EASTD304: Teaching Practicum
Fall 2017 & Fall 2018, Harvard University

This is a course that I personally developed, in consultation with the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, to provide first-time graduate teaching fellows in the department with practical tools for managing a classroom. Topics begin with the more basic aspects of lesson and activity planning, then build into issues of assignment design, evaluation strategies, techniques for giving effective student feedback, and how to balance teaching demands with one’s own research projects.

Pedagogy Fellow, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Fall 2017 – Spring 2019, Harvard University

In my role as the department’s nominated Pedagogy Fellow, I attended bi-weekly meetings at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning that trained me in both the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching. On the practical side, I gained experience in best practices for classroom management, syllabus design, and activity planning; on the theoretical side, I was given the space to reflect on the way China Studies is taught, what skills I want students to learn in my classrooms, and strategies for building my future classrooms around those values.

EAST402: Screening China from the Margins
Spring 2021, Yale University

Course Description: When you think of “China,” what comes to mind? Perhaps it’s a booming economy, the Great Wall, or even Confucius. While these ideas have informed many of the mainstream images associated with modern China, this course wants to reimagine China through people, images, and ideas at the other end of that spectrum—from the periphery. Taking film as our primary medium of investigation, the course comprises three units that address overlooked but important elements essential to understanding modern China: same-sex desire, socio-economic inequality, and ethnicity. By looking at people that exist on the margins of Chinese society, the course recasts contemporary “China” to reflect a much greater diversity of people, cultural practices, desires, and economic means than is accommodated by mainstream representations.  This course also offers students the chance to acquire the vocabulary necessary for analyzing cinematic works and the opportunity to learn and practice a range of basic filmmaking techniques through an optional series of short filmmaking assignments. Each seminar meeting will comprise a short lecture introducing key terms and contexts and a robust class discussion.

LC251: Masterpieces of Modern Chinese Literature
Spring 2018, Boston University

Course Description: The origins of modern Chinese literature can be found in the dreams and aspirations of the Chinese people. Beset by domestic unrest and foreign incursions, China at the turn of the 20^th century faced a range of political, economic, social, and cultural dilemmas. How could the Republic of China (ROC) be strengthened and foreign powers expelled? How could China become “modern,” while retaining those cultural and social customs that make it uniquely Chinese? What might a modern Chinese political and social order look like? Potential solutions to these and other problems consistently found their expression in literature—understood here as not only a form of artistic expression, but as means of political and social critique and commentary—and it is through this medium that one can grasp the zeitgeist of the age.

The founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the subsequent retreat of the Nationalist Party (KMT) to the island of Taiwan—where they continued to rule in the name of the ROC—only further compounded the complexity of Chinese imaginations. In the PRC, literature was touted as a tool for enlightening the masses and awakening them to the goal of creating a socialist utopia. Across the straits in Taiwan, literature was used to support the war effort to reclaim Mainland China, at the same time that its modernist movement created space for individual expression from under stifling government regulation. Between these two political entities, Hong Kong—governed by the British from as early as 1848—not only bore witness to these tumultuous times, but also struggled to hold onto its disappearing Chinese identity from within its liminal political state.

The possibilities of modern Chinese literature have been radically expanded by these historical and political contingencies, in turn generating a diverse constellation of styles, forms, and stakes. By developing skills in close-reading and textual analysis, students will learn the major movements of Chinese literature from the turn of the 20^th century to today, and study the texts of major literary figures, such as Lu Xun, Eileen Chang, and Mo Yan. The first half of the course will cover literature before the Great Divide of 1949, while the second half of the semester will take advantage of the great diversity of Chinese-language literature and discuss works from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Altogether, the course will provide students with a comprehensive overview of major Chinese writers and literary movements, as well as hints of its exciting potential for the 21^st century.

AI63: Masterpieces of East Asian Cinema
Fall 2017, Harvard University

Responsibilities included managing the course website and assigning student discussion sections; assisting with the creation of non-traditional assignments (short-films and videos) and assessment rubrics; and hosting weekly planning meetings for a team of five teaching fellows to coordinate the curriculum and workshop pedagogy strategies.

ChinaX – Modern China Book Club
Summer 2016, HavardX (online platform)

Responsibilities included developing original teaching materials, reading guides, essay questions, and grading rubrics suitable to online instruction; managing online discussion forums and interacting with student discussion threads; filming office-hour conversations with Professor David Der-wei Wang and posed students’ questions; participating in live-streamed office hours with students from around world; grading student essays.

CB40: Popular Culture and Modern China
Spring 2016, Harvard University

Awarded Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning’s “Certificate of Distinction in Teaching”

Responsibilities included assisting with syllabus creation and course website development; composing essay topics and grading rubrics; managing online discussion forums; developing creative writing assignment options; and leading a discussion section of undergraduate students in the study of Chinese popular history, literature, music, and film.

EAS97ab: East Asian Studies Sophomore Tutorial
Spring 2017, Harvard University

Awarded Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning’s “Certificate of Distinction in Teaching”

Responsibilities included leading one discussion section of undergraduate students in a range of disciplinary methods used in the study of East Asia; serving as a developmental writing resource to students and guiding; advising students in the selecting topics, conducting research, and composing a fifteen-page research paper.

AI47: Forbidden Romance in Modern China
Fall 2016, Harvard University

Awarded Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning’s “Certificate of Distinction in Teaching”

Responsibilities included leading one discussion section of undergraduate students in the study of Chinese literary history and ideas of love, affect, and romance; advising student writing on short- and medium-length essays; and training students in the process of close-reading primary (literary) texts.