Dear Colleagues:
As the 2025-26 academic year comes to a close, I want to express my gratitude for your engagement with and support for Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies (CEAPS)programming this year.
This year, we welcomed three visiting speakers to campus and hosted two virtual talks in the CEAPS Seminar Series. Three graduate students, one post-doc, one participant in the Visiting Asian Scholars Program, and one faculty member presented in our CEAPS Brown Bag Series. We celebrated the publication of Prof. Yujeong Yang’s book and cosponsored a celebration of the publication of Prof. Gian Piero Persiani’s book. We hosted five AsiaLENS film screenings, including two collaborations with the national GETSEA series and a screening of Shiori Ito’s Black Box Diaries organized by Prof. Belinda He. We also cosponsored the Ebert Center’s screening of Anna May Wong’s breakthrough film Picadilly. We participated in the national China Town Hall virtual forum. And we hosted two faculty gatherings – of our Japanese studies and Korean studies affiliates; we look forward to hosting a gathering of Chinese studies affiliates in the fall.
In October, we celebrated the opening of the UAAT Mandarin Education Program Liaison Office; representatives from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago and from the system, campus, college, and school levels joined us for the celebration. In November, a five-member CEAPS delegation traveled to Osaka to join our colleagues from Osaka Metropolitan University (OMU) in inaugurating their new Morinomiya campus. In March, a four-member delegation from OMU came to Urbana-Champaign for our annual exchange symposium. As part of the UAAT relationship, faculty members from both the Urbana-Champaign and Chicago campuses will travel to Taiwan this summer to meet with colleagues and learn about partner universities in Taipei and Hsinchu.
In March, the CEAPS team traveled to the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting in Vancouver to produce the annual AAS Film Expo. We screened 24 films, the majority of which were followed by Q&A sessions with filmmakers. Thanks to Jason Finkelman, Tim Liao, and Bing Wang for serving as film submission reviewers.
In collaboration with Sensei Hikaru Takeyama from the University Laboratory High School, we hosted a Mochitsuki Event in February to celebrate the Lunar New Year. In collaboration with the UAAT Mandarin Education Program Liaison Office, we hosted a Mandarin Speech Contest for local K-12 students in April.
During AY25-26, CEAPS awarded four dissertation research travel grants, 16 graduate student conference travel grants, and eight faculty conference travel grants. The Illinois Global Institute awarded three AY26-27 graduate language fellowships and six summer research travel grants to CEAPS-affiliated graduate students. Many thanks to the CEAPS Advisory Board (Yilang Feng, Naoko Gunji, Mikihiro Sato, Bing Wang, and Yujeong Yang) for reviewing travel grantapplications. Thanks also to everyone who made donations to support the travel grant program during the LAS Day of Giving in the fall: we hope to build on this year’s successful fundraising efforts in the fall to further ensure the sustainability of the travel grant programs.
This summer, we will host our second National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) foundational seminar (Ink & Image) organized by Profs. Jennifer Bergmark and Rod Wilson. Last summer’s inaugural seminar was a terrific success, and we are all looking forward to having another group of K-12 educators in residence with us in July, learning about East Asian art, literature, and history.
As always, I want to extend my deepest thanks to CEAPS Associate Director Yuchia Chang, Outreach and Programming Coordinator Alex Chun, Office Manager Rosa Pullen, Graduate Student Assistants Yeowon Lim and Samantha Shoppell, and ATLAS Intern Ryan Simpson for all their hard work in bringing this year’s events and projects to fruition. We also continue to be grateful for YiWen Chiang’s presence in the UAAT Mandarin Education Program Liaison Office.
For those of you who are completing your time at Illinois, I hope that you will stay engaged and in touch with CEAPS as you move on to new opportunities. For those of you who will be returning to campus in the fall, I look forward to continuing to collaborate with you in support of East Asian and Pacific studies on campus and in the broader community. We always welcome your suggestions for programming or new initiatives and hope that you will reach out to us if you have any ideas. In the event that the federal government issues a call for National Resource Center proposals over the summer, we may be soliciting those suggestions while you are ostensibly away on break!
Please note that we have tentatively scheduled our Fall Open House for Friday 25 September. We are also looking forward to helping the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures celebrate its 35th anniversary in October.
Thank you again for being a part of the CEAPS community -- I wish you all a relaxing and refreshing summer!
Matt Winters
Director, Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies