In the latest edition of Humanitas, a column focused on the arts and humanities at Yale, we catch up with a Yale scholar who was recently elected to a leadership role at the Modern Language Association, a new role that also represents an important statement about recognition of East Asian and Chinese studies; celebrate a major honor for The Yale Review, a storied literary journal that recently got a new look; bask in the glory of the Gothic cathedrals of northern France; remember the civil rights legacy of one of Hollywood’s first Black stuntmen; and glean insights from a Yale dean on the link between consumer capitalism and religion in the United States — and why she believes you can explain any religious concept through the lens of Oprah Winfrey’s celebrity.
For more, visit an archive of all arts and humanities coverage at Yale News.
Moving East Asian studies from academia’s ‘margins’
In her research and teaching, Yale professor Tina Lu focuses on Chinese literature of the 16th and 17th centuries, a field that she says is too often regarded as “extraordinarily niche” in American universities. But a new leadership opportunity for Lu with the Modern Language Association (MLA) suggests that these outdated notions are fading.
In December, Lu, the Colonel John Trumbull Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), was elected as MLA’s second vice president. She’ll serve in that role for one year, after which she will spend a year as the group’s vice president. Then, in January 2025, she will begin a one-year term as its president. Founded in 1883, the MLA and its more than 20,000 members from more than 100 countries work to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature.
“In a personal way, I’m proud and grateful that the membership of the MLA is making a statement about how the study of East Asia and of China is not marginal to its work, but central,” Lu…
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