Greetings from our new home in the CASE Building on the CU Boulder campus! Our humble brick cottage has made way for a new campus hotel and conference center. We are happy to welcome several new Asianists who joined our community in the fall of 2019. Marjorie Burge (Assistant Professor of Japanese), Xiaojing Miao (Visiting Assistant Professor of Chinese), Rachel Schine (Postdoctoral Associate in Arabic) and Ivanna Yi (Visiting Assistant Professor of Korean) all joined Asian Languages and Civilizations this year. Elsewhere on campus, we welcome Nishant Upadhyay (Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies), Jennifer Ho (Director of the Center for Humanities and Arts, and Professor of Ethnic Studies), Azita Ranjbar (Assistant Professor of Geography), and Will Taylor (Assistant Professor of Anthropology). Here at CAS, we are also joined by Darren Byler (Postdoctoral Associate with the China Made project), Nancy Johnsen (Finance and Grant Administrator), and Brenna Faricy (Videography Intern).
After 5 years as Associate Director of CAS and Instructor in Asian Studies, Colleen Berry will be retiring this year. Under Colleen’s guidance, the Asian Studies program has not only grown in student numbers, but has also been enriched by her course offerings, and by her passion as a teacher. CAS has benefitted immeasurably from Colleen’s enthusiasm and her natural abilities as a community-builder. Her students have benefitted from the care she brought to the classroom and the rich experiences she brought to the study-abroad trips she led in China. We wish her luck. She will be missed by all!
As usual, 2019 was a very busy year for us at CAS. Some highlights include co-hosting the Second China Made workshop at the Hong Kong Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. I should note that we are fortunate to have such great partners at HKIHSS. They helped us hold a great workshop despite all the stress and uncertainty that has plagued Hong Kong this past year. Related to China Made, postdoctoral associate Darren Byler has joined our team. Darren is an internationally-recognized expert on China’s surveillance infrastructures and the internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. He comes to us from the University of Washington, where he recently completed a dissertation in cultural Anthropology.
This year CAS wrapped up its Southeast Asian Studies initiative by finalizing a new student exchange program with Indonesia’s premier liberal arts institution, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. We are excited about continuing to build student opportunities in Indonesia.
It also gives me great pleasure to announce that at the spring 2019 commencement ceremony, Mr. Kazunori Takato was awarded the University Medal, CU’s top honor for achievement and contribution to the university. His award is much deserved! Takato-san has been a long-term supporter of CAS and has done a great deal to further our mission of making the study of Asia as accessible as possible to our students and to our broader community. We are equally proud that our Tang Global Seminar continues to be the most diverse and accessible of all study abroad opportunities offered at CU. This diversity and accessibility are made possible through our generous donors. If you would like to help us in our mission, please consider a donation to CAS.
Tim Oakes, CAS Director, Professor of Geography
CAS Directors and Staff
Tim Oakes, CAS Director; Professor of Geography
Danielle Rocheleau Salaz, CAS Executive Director
Colleen Berry, CAS Associate Director and Instructor
Lynn Parisi, Director, Program for Teaching East Asia
Susan Schmidt, AATJ Executive Director
Darren Byler, CAS Postdoctoral Fellow
Catherine Ishida, TEA Senior Staff Associate
Nancy Johnsen, CAS and TEA Finance & Grant Assistant
Lynn Kalinauskas, TEA Senior Staff Associate
Liza Williams, CAS Event Coordinator
Jon Zeljo, TEA Senior Staff Associate, China and NCTA
Lin Zhu, CAS Graduate Research Assistant
Brenna Faricy, CAS Videography Intern