Recent News

Dr. Nazry Bahrawi, Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian Literature, was interviewed for a feature story in BBC StoryWorks, titled "Found in translation: Letters from a multilingual island." The article explores Prof. Bahrawi's translation philosophy and practice in the context of Singaporean multiculturalism and multilingualism, and features an excerpt from his English-language translation of the 18th-century Malay tale Hikayat Raja Babi. … Read more
Read more
Chinese, like the other earliest inventions of writing, emerged in complex societies, where people needed to use symbols for writing. The script started as pictures, but quickly evolved to incorporate other mechanisms capable of indicating abstract concepts and grammatical structures. When Classical (or ancient) Chinese script spread, literate people in other cultures not only mastered it, but they then used it to represent their own distinct spoken languages in written form. Zev Handel,… Read more
"Wabi-sabi is typically described as a traditional Japanese aesthetic: the beauty of something perfectly imperfect, in the sense of 'flawed' or 'unfinished.' Actually, however, wabi and sabi are similar but distinct concepts, yoked together far more often outside Japan than in it," writes Paul Atkins, professor of Asian languages and literature at the UW.… Read more
Grace Rothmeyer, a member of the Chinese Flagship Program and a third-year double-major in Chinese and Informatics, has been awarded a Critical Languages Scholarship to allow her to further her studies in Chinese this summer.  As a participant in Chinese Flagship and a Foreign Languages and Area Studies (FLAS) awardee, Grace is an accomplished student of… Read more
The Department of Asian Languages & Literature's Dr. Chan Lü, Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Linguistics, recently received a grant from the Harmonious Bilingualism Network (HaBilNet) for her research into bilingualism and language development within Chinese immigrant families in the United States. The project, titled "Bilingual Parents' Parenting Styles, Family Language Use and Children's Well-being: A Case Study of Chinese Immigrant Families in the United States,"… Read more
Professor Bich-Ngoc Turner recently published a work of short fiction in the Vietnamese-language journal Nhà Văn và Cuộc Sống - Tiếng Nói của Nhà Văn Việt Nam (Journal of Authors and Life - Voices of Vietnamese Writers). The story, "Tết ở Xứ Tuyết" ("Lunar New Year in the Snowland"), was crafted as fiction, drawing inspiration from the author's own encounters during the Lunar New Year celebrations in Washington, D.C. back in 2014. Set against the backdrop of bustling city life, the… Read more
The work of Professor Heekyoung Cho has been featured in the Winter 2024 issue of HUMANITIES: The Magazine of the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH). The article, "What Is a Relay Language?", explores Heekyoung's research into the ways in which early twentieth century… Read more
Read more
"Asian communities in Washington are changing, and our state’s century-old Asian languages department must change as well. Comparison of the U.S. 2020 Census results with the previous 2010 Census demonstrates that Asian demographics in our state and region are undergoing dramatic changes," writes Zev Handel, professor and department chair of Asian languages and literature at the UW.… Read more
Read more
ASIAN 498 B (SLN 10556) is a 5-credit course offered Winter 2024, jointly taught by Heidi Pauwels and Olga Levaniouk. The course explores two epics, the Iliad and the Mahābhārata. There are no prerequisites and no previous knowledge of the Iliad or the Mahābhārata is assumed. Open to all majors. Learn more about the course from the informational flyer and check out the course promo video.
Professor Ted Mack (Japanese literature) has won the first-ever Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for East Asian Studies for his book Acquired Alterity: Migration, Identity, and Literary Nationalism from the Modern Language Association (MLA). The prize honors an outstanding scholarly work in the field of East Asian or East Asian diaspora literary or linguistic… Read more