ACLS Awards Inaugural Luce/ACLS Collaborative Grant in China Studies

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to award the 2024 Luce/ACLS Collaborative Grant in China Studies to the project Diversifying Humanistic Pedagogy in China Studies: Incorporating Ethnic Minority Literary and Cultural Productions into North American College Classrooms.

The newest competition in the Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies is designed to support the development of effective strategies for long-term change in the field of China studies through working groups that will design and pilot activities to solve specific, pressing challenges in the field.

The first winning project addresses a lack of consideration of ethnic diversity in the current Chinese literary and cultural curriculum at institutions of higher education in North America. The project team is composed of faculty from diverse ranks and institutions in the US, as well as collaborators in China:

• Yanshuo Zhang (Principal Investigator), Assistant Professor of Asian Languages and Literatures, Pomona College
• Mark Bender, Professor of Chinese, The Ohio State University
• Li Guo, Professor of Asian Studies, Utah State University
• Robin Visser, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Jiajun Wang,  Founder of the Taoping Qiang Culture Museum, Sichuan, China
• Jingui Zhang, Artist and educator

The team will create three working 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.  Spanning humanistic disciplines and grounded in interdisciplinary pedagogies and methods including literature, translation studies, film, art, and museum studies, the project aims to make China studies an integral part of global studies on race, ethnicity, and identity.

“Curriculum dominated by a Han-majority-centric perspective can perpetuate harmful stereotypes of China as a monolith,” said Yuting Li, Henry Luce Foundation Program Director for Asia. “The Henry Luce Foundation and ACLS are thrilled to support this project that will allow students and faculty to have a fuller, more accurate understanding of China and its many diverse peoples and cultures.”

“This inaugural Collaborative Grant award reflects the goals of the Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies to foster more inclusivity in the field and to support scholarship that informs public understanding of Chinese cultures, histories, and societies,” said Deena Ragavan, ACLS Director of International Programs. “This work has the potential to positively influence the field of China studies, particularly through its commitment to making resources and knowledge freely available to teachers and faculty across the country.”

The Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies is currently accepting applications for Long-Term Early Career Fellowships, Flexible Early Career Fellowships, and Travel Grants in China Studies with a deadline of November 14, 2024, 9:00 PM EST. The next competition for the Luce/ACLS Collaborative Grant in China Studies will open by March 2025.