Announcements

Wandi Wang, assistant professor of Chinese in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Lehigh University, has been awarded a grant from the ASIANetwork Embodied Learning About Asia Program to support an innovative, multidisciplinary initiative in Wang's "Five Senses in Traditional China" course this fall.

Read the full story from CAS News.

Asian and Asian American Studies program hosted Peter Hessler, author and staff writer for the New Yorker, last week. His narrative non-fiction workshop about his article "Dr. Don" drew a large crowd in Linderman 200.

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This year’s Lunar New Year celebration at Lehigh was organized by students of Asian Cultural Society (ACS). Participating student clubs brought food and traditional dishes, and each group had a chance to talk about what the foods represent in their countries. "It's a very important celebration because it gives the students memories and gives them a sense of home. And when they take part in the eating of certain foods and certain songs and then dancing, it calls back memories of activities and sights and smells that they experienced back home. So it's very important to their sense of belonging," professor Tom Chen tells Lehigh Valley News.

Read the full story from Lehigh Valley News > >

Author and futurist Ken Liu visited Lehigh last week and gave two amazing talks. Each event sparked interesting discussion about the future of work, robots, and jobs today.

Brought to you by the Asian and Asian American Studies program and the Humanities Center, his public lecture "The Future of Work in the Age of AI" drew a large crowd in the 3rd floor of the HST building. Liu posed such questions as:  What will work be like in the future? Should we celebrate that robots will make our lives better or worry about AI taking our jobs? What can we do to prepare?

Asian Studies and the Humanities Center are co-sponsoring a yearlong Science Fiction/ Speculative Fiction reading group, focusing on Asian and Asian American authors, for students and faculty. It will run both Fall and Spring semesters and take place at the Humanities Center. Refreshments will be provided.

We will purchase the books for students in the reading group. Open to students and faculty in any college or department. 25 participants maximum due to room capacity. Please register online here. See below for titles and schedule.

Science Fiction/Fantasy student-faculty reading group schedule - all meetings 4:30 pm-6:00 pm at the Humanities Center, 224 West Packer Avenue. Refreshments provided.

• Tuesday September 12
• Wednesday October 11
• Tuesday November 14
• Wednesday January 31
• Tuesday February 13
• Wednesday March 6
• Tuesday April 16

The reading group will read a selection of the following short stories and novels, based on participant interest. All readings will be in English. Students do not need to buy books - we will cover the cost of books:

1. Hao Jingfang’s Vagabonds
2. Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide
3. Caroline Yoachim’s Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World
4. Kawika Guillermo’s All Flowers Bloom
5. S.L.Huang’s The Water Outlaws AND Zero Sum Game
6. Taiyo Fujii’s Gene Mapper
7. Sunyoung Park & Park Sang Joon eds Readymade Bodhisattva: The Kaya Anthology of South Korean Science Fiction 
8. Mingwei Song ed The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science Fiction
9. Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories AND The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
10. Ted Chiang, Exhalation AND Stories of Your Life and Others 
11. Rebecca F. Kuang, Babel: Or The Necessity of Violence - An Arcane History of the Oxford Translator’s Revolution (2022) AND/OR The Poppy War Trilogy
12. Mohsin Hamid, Exit West (not conventional genre sci fi but brilliant use of reality bending device to illuminate events and ideas)
13. Vandana Singh, The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories (2009)  AND/OR Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories
14. Shannon Chakraborty, The City of Brass (first book in a trilogy) AND/OR brand new book: The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi
15. Selections from: Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction
16. Michelle Min Sterling, Camp Zero (global warming/climate apocalypse/near-future thriller/Korean American mother-daughter relationship novel)
17. Jinwoo Chong, Flux ( Korean American time travel/ corporate malfeasance/ systemic racism/ multiple perspectives/thriller)
18. Pema Tsetan, “Orgyen’s Tooth”  (short story, by most famous contemporary Tibetan filmmaker and short story writer; magic realist rather than strictly science fiction)
19. G. Willow WIlson, Alif the Unseen