Memories in Motion: Artist Talk and Exhibition on Rural Wuhan at DKU
On the afternoon of January 16, 2026, Duke Kunshan University hosted an artist talk and exhibition event centered on Memories of Water, an ongoing research-based project by AH visiting lecturer Dingyi Xu. The event brought together students, faculty, and staff from across the DKU community for a documentary film screening, followed with artist talk and […]
Featured Course: Chinese Thought on the Environment (GCHINA308 / PHIL308 / RELIG302)
By Violet Nguyen, Class of 2028 In an age defined by climate anxiety and ecological fragmentation, where do we look for new, or perhaps very old, ways of belonging to the world? As the global community struggles with climate change and biodiversity loss, the quest for new frameworks to understand our relationship with the planet […]
CSCC Screens Pavilion of Women with Post-Film Discussion Featuring Professor Zhuoyi Wang
On Monday, January 5, 2026, the Center for the Study of Contemporary China in collaboration with the Language and Culture Center (LCC), presented a screening of the 2001 film Pavilion of Women. The event concluded with an engaging discussion featuring Professor Zhuoyi Wang, Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Hamilton […]
SocioTech Futures: Cultivating Student Leadership
As part of the 2025 Annual President’s Forum of the Alliance of Asian Liberal Arts Universities, the Digital Technology and Society Cluster at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China organised a panel titled “SocioTech Futures: Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts Cultivating Student Leadership in Advancing Technology for Society.” The panel members, Dongping Liu from Amazon […]
Digital Humanities Zhouzhuang Mystery of Life Museum Field Trip
On November 7, 2025, students from Duke Kunshan University’s CULANTH/MEDIA 201: New Media and Society and INFOSCI 301: Data Visualization and Information Aesthetics embarked on a field trip to the Zhouzhuang Mystery of Life Museum in Kunshan. They were guided by Prof. Fan Liang and Prof. Luyao Zhang, lead and co-lead of the the Digital […]
Cultivating Community and Sustainability in Campus Gardens: Report on the Gardening in Universities Workshop
By Zheng Zeng, Class of 2026 On the afternoon of November 29, 2025, the Gardening in Universities workshop was held on the DKU campus. Campus gardening plays a vital role in universities by creating hands-on spaces where sustainability, education, and community building intersect. It fosters environmental awareness, experiential learning, and meaningful connections among students, faculty, […]
Announcing the 2025 Fall CSCC Grant Recipients
The Center for the Study of Contemporary China (CSCC) is delighted to announce the recipients of the 2025 Fall Grants. These awards support innovative student and faculty projects that deepen our understanding of contemporary China. This year’s grants fund an exciting range of initiatives—from healthcare and disability inclusion programs in Kunshan, to explorations of Tibetan […]
Faces of Power: Insights from Songpo Yang’s Talk on Facial Perceptions in China’s Bureaucracy
By Zihan Chen, Class of 2026 On November 28, 2025, the CSCC Governing China Cluster hosted Songpo Yang, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University, for a captivating lecture on the subtle influence of facial appearances in China’s bureaucratic selection processes. Yang’s presentation challenged the notion of purely rational, merit-based […]
Understanding Digitalization and Resource Misallocation: Insights from Prof. Liu Yunting’s DKU Seminar
By Eric-Ștefan Duma, Class of 2028 On November 21, Peking University Associate Professor Liu Yunting delivered an Economics seminar at Duke Kunshan University, where he presented his recent research, “Digitalization, Selection, and Misallocation: Evidence from Firm-Level Data in China.” Drawing on extensive firm-level data, his study develops and empirically tests a model that connects digital […]
Report on The Sublime Body in Pain: Ballet, the Nation and the Female Ideal in Contemporary China
On Thursday, November 27, 2025, Duke Kunshan University faculty, staff, and students attended a lecture by Professor Ziying Cui, Visiting Lecturer of Dance, titled “The Sublime Body in Pain: Ballet, the Nation and the Female Ideal in Contemporary China.” The lecture examined how the Chinese imagination has invested the ballerina’s disciplined, suffering body with symbolic meaning that […]