Research and Innovation

By examining the dynamic interplay between discourses of fiction and medicine, Novel Medicine demonstrates how fiction incorporated, created, and disseminated medical knowledge in China, beginning in the sixteenth century. Critical readings of fictional and medical texts provide a counterpoint to prevailing narratives that focus only on the “literati” aspects of the novel, showing that these texts were not merely read, but were used by a wide variety of readers for a range of purposes. The intersection of knowledge—fictional and real, elite and vernacular—illuminates the history of reading and daily life and challenges us to rethink the nature of Chinese literature.

The Plum in the Golden Vase (also known as The Golden Lotus) was published in the early seventeenth century and may be the first long work of Chinese fiction written by a single (though anonymous) author. Featuring both complex structural elements and psychological and emotional realism, the novel centers on the rich merchant Ximen Qing and his household and describes the physical surroundings and material objects of a Ming dynasty city. In part a social, political, and moral critique, the novel reflects on hierarchical power relations of family and state and the materialism of life at the time.

The essays in this volume provide ideas for teaching the novel using a variety of approaches, from questions of genre, intertextuality, and the novel’s reception to material culture, family and social dynamics, and power structures in sexual relations. Insights into the novel’s representation of Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, legal culture, class, slavery, and obscenity are offered throughout the volume.

Classifying the Unseen examines “epistemic” literature, including medical texts, encyclopedias, almanacs, and guidebooks that describe or hint at early scientific inquiry; local and court histories, gazetteers, and newspapers that recorded natural disasters, omens and unexplained phenomena; and “entertainment” literature – novels, anecdotes, and jottings created primarily to amuse and beguile but which also conveyed information. Existing histories of Chinese science concern themselves primarily with officials at court and their response to western science. Classifying the Unseen expands on these histories by examining debates on the margins of that elite discourse, often found in commentary, appendices, sequels, and supplements. By drawing previously unexplored connections between epistemic and entertainment texts, elite and more marginal literature including newspapers, medical manuscripts, coroner’s manuals and family instructions, this work advances a more robust understanding of how an increasingly literate early modern China perceived and experienced the natural world. Classifying the Unseen examines the curious in context – revealing fears of people and practices (magical poison, secret medical practices) along the borders of an expanding empire, and foreign curiosities that penetrated its urban centers. It also seeks to understand how things were investigated and envisioned when they lacked visual context – either because they were everywhere (water, wind, life) or nowhere (dragons, the future).

The Shared Language of Poetry: Mexico and the United States began as a symposium funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and has now become an anthology of essays and poetry that makes a passionate case for the essential value of the humanities. The assemblage of different languages—Spanish, English and Indigenous, as well as in-between inflections—shows the complexity of linguistic and cultural connections between and within the two nations. Here, fourteen scholars and poets from Mexico and the United States attest to the power of contemporary poetry through essays on topics ranging from "Poetic Breadth in the 21st Century" to "Translation in a Global World," from "Representing and Defying Affect through the Body Poetic" to the "Linguistic and Geographic Remappings of Indigenous Poetics." These invigorating texts are complemented by an anthology of verse, published in the original languages, as well as in English or Spanish translation. The volume's intellectual and linguistic diversity offers a vibrant picture of the power of poetry today and for all time.

“When the Tout-Monde is not one: Maryse Condé’s Problematic ‘World-in-Motion’ in Les belles ténébreuses (2008) and Le fabuleux et triste destin d’Ivan et Ivana (2017)”, in Chronotropics: Caribbean Women Writing Spacetime. Eds. Odile Ferly and Zimmerman (2023): 139-156.

Peer reviewed article: “Women Filmmakers, War, Violence and Healing on the Algerian Screen: Mounia Meddour’s Papicha (2019)”. Expressions maghrébines. Vol title : « Théories voyageuses » féministes en territoires littéraires et artistiques maghrébins

"Moroccan Film: Documenting Women’s Resistance of the ‘Everyday’ in Nabil Ayouch’s Much Loved (2015)" is one of the three Keynote lectures Valerie Orlando gave in Morocco in December 2023.

The two other Keynote lectures in December in Morocco were titled "Filming and Documenting Changing Climates in Morocco: The Socio-politically Committed Documentary" MA Lecture Series, Intercultural Communication Studies Program, Department of English, Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah de Fès, Fès, Morocco (December 12, 2023). 

The third Keynote lecture is “Post Covid? Of pens and paper and “taking the time you need”: the joy of exploring francophone literature through slowness and thoughtfulness (without technology)”. This was a conference on The Post-Pandemic and the digital turn in Higher Education: the fate of the humanities, hosted by the “Identity and Difference Research Group” in collaboration with “Strategies of Cultural Industries, Communication and Social Research Lab”.

Jon Malone, Takehiro Iizuka and Zhiyan Deng have been awarded a total of seven dissertation grants, totaling more than $25,000. 

Malone received the prestigious Language Learning Dissertation Grant, the TIRF Doctoral Dissertation Grant and the Duolingo Dissertation Award. His dissertation project uses eye-tracking technology to investigate how second language learners acquire vocabulary through reading while listening. 

Iizuka, supported by the TOEFL Grant for Doctoral Research in Language Assessment and the Duolingo Doctoral Dissertation Award, examines the extent to which spoken and written vocabulary can be distinguished from each other from a measurement point of view, as well as their role in predicting listening and reading comprehension performance, respectively.

Deng was awarded both the TOEFL Grant for Doctoral Research in Language Assessment and the Duolingo Doctoral Dissertation Award. 

All three students are using the support for their research expenses.

Dr. Cae Joseph-Masséna, an assistant professor of French Language and Literatures in the Michele Bowman Underwood Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences and University of Maryland alumni, has won a Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW).