New co-chairs to expand campus forums on China
BY Ajay Singh
UCLA Today Staff
The UCLA Center for Chinese Studies consistently draws the world’s
best scholars to its seminars and lecture series. It is now poised
to further broaden its coverage of China by becoming an even more
active forum for exchanging ideas, according to two acclaimed scholars
who will shortly head the center.
David Schaberg, associate professor in the Department of East Asian
Languages and Cultures, and Yunxiang Yan, professor of anthropology,
will become co-directors of the Center for Chinese Studies beginning
July 1. They will succeed Political Science Professor Richard Baum,
who has guided the center to prominence over the past six years.
Schaberg and Yan plan to invigorate the center with “the
sort of energy that two people working together can bring,”
Schaberg said. Both he and Yan have won the prestigious Joseph Levenson
Prize for writing outstanding books about China. (Schaberg won the
prize in 2003 and Yan last April.)
Yan has lectured worldwide, including at the London School of Economics.
He and Schaberg plan to make the center more inclusive of people
on campus and beyond those with a scholarly interest in China. “Whether
these are scholars, people doing business with China, Asian Americans
or cultural groups, we definitely won’t be limited to a single
approach to event programming,” said Schaberg.
As the university with the largest China faculty in Southern California,
UCLA must create a network of scholars and others to become an undisputed
leader in Chinese studies, Schaberg said. One step in that direction:
a weekly brown bag lunch event where leading China scholars will
speak on selected topics. “China’s importance is not
going to diminish over the next 10 or 100 years,” said Schaberg.
“Both Yunxiang and I believe that a great university has to
be a great source of information and teaching about China.”
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