新英格兰地区中文教师协会

第八届中文教学国际会议

Conference Theme: "Explore the Humanities through Language"

Keynote Speaker 嘉宾简介:

Prof. Jennifer Rudolph

Jennifer Rudolph is Professor of Asian History and Director of the China Hub and the Hangzhou Project Center at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She has also served as the Executive Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Harvard China Fund at Harvard University. In her early professor days, she was a founding member of the Urban China Research Network. Her latest book The China Questions: Critical Insights into a Rising Power (Harvard, 2018) brings together expert knowledge on China for a general audience. She has led the efforts to build a China program for STEM students at WPI and is active in more national efforts to blend liberal studies with engineering education. Rudolph started her study of Chinese at the University of Chicago, where she received her A.B., and continued it at the University of Washington, where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Chinese History. She studied at the Inter-University Program for Advanced Chinese Language Studies in Taipei between her undergraduate years and graduate school.  Throughout her career, she has tried to bring scholars from different disciplines together to create programs that benefit from multidisciplinary approaches in order to integrate knowledge and develop new approaches, whether in Chinese Studies, Urban Studies, or international engineering.

Speech Abstract:
"Beyond Borders: Language Learning, STEM, and Humanities"

Calls to go global echo on many US college and high school campuses. For scholars who have spent their lives studying other societies and their languages, going global is not novel; it can be a natural extension of existing practices. However, today’s global charge comes with a seeming devaluing of language learning on many campuses. This talk makes a case for countering that trend by broadening the boundaries of how we define area and language studies to include science and engineering (STEM).  Integrating language into STEM discipline curricula develops the culturally and linguistically competent scientists, engineers, and policy makers that today’s global world needs. “Wicked” global problems like poverty, climate change, and food insecurity are transnational and complex and require examination with multiple lenses and application of knowledge that is both global and local. Just as wicked problems are transdisciplinary, our approach to training today’s students to tackle them must be as well. Creating transdisciplinary language and culture curricula creates new value for those “wicked” fields as well as for those fields conventionally viewed as language related.

Conference Committee, NECLTA