Li Guo

This collaborative reading workshop explores reportage narratives in contemporary China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, including travel writings, environmental reportage, nonfiction works, and documentary films. Participants appraise the activist function of the reportage genre, assess its ideological limitations, idiosyncratic constraints and concurrent ethical challenges. The reading sessions of the workshop cross-examine literary reportage and documentary cinematography, focusing on the textualisation of real life images, and the visualisation of texts narrating real people and events. Ultimately, the workshop evaluates the representations, discourses, and analytical demarcations of the reportage concept, and explore new perspectives on the aesthetics of global reportage.

This interdisciplinary, cross-institutional project aims to build understanding of ethnic diversity and minority voices within China by developing a multicultural China studies curriculum that is integrated with global studies on race, ethnicity, indigeneity, and identity. Collaborators bring their expertise from literature, folklore studies, ethnography, translation studies, material culture and art into a collective initiative benefitting humanistic research and teaching in China Studies. The project is comprised of three interwoven work groups whose members will collaboratively develop open-access digital repositories containing sample syllabi, translated literary and cinematic works, and multimedia educational resources about cultural and artistic production in ethnic minority communities. These platforms will showcase and create access to a range of free resources to diversify China studies curricula taught at North American educational institutions while promoting a more holistic understanding of minority communities, multiculturalism, and multilingualism in China. In moving beyond the Han-centered, monocultural paradigm of China, this inclusive pedagogical approach resituates China studies within broader movements in ethnic studies, ensuring that teaching about diversity in China will be feasible, meaningful, and engaging for students and educators alike.