Graduate Fellowship Honors the Mathers!
We are very pleased to announce the establishment of a new graduate student fellowship in honor of Richard B. and Virginia Mather. Over the last sixty years, Richard and Ginny have been dear colleagues and good friends through the many manifestations of Asian studies at the University of Minnesota. During that time, Richard emerged as one of the world’s most important scholars of Chinese literature of the early medieval period.
In his research Richard drew broadly on the literatures of Asia, including Japanese and Sanskrit. So it is particularly appropriate that this new fellowship is available to graduate students in our PhD program in Asian Literatures, Cultures and Media, now entering its fourth year.
To contribute to the Mather Fellowship, please visit Asian Languages & Literatures’ Make a Gift or contact Jill Kane at CLA External Relations.
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We are very pleased to announce that Jason McGrath, Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Film, has just had two significant achievements, both related to his study of film.
Lead Teachers of Chinese (Ling Wang), Hindi (Ravi Prasad), Japanese (Tomoko Hoogenboom), and Korean (Hangtae Cho), as well as Chinese teacher and liaison with the Language Center (Zhen Zou) are our 
On Saturday, March 31, the Third Midwest University Chinese Speech Contest was held at Northwestern University in Chicago. Of the fifteen gold cups awarded, U of M students from ALL won five of them and one took the silver cup. Twenty-one of the best universities from nine Midwestern states, including the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, Washington University and others were represented.
Scott Divine, a student in ALL and the Carlson School, won a prestigious "Degree Scholarship" from the Taiwan Ministry of Education (MOE) to pursue an MBA at National Taiwan University (Taida). He will begin his three year program with a year of intensive language study at International Chinese Language Program (ICLP). In a nation-wide competition, Annalee Hanson and William Hesch both won MOE scholarships for a year of Chinese study, which they will pursue at the Center for Chinese Language and Culture Studies (CCLC) at National Taiwan Normal University. At the same time Anatoly Detwyler and Margot Goodnow were granted similar scholarships through the regional Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago competition. Anatoly will study at ICLP and Margot will study at CCLC.
The University of Minnesota has been awarded a four-year National Resource Centers (NRC) grant by the Department of Education for The Consortium for the Study of the Asias (yes, Asias!). This makes us one of only three universities in the nation with Centers that focuses on Asia in general. This grant is accompanied by Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships for graduate students studying and researching in Asian languages. The expected four-year funding level for both the NCR and FLAS will be approximately 1.9 million dollars.
It is impossible to write a thorough cultural history of postwar Japan without referring to jazz. That simple premise lies at the heart of this book, which examines how jazz has been represented in Japanese film, literature, criticism, and material culture from 1945 through the present day.
"...and you may find yourself in another part of the world...and you may ask yourself, well...how did I get here?� -Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime