebuck (Cornell), Inga Kim Diederich (Colby College), Takashi Fujitani (UToronto), Marvin Sterling (Indiana U), Hoi-eun Kim (A&M), Sidney Lu (Rice) and Jaymin Kim (Rice).

Finally, the graduate students of the Rice Asian Diasporic and Asian American Research (RADAAR) Collective will collaborate with graduate students at Texas A&M this spring, February 28 - March 1, 2025, to offer the Texas Association for Asian American Diaspora Studies (TAAADS) 1st Annual Symposium. A call for papers will go out by November 1st, and students are encouraged to submit abstracts. While A&M will host the conference this academic year, Rice will host the conference in 2025-2026.

For questions about any of our events, please write to chao.center@rice.edu.

In the meantime, this, our inaugural newsletter, will fill you in on the activities of our busy past year and point you towards our faculty and student resources.

Lisa Balabanlilar
Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor in the Humanities
Chair of the Department of Transnational Asian Studies
Director of the Chao Center for Asian Studies

Chao Center for Asian Studies

The Year in Review

Chao Center

Transnational Asia Speaker Series

Through the generosity of the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Foundation and with the support of our faculty, the Chao Center for Asian Studies hosts a number of distinguished scholars annually for guest lectures that are free and open to the public. In 2023-24, TASS talks included:

“Japan Doesn’t Care about Parents?: Family Privacy, Law, and International Parental Abductions” | Allison Alexy

October 25, 2023

Using parental abduction cases as a starting point, Allison Alexy theorized the relationship between law and family within and beyond Japan, specifically engaging scholarship in anthropology, gender studies, and legal studies.

“Hospitality’s Anatomies” | Vernadette Gonzalez

March 1, 2024

This presentation tracked how hospitality and its constituent parts are generated, sustained, repurposed, and operationalized in militouristic regimes, and followed the circulations of hospitality’s anatomies from Hawai’i, to Atlanta, Seoul, and Olongapo.

“Northeast Asian American Literature in the Era of Deindustrialization” | Christopher Fan

March 28, 2024

This talk offered a deliberately partial account of contemporary Northeast Asian American literature and its authors, proceeding from the political economic formation of the region across Japanese, US, and now Chinese imperialist regimes. It aimed to show how works of post-65 Northeast Asian American literature share a set of racial and literary forms that extend from the class formation of its authors in relation to professional-managerial occupations, especially in STEM fields.

Tibetan Buddhist Sand Mandala

October 16 - 20, 2023

In a series of events lasting one week, monks from the renowned Gaden Shartse monastery in India created a sand mandala for public viewing, performed opening and closing rituals for the benefit of attendees, and presented a lecture on Buddhist concepts of life, death, and rebirth. The lecture and rituals were led by Geshe Lharampa Jampa Chodak.

“A Window to the World of Kathakali”

October 19, 2023

Kathakali, which literally means “story-play,” is a highly evolved dance-theater tradition that originated in Kerala (in south India) in the 17th century. It is an amalgam of dance, drama, and music with elaborate ornamentation, make-up, and costuming. With the School of Humanities and the Department of English, the Chao Center co-sponsored both a public lecture-demonstration, featuring V. Kaladharan and Kalamandalam Manoj Kumar, and a public performance, featuring Kalamandalam Manoj Kumar.

Screening of “Chinatown Rising”

November 9, 2023

“Chinatown Rising” is a documentary film set in the mid-1960s that illustrates the issues that led members of San Francisco’s Chinese American community to mobilize for bilingual education, tenants’ rights, affordable housing, and an ethnic studies curriculum. The film was introduced by Dr. Sidney X. Lu and followed by a Zoom Q&A with film director Josh Chuck.

Bhagwaan Mahavir Lecture in Jain Studies | “Jainism, the Caste System, and a History of the Jain Sacred Thread Ceremony”: Ellen Gough

February 20, 2024

This talk by Ellen Gough, Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Emory University, drew upon fieldwork in Mumbai and an examination of Jain texts to present the beginnings of a history of the Jain sacred thread ceremony, showing its connection to a modern festival called Rakṣā Bandhan, “Tying the Thread.”

“Gravity is the Momentum of Feelings” | Xin Liu, HAAA Visiting Artist

February 21, 2024

Xin Liu, HAAA artist-in-residence and recipient of the 2022 Karman Fellowship, 2021 Porsche Young Chinese Artist of the Year, and the 2020 X Museum Triennial Award, gave a public talk, "Gravity is the Momentum of Feelings," to a packed audience on February 21, 2024.

Lecture and Presentation on the Artistry of Noh Masks | Hideta Kitazawa

April 2, 2024

Noh masks are the most iconic elements of Japan’s oldest dramatic art, continuously performed since the 14th century. Hideta Kitazawa gave a riveting lecture-demonstration on the artistry of noh masks on the occasion of his delivery of two masks produced for Rice’s Fondren Library.

Dreaming the Mountain: Conversation and Reading by Co-Translators Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins

April 5, 2024

Presented with the Center for Environmental Studies, Vietnamese poet and essayist Nguyen Ba Chung and acclaimed American poet Martha Collins discussed and read from poet Tuệ Sỹ’s Dreaming the Mountain, which they co-translated.

Dzogchen and Tibetan Modernity Conference

April 26 & 27, 2024

This interdisciplinary conference led by Anne Klein, Professor of Religion, and Learned Foote (PhD Religion, ‘23) took an expansive look at one of the most celebrated esoteric systems of Buddhist practice, a creative furthering over more than a thousand years of the Indian Buddhist traditions received and translated from about the 8th to 11th centuries and still part of vibrant traditions throughout the Himalayas and beyond. Co-presented with the Department of Religion, the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Rice Creative Ventures Research Fund, and Dawn Mountain, A Center for Tibetan Buddhism.

Co-Sponsored Events

The Chao Center is proud to support relevant events hosted by other centers and departments across campus.

“Sini-Islamic Calligraphy: Arabic Calligraphy in Chinese Tradition” | Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang

January 23, 2024

This event unveiled Sini-Islamic calligraphy - a unique artistic synthesis, blending Arabic calligraphy with Chinese calligraphic styles, developed by Chinese Muslims over centuries. Presented by the Department of Art History.

Screening of “Balloon” by Filmaker Pema Tseden

March 1, 2024

Balloon narrates a Tibetan family's challenges in the face of religious conservatism, sexual freedoms and China’s one-child policy. Following the film, professors of anthropology Huatse Gyal and Cymene Howe shared reflections on the film and facilitated audience discussion. Co-presented with the Department of Anthropology and Rice Cinema.

Visiting Artist | Chitra Ganesh

April 2, 2024

Through studies in literature, semiotics, social theory, science fiction, and historical and mythic texts, Ganesh reconciled representations of femininity, sexuality, and power absent from the artistic and literary canons. Presented by the Department of Art and co-sponsored with the Department of Art History and the Moody Center for the Arts.

Houston Asian American Archive (HAAA)

Texas Oral History Conference (TOHA)

September 8 & 9, 2023

Representing HAAA, Karen Siu, Indre Rapalaviciute, and Daniel Cho presented at the TOHA conference as part of a panel titled, “Stories from the Houston Asian American Archive: Understanding the Stakes of Documenting AAPI Oral Histories.” The session discussed how necessary it is to account for the Asian American community in oral history work and research. As AAPI populations continue to grow and diversify in the US while facing racism and xenophobia, this panel demostrated how oral history serves as an important genre and method that amplifies underrepresented Asian American voices in the US and various inequities they face. Each presentation took a different approach to the question of what it means to document and study oral histories and oral history methods in relation to Asian American communities.

Chinese Community Center’s Luminary Award

November 9, 2023

The Chinese Community Center, a civic organization that provides social services and cultural programs for the Asian community, gave the Luminary Award to Dr. Anne Chao, Manager of the Houston Asian American Archive, for her work in preserving and honoring the lives and stories of Asian Americans in the greater Houston area.

HOPE Clinic Region VI AAPI Health Summit

January 19 & 20, 2024

HAAA representatives Emily Ma, Grace Park, Ian Kim, and Indre Rapalaviciute attended the conference and learned about various matters that lie at the intersection of AAPI culture/identity and healthcare. HAAA was promoted to a broader Houston healthcare community, and we were fascinated by and gained invaluable new perspectives from a variety of presentations. Discussion panels were led by field experts on mental health issues, stigma, and culture gaps regarding Asian Americans.

HAAA Visiting Artist | Xin Liu

January 29 - March 11, 2024

With the arrival of a contemporary art rising star Xin Liu, HAAA kicked off their dual artist-in-residency program. Xin Liu, after immersing herself in HAAA oral histories for weeks, reports: "The experience was incredibly intimate. Their voices transported me to life journeys from the Philippines to Sangley Point on the island of Luzon as a U.S. Coast Guard, from a five-year hunger strike to getting out of an arranged marriage in east Pakistan to becoming a nutritional scientist for astronauts and shaking hands with Neil Armstrong, from growing up in a refugee camp in Thailand as a Karen person to working in the HOPE clinic to help anyone who came through with a Buddhist heart. There are countless journeys woven together, acutely different in each story, yet they often share tender moments of grief, ambition, tenacity, a longing and timidity for life, and the occasional surge of nostalgia that makes one forget where they are." Xin Liu gave a public talk, "Gravity is the Momentum of Feelings," to a packed audience on February 21, 2024.

Rice Asian Diasporic and Asian American Research (RADAAR) Collective

Roundtable & Speaker Series | “What Does Feminist Asian/-American Studies Look Like?”

April 5 & 6, 2024

In partnership with the Chao Center for Asian Studies and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, the RADAAR Collective held a two-day event reflecting on the question, “What does feminist Asian/-American Studies look like?” A roundtable discussion was held composed of undergraduate and graduate students as well as community members, and a series of speakers presented the following:

“Transnational Feminism and SWANA Studies: Traveling Testimonies of Incarceration and Resistance” | Dr. Carol W.N. Fadda, Associate Professor of English at Syracuse University
“Unhappiness: On Romantic Empire and Transnational Asian American Erotics” | Dr. Quynh H. Vo, Professorial Lecturer of Asia, Pacific, and Diaspora Studies at American University
“Navigating Sustainability in the Margins of India: Transnational Feminist Reflections” | Dr. Debarati Sen, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Houston

Transnational Asia: an online interdisciplinary journal

Special Issue dedicated to Professor Nanxiu Qian

September 2024

The Rice and broader academic community lost its dear friend, Dr. Nanxiu Qian, Professor of Chinese Literature, in 2022. Professor Qian was best known for her pioneering and much-cited work on the enormously influential fifth-century Chinese masterpiece Shishuo xinyu (A New Account of Tales of the World), but she also wrote extensively on a great many other Chinese literary works spanning some two thousand years, from the Lienü zhuan (Biographies of Exemplary Women; first century BCE), to twentieth century fiction in Taiwan, and gender studies in contemporary American scholarship on China. Her last single-authored book was Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui and the Era of Reform (Stanford University Press, 2015), a highly regarded political and literary biography of a remarkable woman scholar in late nineteenth and early twentieth century China. Nanxiu was also a dedicated, prize-winning teacher who introduced hundreds of students to the beauty and power of texts written by Chinese women, past and present.

In appreciation of Nanxiu Qian’s wide-ranging scholarship, the editorial committee of Transnational Asia called for papers on women and literature in transnational Asia from any historical period. The essays in this special issue are selected from a large number of papers that were submitted in response to the committee's call. Look for its release in early September on the journal’s website.

Department of Transnational Asian Studies

Faculty and Staff Achievements

The Department of Transnational Asian Studies extends our warmest congratulations to our staff and faculty who have been recognized for their contributions this year.

Congratulations to Eric Huntington for achieving tenure with his promotion to T.T. & W.F. Chao Associate Professor of Transnational Asian Studies.

Sonia Ryang, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Asian Studies, was awarded the University of California Berkeley Hong Yung Lee Book Award in Korean Studies for her book Language and Truth in North Korea.

A new scholarly series from the University of Pittsburgh Press, Between Asias and Americas, will be edited by Sonia Ryang, T.T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Asian Studies, and Sidney X. Lu, Annette and Hugh Gragg Associate Professor of Transnational Asian Studies.

Susan Huang received a Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange Publication Subsidy for her work on her new book, The Dynamic Spread of Buddhist Print Culture.

Hae Hun Matos, Department Administrator, received a Career Champion Award from the Center for Career Development for her work advancing their mission of educating, connecting, and empowering Owls to find and make their place in the world.

Faculty Book Releases

The Dynamic Spread of Buddhist Print Culture by Shih-shan Susan Huang

The Japanese Empire and Latin America edited by Pedro Iacobelli and Sidney X. Lu

Music, Mind, and Language in Chinese Poetry and Performance by Casey Schoenberger

Student and Alumni Achievements

Congratultions to our 2024 Advanced Undergraduate Research Award (AURA) recipients, Matt Banschbach (‘25), Maya Habraken (‘26), Lily Remington (‘25), and Julie Trinh (‘25). Banschbach worked on research titled “Tawain’s Energy Security under a Coercive PRC Blockade,” Habraken participated in the Korea America Student Conference, Remington completed a medical internship in Vietnam, and Trinh worked on research titled “Identifying Socioeconomic Needs and Access of Houston Vietnamese Tuberculosis and Hepatitis B Patients.

Congratultions to our 2024 Chao Scholar Award recipients, Sophia Govea (‘25) and Julie Trinh (‘25). Govea used the award for a trip to Manila to study Philippines’ involvement in the Korean War and Trinh worked on research titled “Identifying Socioeconomic Needs and Access of Houston Vietnamese Tuberculosis and Hepatitis B Patients.”

Congratultions to our 2024 HAAA Outstanding Award recipients, Kevin Chen (‘24) and Emily Ma (‘24).

Congratulations to the graduates who recieved a certificate in an Asian language last May. Isabella Estes (‘24) and Zane Tannir (‘24) received a Certificate in Arabic, Sora Kim (‘24) received a Certificate in Chinese, and Niyah Troup (‘24) received a Certificate in Japanese.

Loïc Duggal (‘25) and Hoang Nguyen (‘24), along with faculty advisor Sidney X. Lu won the Texas Digital Library’s 2024 Trailblazer Award for their work on the History of Japanese Farmers in Texas digital exhibition.

Stephen Peng (‘23), recipient of a Certificate in Arabic during his time at Rice, received a Fulbright Research Scholarship which he is currently using to carry out cancer research in a medical facility in Jordan.

Rijuta Vallishayee (‘24) received the Elizabeth Lee Moody Undergraduate Research Fellowship in the Humanities and the Arts allowing her to conduct independent research into television drama censorship in China. This research further led to her receiving Best Oral Presentation for her project titled “Performing Identity: Opera Bans as Qing Dynasty Governance of Social Identity” at Humanities Day.

Faculty and Staff Appointments

Chang Xu (PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, 2024), whose research interests include the history of medicine, military history, and imperial history, joins us from Washington University in St. Louis as Assistant Professor. She will teach FWIS 179: Medicine in Transnational Asia this fall.

Sonia Ryang was appointed the Department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies last summer.

Hae Hun Matos was promoted to Department Administrator last summer, managing both the Department of Transnational Asian Studies and the Chao Center for Asian Studies.

Julie (JLaw) Law joined Rice in the spring as our Program Administrator for both the Department of Transnational Asian Studies and the Chao Center for Asian Studies.

Indre Rapalaviciute joined Rice last summer as the Program Administrator for the Houston Asian American Archive (HAAA).

Amber Szymczyk, Publication Specialist for both the Department of Transnational Asian Studies and the Chao Center for Asian Studies, transitioned to full-time in the spring.

Funding for Faculty and Researchers

Thanks to a generous gift from the T.T. and W.F. Chao Foundation, the Chao Center is pleased to offer competitive funding support towards the Asia-related academic and intellectual endeavors of Rice faculty and researchers. A broad range of proposals may qualify for funding. All full-time faculty, PhD students, postdoctoral and research fellows, lecturers, and other academic personnel are eligible to apply.

Small Grants (Up to $5,000)

Small grants should represent a unique opportunity or event and not be used to support an on-going class or repeated program.

Learn More and Apply →

Large Grants ($5,000 - $10,000)

The Chao Center for Asian Studies awards competitive grants that are intended to develop innovative models for conducting research on or about Transnational Asia or to ask new questions within existing models.

Learn More and Apply →

Funding for Students of Transnational Asian Studies

Thanks to a generous gift from the T.T. and W.F. Chao Foundation, the Chao Center for Asian Studies is pleased to offer competitive funding support towards the Asia-related academic and intellectual endeavors of students in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies. These fellowships are awarded with the goal of facilitating the initiation, completion, or development of either individual or collaborative research projects. A broad range of proposals may qualify for funding.

Chao Scholars Research Funding

Competitive grants are available only to majors in Transnational Asian Studies. Proposals are evaluated by the Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies, in collaboration with the faculty of the department.

Learn More and Apply →

Advanced Undergraduate Research Award (AURA)

Through the generous support of the Gee Family Association, the Chao Center supports Asian Studies majors and minors to pursue interdisciplinary academic research, internship or pre-professional work experience, cultural study opportunities, and community service projects.

Learn More and Apply →