The U.S.-based CCSP Fellowship Grantees for 2016 – 2017 represent a broad range of academic and research interests from across the arts, education, humanities, and social sciences.

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Research in China Fellowship Grantees:

Ryan Allen, Teachers College, Columbia University, International Education
Grant Period: Spring 2017
Host Institution: Beijing Normal University
Research Focus: Ryan Allen’s research focuses on the impact of global university rankings on Chinese universities. This study will examine how students and academics have responded to the rankings, how rankings have affected collaborations or joint projects, and how they have helped to form global reference societies and word-class conceptions.

Harrison Carter, University of California, San Diego, Department of Sociology
Grant Period: Spring 2016 – Spring 2017
Host Institution: Fudan University, Department of Social Development and Public Policy
Research Focus: Contemporary iterations of traditional practices in Shanghai, paying particular attention to traditional festivals and the use of Buddhist temples, including an examination of the ways a variety of modern urban residents are participating in these practices and the multiplicity of meanings derived from them.

Yun Fu, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Department of Architecture
Grant Period: Academic Year 2016
Host Institution: Peking University
Research Focus: Yun Fu is an architect and doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. his research looks at post earthquake reconstruction as a persistent class of design problem, focusing on emerging design approaches in East Asia and its effects on the built environment. Other recent projects have explored the development of earthquake engineering in modern Japan and stylistic proclivities in contemporary Chinese architecture.

Claudia Huang, University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Anthropology
Grant Period: Fall 2016
Host Institution: Sichuan University
Research Focus: Claudia Huang’s current reserach on the congregational dancing (otherwise known as public dancing or “dancing grannies”) phenomenon is a case study on new forms of meaning-making in contemporary China. As an anthropologist, she has always been interested in the ways in which economic, social, and political changes can transform people’s understandings of their own lives and of themselves. Her current project explores how retired women use their dance groupos as venues for forging new relationships and for practicing self-care.

Bill Minhyuk Hwang, Rutgers University, Department of Political Science
Grant Period: Academic Year 2016
Host Institution: Peking University
Research Focus: Bill Minhyuk Hwang’s research attempts to provide an overview of how Western Enlightenment was introduced to East Asia, focusing on how the original vision of Enlightenment intellectuals in East Asia was betrayed by politicians, Western powers, and the intellectuals’ lack of praxis.

Najung Kim, Stanford University, Department of Art and Art History
Grant Period: Academic Year 2016
Host Institution: Peking University
Research Focus: Displaced Landscape: Social Figuration of Ni Zan (1301-1374) – Spanning three dynastic boundaries, between 1350 and 1700, paintings and writings produced by the political refugee Ni Zan (1301-1374) were deployed by local elites in southeast China as a means of claiming regional identity and social standing. Ruling regimes, regardless of their ethnic identity, also utilized Ni’s fame in state-issued publications for consolidating their politico-cultural legitimacy. Through the lens of the myths surrounding Ni Zan, Najung Kim’s project reconstructs the largely forgotten history of the Kingdom of Dazhou (1354-1367) and rediscovers how local memory served as a counter-memory, a corrective to the orthodox historiography in the arena of public discourse.

Yoon-Rim Kim, Western Michigan University, Department of History
Grant Period: Academic Year 2016
Host Institution: Sun Yat-Sen University, Department of Anthropology
Research Focus: Foreign students studying Confucianism and Buddhism in Tang Dynasty China between the 6th – 10th centuries CE.

Maxim Korolkov, Columbia University, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Grant Period: Academic Year 2016
Host Institution: Wuhan University
Research Focus: As a doctoral student in Columbia University, Maxim Korolkov is exploring the administrative organization and economic management in the early Chinese empire of Qin (221-210 B.C.) as reflected in the archive of Qianling County excavated from the remains of the Qin fortified settlement at Liye, Hunan Provice. Maxim is particularly interested in the organization of production, accumulation, storage, and distribution of food and other material resources; official communication and transportation; management of labor; operation of monetary economy; and government intervention into local economic activities. He is also interested in possible implications of the existing theories of social power and anthropological research on the construction of value in various societies for the interpretation of the ancient Chinese paleographic documents.

Chien Wen Kung, Columbia University, Department of History
Grant Period: Fall 2016
Host University: Xiamen University
Research Focus: Chien-Wen Kung is a Ph.D. candidate in International and Global History at Columbia University, where he specializes in overseas Chinese history and Chinese migration, modern Asian transnationalism and regionalism, and social and cultural histories of Cold Was Asia. His dissertation is a history of Philippine-Chinese anticommunism and transnational connections between China, Taiwan, and the Philippine Chinese after World War II.

Jinok Lee, University of Texas – Austin, Department of Anthropology
Grant Period: Fall 2016
Host Institution: Shandong University
Research Focus:Jinok Lee’s research explores interactions between colonial powers and peasant farmers in Bronze Age China. The main goal of the project is to study the environmental history and agricultural land-use strategies of indigenous populations in eastern China to understand how commoners responded to changing ecological and political contexts, when the region was incorporated by the Shang dynasty.

Rongchan Lin, Teachers College, Columbia University
Grant Period: Spring 2016, Spring 2017
Host Institution: Peking University, School of Chinese as a Second Language
Research Focus: Assessing integrated speaking via a multimodal perspective for students learning Chinese as a second language.

Chris Peacock, Columbia University, Department of East Asian Langauges and Cultures
Grant Period: Academic Year 2016
Host Institution: Renmin University
Research Focus: Chris Peacock majors in modern Chinese literature and comparative literature at Columbia University. Within these fields he focuses primarily on modern Tibetan literature written in the Tibetan language. the focus of his work is how modern Tibetan literature, formed from the 1980’s onward, conceives of itself as a literary tradition and the relationship that it has to the major intellectual traditions of modern Chinese literature. His research centers around prominent Tibetan authors such as Tsering Döndup and Döndup Gyel, and through their work he aims to draw Tibetan writing into conversation with some of modern China’s most well-known writers and well-known intellectual discourses, in particular Lu Xun, ideas of social Darwinism, and the discourse of national character.

Marketus Pressword, University of California – Irvine, Modern China
Grant Period: Academic Year 2016
Host Institution: Fudan University
Research Focus: Marketus Pressword’s research focuses on the relationship between African American and Chinese intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century.

Jesse Rodenbiker, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Geography
Grant Period: Academic Year 2016
Host Institution: Sichual University
Research Focus: Jesse Rodinbiker’s work focuses on Southwest China’s Yunnan and Sichuan provinces and the dynamics of urban-rural aministrative change and practices of environmental management including: infrastructural provisioning, urban treatment wetlands, and the history of the science of ecology in China. Focusing on urban-rural peripheries, Jesse is also interested in the transformation of peri-urban villagers’ lives and livelihoods undergoing projects of ecological modernization, the production of ecological scientific knowledge, as well as the production of rural spaces. His research explores how the discourses, practices, and aesthetics surrounding urban ecological development (in)form, socio-ecological change, cultural politics of nature, and the economic geographies of a rapidly transforming China.

Tobial Smith, University of California – Berkeley, School of Law
Grant Period: Spring 2017
Host Institution: Peking University
Research Focus: Tobias Smith’s project examines the use of suspended sentences and appellate case review in modern and contemporary Chinese criminal law.

Gordon Kuo Siong Tan, SUNY Buffalo, Department of Geography
Grant Period: Fall 2016
Host Institution: Beijing Normal University
Research Focus: Gordon Kuo Siong Tan’s research interest revolves around the finance and accounting industry and its impact on human capital and urban/regional development. What skills do workers in this industry have that make them a profession and how do these skills vary across financial centers? He is also interested in examining the ways finance has been shaped by technology (financial technology) and their influence on everyday lives. How does interaction with technologically-mediated financial platforms change the way once accesses the traditional banking system?

Danielle Tyree, Southern Methodist University, Department of Education
Grant Period: Academic Year 2016
Host Institution: East China Normal University
Research Focus: Danielle Tyree’s interests include cross-cultural comparisons in educational psychology. Currently, she is focused on cross-national and Chinese cross-regional comparisons in higher education looking at creativity performance as well as Chinese student and teacher perceptions of the construct of creativity and stereotypes between Western and Eastern students, using America and China as reference points. Danielle is also interested in intercultural communication and second language learning.

Ph.D in China Fellowship Grantee:

Tony Yan
Host Institution: Beijing Normal University
Research Focus: Tony Yan is interested in the field of higher education, especially disciplinary exploration and analysis, which is the comparative study of different academic disciplines.