Dear Colleagues:
On behalf of the entire CEAPS team, it’s my pleasure to welcome you back to campus for the new academic year!
Over the summer, six faculty and staff from the Urbana-Champaign campus and three faculty from the Chicago campus traveled to Taiwan as part of our collaboration with the University Academic Alliance in Taiwan (UAAT). We met with colleagues at National Tsing Hua University, National Taiwan University, National Taiwan Normal University, and the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science and visited the Hsinchu Science Park and other destinations. After a bit of time in Indonesia, I returned to Taiwan a week later to participate in the UNIQ Resonance Workshop hosted by our colleagues in Illinois International that brought together faculty from Illinois, National Taiwan University, and Kyushu University.
In early July, CEAPS submitted our proposal for the new U.S. Department of Education / Department of State Centers Aligned with Areas for National Need (CAANN) Program. We thank all of the faculty affiliates who sent suggested programming or data about East Asian Studies activities on campus to include in the proposal. My deep thanks to the CEAPS staff – Yuchia Chang, Alex Chun, and Rosa Pullen – for their hard work across multiple time zones in putting the proposal together, and special thanks to Department of Political Science Ph.D. student Trevor Norton who put in significant effort to check that all t’s were crossed and all i’s were dotted in our submission. We expect to learn the outcome of the competition by the end of September.
Later in July, Profs. Jennifer Bergmark and Rod Wilson and Outreach Coordinator Alex Chun built on the success of last summer’s inaugural National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) foundational seminar to welcome a new group of fourteen K-12 educators to campus to learn about the history, art, and literature of East Asia. In addition to attending a series of engaging lectures, our participants had the opportunity to see Chinese and Japanese prints and manuscripts from the Rare Books and Manuscript Library, to participate in a tea ceremony at Japan House, and to practice their woodblock printing. Thanks to all of the faculty affiliates who participated in the seminar!
We have an exciting calendar of Fall 2026 events lined up for you.
Following our successful gatherings of Japanese Studies and Korean Studies faculty last year, we invite our Chinese Studies faculty (broadly defined) to join us on Friday 11 September at 1:30 p.m. in 306 Coble Hall for an informal gathering. Come to meet someone new and to catch up with old friends!
On Monday 14 September, we’ll have our first AsiaLENS screening of the year. Filmmaker Beth Harrington will be with us for a screening and discussion of her film Our Mr. Matsura about photographer Frank Marsura’s early-20th-century migration from Japan to the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
We welcome faculty and graduate students to join us on Friday 18 September for a workshop with representatives from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation and Foundation Relations who will talk about ways of identifying and applying for external funding in East Asian Studies.
And then please be sure to join us at 1:00 p.m. on Friday 25 September for our Fall Open House! See old friends and colleagues, meet new ones, and join us in celebrating the accomplishments of our student travel grant awardees. We will have Mid-Autumn Festival and Chuseok treats.
Looking ahead, we will have a lot of exciting events connected to the exhibition Ink Shower: Contemporary Taiwanese Artists Reimagine Tradition at the Krannert Art Museum this fall. The opening reception will be at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday 5 November, and we would love to have a great turnout from our faculty affiliates!
You can find more information about these events, as well as our brown bag speaker series and our external speaker series on our website.
CEAPS has a 60-year history of supporting teaching, research, cultural programming, and outreach related to East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific on campus and in the broader community. Associate Director Yuchia Chang and I are always eager to hear your thoughts about events and programming that the Center might help facilitate – please do not hesitate to reach out to us with ideas! Also, if you are aware of any new (or not-so-new) faculty members on campus who should be CEAPS affiliates, please do let us know so that we can reach out to them.
Best wishes for a great start of the year, and looking forward to seeing you soon!
Matt Winters
Director, Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies