Inaugural Luce/ACLS Collaborative Grant in China Studies Awarded to Project Promoting Education on Chinese Ethnic Diversity

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) awards the inaugural (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.

This grant, 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, Diversifying Humanistic Pedagogy in China Studies, 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

“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.”

The next competition for the Luce/ACLS Collaborative Grant in China Studies will open by March 2025.