STANFORD UNIVERSITY ICA PROGRAMS & CENTERS: CENTER FOR AFRICAN STUDIES
Vol. 2, Issue 2
Internships in East Asia by Tre'vell Anderson, MA '14
CENTER FOR EAST ASIAN STUDIES CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES CENTER FOR RUSSIAN, EAST EUROPEAN AND EURASIAN STUDIES CENTER FOR SOUTH ASIA EAST ASIA INTERNSHIP PROGRAM THE EUROPE CENTER FORD DORSEY PROGRAM IN INTERNATIONAL POLICY STUDIES FRANCE-STANFORD CENTER FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES HAMID AND CHRISTINA MOGHADAM PROGRAM IN IRANIAN STUDIES INNER ASIA @ STANFORD MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES FORUM PROGRAM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SOHAIB AND SARA ABBASI PROGRAM IN ISLAMIC STUDIES THE STANFORD HUMAN RIGHTS INITIATIVE TAUBE CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES
East Asian Internship Program participant, Cooper Williams (BA '13, far-right), interned with Fields China, an organic food provider in Shanghai. The position provided him with a fatanstic opportunity to engage with locals, learn about Shanghai and its surrounding areas, and gain invaluable cultural and professional experience abroad.
“Exchange student researcher by day and a tourist by night, this double life enabled me to experience Taiwan through a unique lens,” said Christine Quan ’15, who was one of 32 students that received an international summer internship through the East Asia Internship Program, managed by the Division of International, Comparative & Area Studies (ICA), with support from the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center. The internship program is open to all Stanford undergraduate students. It draws majors from a variety of departments and programs including, product design, economics, history and biology. Funding for these internship opportunities is provided through a stipend from the program, host organization or both and covers travel, housing and other living expenses. “Interning at Asia University was a more diverse experience than I had anticipated,” said Quan, a bioengineering major. “I harvested rice, extracted plant DNA and visited a technology exhibition. I especially enjoyed being able to apply my skills and coursework to a new set of problems.”
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The 2013 East Asia Internship Program attracted over 65 applicants for the opportunity to intern at 28 companies across East Asia. Participating companies included Samsung Consulting in Beijing, Lenovo in Shanghai, Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs in Seoul, Morrison & Foerster LLP in Tokyo and Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital in Taiwan. Interning at Lenovo in Shanghai, Jasmine Park ’16 had a transformative experience. “Going to Shanghai and interacting with my coworkers and the interns was a new world,” said Park, a science, technology and society major. “I began to understand that there are things about the IT industry and localization patterns that I had not known. Rather than wondering why something would be useful, I started to see that there may be a different target for this that I don't understand, so I wanted to learn more about it.” "Immersing myself in a new industry, interacting with a broad range of different personalities, and exploring the breadth of Taiwanese culture was an amazing and enriching experience." ~ Eileen Eung, B.S. '14
2014-2015 FRANCE-STANFORD CENTER CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Mathieu Rolfo ‘16 interned with NEC Corporation in Tokyo and had a similar experience. “It was incredible working and living in Tokyo,” the undeclared major commented. “As the only foreigner in the 200-person Global Energy Systems Integration Unit at NEC, I was immersed in a traditionally Japanese yet forward-thinking business culture.” Caroline Hernandez ’15 was able to put her past yearbook experience to use at Time Out Magazine in Beijing. “Journalism is something that I've been interested in for a long time. Interning at Time Out was a great capstone to my experience working on my high school's yearbook staff and taking communication classes at Stanford,” Hernandez stated. In addition to gaining invaluable experience working in an international setting, many students found that it was their immersion in a new culture that left the biggest impression.
The France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies is currently accepting proposals for a number of “My colleagues were very welcoming and offered to show me many aspects undergraduate, graduate, and faculty fellowship and grant opportunities. Read below for a brief overview of Japanese culture,” Rolfo recalled. “With them, I visited traditional of each opportunity or visit francestanford.stanford. temples as well as modern cultural neighborhoods in Tokyo. We ate edu for complete deadline and application information. delicious food, traveled to Kyoto by bullet train and even climbed Mount 2014-2015 Collaborative Projects Call for Proposals Deadline for Applications: March 15, 2014 2014-2015 Call for Conference Proposals Deadline for Applications: March 15, 2014 Undergraduate Fellowship Call for Applications (June 2014 – Aug. 2015) Deadline for Applications: Feb. 15, 2014 2014-2015 Visiting Student Researcher Fellowship Call for Applications Deadline for Applications: March 15, 2014 2014-2015 Visiting Postdoc Fellowship Call for Applications Deadline for Applications: March 15, 2014
Fuji.”
Hernandez had the opportunity to learn about Chinese culture through the host family she lived with. “They taught me more about Chinese culture than I could ever learn in a classroom,” she said. “They took me to eat Peking duck and to the park on Saturday mornings. They even brought me to a Chinese wedding. They showed me more generosity and hospitality than I ever could have asked for.” More information on the 2014 internships can be found on the Center for East Asian Studies website, or by contacting Denise Chu at denise.chu@ stanford.edu. Applications are due by noon on February 17, 2014. Tre'vell Anderson is a student in Stanford's Graduate Program in Journalism.]
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Q&A with Postdoctoral Fellow Hajnalka Kovacs This year, the Sohaib & Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, in collaboration with the Center for South Asia and the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies, launched a new postdoctoral fellowship in Literary Cultures of Muslim South Asia. Hajnalka Kovacs was selected as its 2013-2014 recipient. Kovacs holds an M.A. in Indian and Iranian Studies from Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary, and an M.A. in Urdu Literature from Jamia Millia Islamia, India. She received her Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. How did you become interested in the literary cultures of Muslim South Asia? I began studying Indian languages and literature at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. My initial training included Hindi and Sanskrit, but when I travelled to India to study Urdu literature, I came across the works of the renowned literary critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, which opened my eyes to the poetics and aesthetics of pre-modern Urdu and Persian poetry. Please tell us about your research. My research explores the complex intersections between literary aesthetics and religious beliefs in Indo-Persian and classical Urdu poetry during the 17th and 18th centuries. In my earlier work, I explored the limitations of applying the notion of “Sufi poetry” to the lyrical output of a practicing Sufi such as the Urdu poet Khwājah Mīr Dard (1720-1785). In my doctoral dissertation, I focused on the Mirza Abd al-Qadir Bedil (16441720)’s Muhit-i Azam (“The Greatest Ocean”), illustrating the ways in which this complex mystico-philosophical poem radically transforms the saqinamah genre and embodies a unique synthesis of Ibn Arabi’s theoretical Sufism and contemporaneous Indian religious and cultural ideas.
Hajnalka Kovacs was selected as the recipient of the new 2013-2014 postdoctoral fellowship in Literary Cultures of Muslim South Asia.
but on the basis of its relation to the specific poem’s generic and conceptual framework as well as against the backdrop of the larger literary tradition. What emerges from such an intertextual reading is an extremely innovative and creative poet who consciously manipulated the linguistic, stylistic, and How does your doctoral research contribute to the generic norms to express multiple layers of meaning. scholarship on South Asian literatures? How does the postdoctoral fellowship contribute to your Literary aspects of Bedil’s oeuvre have been rather neglected career as a scholar of literary cultures of Muslim South Asia? in the scholarly literature. There has been a tendency among researchers to list themes recurring in his poetry and then First of all, the fellowship gives me the opportunity to continue illustrate them with excerpts. Bedil’s work has also been put my research on Bedil and turn my dissertation into a book in the service of various ideologies: He has been regarded as manuscript. It also allows me to diversify my teaching portfolio. an enlightened Sufi in Afghanistan, as an advocate of religious I have substantial experience in teaching intermediate and pluralism in South Asia, and as a proto-socialist philosopher advanced Hindi and Urdu. At Stanford, on the other hand, I will in Soviet Central Asia. In his work we can certainly find ideas be teaching an undergraduate course on Urdu short stories which, when lifted out of context, can be used to support such from India and Pakistan, and an advanced reading course on statements. I however prefer not to forget that he is first and Bedil’s autobiographical work, Chahār `Unṣur. foremost a poet, and I seek to examine his works with the methods of literary criticism. For example, I always keep in During this academic year, Hajnalka Kovacs will offer a graduate view that although he explored the key issues of Sufi thought, seminar on “Readings in Indo-Persian Literature” (Winter Term) he did it within the conventions of a particular genre. Therefore, and an undergraduate seminar on “Between Nostalgia and I evaluate each thematic element in his poetry not in isolation Modernity: Urdu Short Stories from India and Pakistan” (Spring Term). ]
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THE MATERIAL IMAGINATION
FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2014 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM ALEXANDER NEMEROV Acoustic Shadows: Macbeth and the Civil War Cummings Art Building, Room 103 435 Lasuen Mall soundmaterialimagination.stanford.edu
STALIN: Geopolitics, Ideology, Power MONDAY, JANUARY 27, 2014 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
STEPHEN KOTKIN, Princeton University Location TBA creees.stanford.edu
AURAL ARCHITECTURE
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2014 SOUTH ASIA BY THE BAY:
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