Center for Asian Studies

U.S. teachers explore Taiwan with CU �Ǹ�Թ� faculty and outreach program

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 16:04:03 +0000

U.S. teachers explore Taiwan with CU �Ǹ�Թ� faculty and outreach program Rachel Sauer Mon, 09/28/2026 - 10:04

Educators from CU �Ǹ�Թ� and the �Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District at the Lady Linshui Temple in Tainan, Taiwan.

Katherine Alexander and Lynn Kalinauskas

CU �Ǹ�Թ� East Asia scholars partner with �Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District teachers to delve into the history and culture of Taiwan

Summer 2026 saw the �Ǹ�Թ�’s Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA) bring 14 secondary teachers from across the country to Taiwan to learn about the country’s history and culture. Included in the group of teachers was �Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District (BVSD) teacher Vanessa Carroll, who graduated from CU �Ǹ�Թ� with an MA in English in 2002.

Katherine Alexander (center), a CU �Ǹ�Թ� associate professor of Chinese, in front of the Grand Mazu Temple in Tainan, Taiwan.

The two-week program was a collaboration between TEA Director Lynn Kalinauskas and Anne Prescott, director of the Five College Centre for East Asian Studies at Smith College. Both were recipients of a Fulbright International Education Administrator Award to Taiwan, which helped build the ties for this summer study. They were accompanied by Katherine Alexander, associate professor of Chinese in the CU �Ǹ�Թ� Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, who received a Fulbright Student Grant while in graduate school that supported a year of doctoral dissertation research in Taipei, Taiwan. As the scholar in residence, Alexander shared her knowledge and love of Taiwan with the teachers and provided them with background on Chinese history and culture.

Working with the Fulbright Taiwan team, the CU �Ǹ�Թ� scholars created a program and itinerary aimed at increasing teachers’ knowledge of the island. The goal was to better equip them to teach about the complex history that has forged today’s Taiwan. The group circumnavigated the island by bus, train and boat, stopping at multiple cities along the way. They were introduced to Taiwan’s indigenous cultures and its historical and political past as well as its more recent transition to democracy and modernity fueled by technological innovation.

The group made its way through historical sites and multiple museums. They wandered through streets and night markets, tasting Taiwanese food, including mango shaved ice, beef noodle soup and dumplings. As they circled the island, they also encountered some fascinating Taiwanese people who helped them understand the impact of past and present policies. The teachers saw Taiwan not only as a place impacted by history but as an ever-evolving, vibrant economic and political locus.

Taiwan’s geopolitics are a hot topic in the daily news, so this is often the first thing that we think about when its name is mentioned. In light of this, on the first day of the visit, the program brought the teachers to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taipei to meet with Liang-Yu Wang, director general of the Department of North American Affairs. Hearing from an official who handles that dossier daily was a wonderful opportunity for teachers who are now better equipped to handle their students’ questions back in the United States.

Educators from CU �Ǹ�Թ� and the �Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District at the Lady Linshui Temple in Tainan, Taiwan.

A fraught history

Taiwan’s modern democratic government owes a debt to the victims of its authoritarian past, and the stay took participants to many places that now commemorate the tragedies of the Kuomintang martial law period, which lasted from 1949-1987. While visiting Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, the group was escorted by Fred Chin, who was wrongfully imprisoned in the facility and as a political prisoner on Green Island for 12 years. He stood in the room where he had been first sentenced to death and in the cell where he was confined before his commutation and transfer to Green Island, sharing stories with the teachers about his case and how he made it through horrible years of torture and persecution.

“We were all deeply moved by his generosity,” said Kalinauskas. “He took the time to walk with us and answer many questions. He accompanied us all the way back to the bus, waving goodbye until we were gone. He understood that these were teachers who would tell his story in their classrooms so that the horrors of the times would not be forgotten.”

As the group traveled south out of the capital, they first stopped in Changhua, where they met Wu Sheng, a poet, environmental activist and advisor to the president on his family farm. Wu Sheng’s love of his land was obvious from the moment he invited the group out of the hot sun and into the shade of his beloved trees. Alexander, who translated for the meeting, was especially touched by this chance to meet him, as she has a personal connection to him through an old friend from college, another Taiwanese environmental activist who had been on the front lines of protests with Wu Sheng to defend their precious ecosystem.

�Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District educator Vanessa Carroll (left) biking in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, with Theresa Illgen (right), a program participant from New Mexico.

“Once he learned this, he welcomed me like a family friend, making me feel right at home again in Taiwan after too many years away,” she reflected. Participating teacher Vanessa Carroll noted after the trip, “Inspired by our day with the Taiwanese poet activist Wu Sheng, I've written a unit called Poetry as Green Activism: Finding Eco-Inspiration in Wu Sheng’s <My Village> which I really look forward to teaching!”

Continuing south, the group spent some time in Tainan, where Alexander guided the group through several places of worship, including two temples established in the 1600s where devotees have worshipped ever since. Alexander remarked, “Teaching teachers about these places was so gratifying because of how excited they were to apply their new knowledge and visit other temples on their own in Tainan the next day and in each new city after that. I can see how they’re always learning, just like their students.”

Exploring Taiwan

Further south in Pingtung County, the group visited the Maya Farm cocoa plantation, where they explored the tree-to-bar process. Cocoa farming is an emerging agricultural field in Taiwan. They tasted the fresh pods, smelled different beans and sipped one of the best cups of hot chocolate they ever had. The teachers learned from the farmers about the land that had been cleared of palm and beetle nut trees to make way for a new industry. They compared this experience with a more traditional farming experience in Maokong, near Taipei, where they visited a tea plantation at which five generations of the same family had worked the land for more than a century.

Caroll used every minute of her free time to explore even more: “I've lived in �Ǹ�Թ� ever since I graduated from CU, so obviously I'm into bikes. In Taiwan, at the end of each day, I'd try to find a bike to explore whatever new city we'd ended up at, and once, in massive and beautiful Kaohsiung in the far south, I was balancing between traffic lights and happened to look over and see an older gentleman wearing a University of Colorado polo shirt. We made eye contact, I gestured to my own chest, and it took him a moment, understandably, to realize I was referencing CU. He told me he went there many years ago; he studied civil engineering, and now he’s an architect. I half-joked, ‘Have you designed any buildings I'd recognize?’ and he immediately gestured broadly and turned around in a half-circle saying, ‘Yes, many here in Kaohsiung,’ as if I could throw a stone and hit one of his designs.

“The fact that I encountered this kind and possibly famous Asian architect wearing a Buffs shirt on a random, busy sidewalk roughly 7,000 flight miles from my home shows that the world can be so wildly small even when you least expect it to be, and that Taiwan really is a fascinating fusion of experiences, cultures, identities, and global interconnectivity.”

While indigenous groups, the original residents of Taiwan—before waves of migration from China began in the 1600s—now make up only 2% of the population, their histories and their contemporary ways of life remain important to building a complete picture of Taiwan’s present. Participants met with tribal elders from the Paiwan and Rukai peoples, who generously shared stories about their personal histories and how their communities continue to practice their traditions today in the face of cultural and economic challenges.

While on Taiwan’s east coast, students also visited the National Museum of Prehistory, which details with vibrant exhibits the many indigenous groups that shaped Taiwan's past and how, through these tribes, Taiwan is connected to Austronesia and global indigenous cultures even in the present.

The trip wasn’t always smooth. A typhoon hit the island while the group was in Tainan, closing most businesses and cultural sites. The ferry to Green Island was stomach-churning. And the heat and humidity were intense. But Taiwan is the birthplace of bubble tea, so there was always a way to hydrate and re-energize for yet another adventure.

As teachers start up a new fall semester, the experiences will make their way into AP world history, geography and many other classrooms where students will become more curious about Taiwan, its history and importance.

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CU �Ǹ�Թ� East Asia scholars partner with �Ǹ�Թ� Valley School District teachers to delve into the history and culture of Taiwan.

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Mao still casts a long shadow

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 13:00:42 +0000

Mao still casts a long shadow Rachel Sauer Fri, 09/04/2026 - 07:00

Bradley Worrell

Five decades after his death, Mao Zedong remains the face of modern China, yet CU �Ǹ�Թ� historian William Wei argues his rise to power was never inevitable and neither is the verdict on his legacy

Mao Zedong remains one of the most prominent political figures in modern history. Fifty years after his death, his embalmed body still lies in state in Tiananmen Square, his enormous portrait continues to hang over the Gate of Heavenly Peace, his face appears on the country’s currency and Chinese schoolchildren are still taught that he was the founding leader who reunified and transformed the nation.

Mao’s omnipresence can create the impression that his rise to power was inevitable. However, reflecting on Mao’s legacy today—five decades since his death Sept. 9, 1976, at age 82—his place in history was never assured, argues William Wei, a �Ǹ�Թ� Department of History professor who is an expert on modern China.

“One of the things I teach my students is that nothing is historically inevitable—and that is certainly the case with Mao’s rise to power,” he says. “If you study Chinese history, you see that his rise to leadership within the Chinese Communist Party unfolded over about a decade. It was driven by a combination of strategic skill, organization building, ideological innovation and, quite frankly, intra-party struggles that involved the purging of rivals.”

CU �Ǹ�Թ� historian William Wei studies modern China, including the legacy of Mao Zedong.

Mao’s rise was never guaranteed

In fact, far from being recognized as leader of the communist movement in China initially, Wei says Mao in the early 1930s was sidelined by rivals known as the “28 Bolsheviks”—communist leaders trained in Moscow who adhered more closely to orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine of organizing urban workers to create a revolution.

Wei says the turning point came in 1935 following the Long March—one of the defining episodes in Communist Party history. After anti-communist nationalist forces overran the communist base in Jiangxi Province, Mao led his Red Army soldiers on a grueling 6,000-mile retreat over some of China’s most difficult terrain to escape encirclement and destruction.

According to Wei, the march was devastating from a military standpoint, with communists losing roughly seven-eighths of their forces. “But they survived, and for the Chinese communists, survival was a form of victory,” he adds.

Even then, Wei says Mao’s emergence was not the result of a sudden triumph but a long process. After communist forces under other leaders lost battles to the country’s nationalist forces, Wei says Mao’s rivals effectively ceded military leadership to him.

Mao also distinguished himself through ideological innovation, Wei says. While orthodox Marxists emphasized that the urban working class would form the revolutionary vanguard, Mao instead argued that China’s overwhelmingly rural population made the peasantry the natural engine for revolution. Wei says Mao’s emphasis on rural peasants as the agents of change helped establish an ideological identity known as “Maoism” that was distinct from both his domestic rivals like the 28 Bolsheviks as well as Soviet orthodoxy.

War, occupation and revolution

With the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, the nationalists and communists largely halted their fighting to focus on combatting the Japanese invaders. While the nationalists tended to engage in pitched battles with the Japanese, Mao’s communists employed hit-and-run tactics associated with guerrilla warfare.

“This strategy preserved the communist party’s strength, as the nationalists bore the brunt of the fighting,” Wei says. “(Nationalists) fought most of the major battles against the Japanese and consequently suffered most of the defeats as well.”

A propaganda image of Mao Zedong from 1967.

By emphasizing guerrilla warfare, recruiting peasants and expanding the party organization throughout rural China, Wei says Mao transformed a weakened movement into a formidable political and military force. Between 1937 and 1940, Chinese Communist Party membership grew from 40,000 to 800,000.

When Japan’s defeat ended World War II in August 1945, the nationalists and communists renewed their fighting. Here again, Wei argues that Mao’s success was never guaranteed.

The nationalists initially held several advantages. They possessed larger forces, better equipment and support from the United States. But Wei says the nationalists were also weakened by corruption, declining public support and incompetence in administering the country’s economy.

The communists, in contrast, entered the conflict stronger than they had been at any point since the Long March, and by the late 1940s the balance shifted decisively in Mao’s favor, Wei says. In 1949, Mao proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China, with the communist victory marking one of the most remarkable political reversals of the 20th century, Wei says.

Korea and Mao’s emergence as a global leader

Mao’s stature expanded beyond China’s borders almost immediately after the communist victory. The Korean War became the first major international test of the new regime and played a crucial role in shaping’s Mao’s standing at home and abroad, Wei says.

He notes that both Mao and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin were initially reluctant to support North Korean leader Kim Il-sung’s plans to militarily reunify the Korean Peninsula. Kim convinced them that he could strike quickly and that America would not intervene.

However, America did intervene on behalf of South Korea. And once American-led forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur reversed North Korea’s initial victories and advanced toward the Yalu River—the border separating Korea from China’s industrial heartland in Manchuria—Chinese leaders viewed that as an unacceptable threat, Wei says.

Although Chinese forces were poorly equipped and lacked air support, Wei says that by their sheer numbers (more than 250,000 soldiers) and with the element of surprise, they decimated the U.S. Army contingent and pushed American forces back to the 38th parallel. The war eventually settled into a costly stalemate.

Politically, however, the war produced significant benefits for Mao, Wei says. He argues that Mao’s reputation was enhanced because China managed to fight the strongest post-World War II power to a standstill. The conflict elevated not only Mao’s prestige but also the People’s Republic by demonstrating that it could not be dismissed as a weak or a subordinate power, Wei says.

The war also reshaped China’s Cold War relationships. Wei says Stalin’s view of Mao improved after China’s willingness to confront the United States, while the conflict poisoned the country’s relations with Washington for decades, until rapprochement in the 1970s and the normalization of relations in January 1979.

Building a new China

“Mao left behind a complicated legacy,” says CU �Ǹ�Թ� historian William Wei. “But I stand by my original assertion that he was, to use the Chinese formula, seven parts wrong and only three parts right."

With the victory over the nationalists, Mao was able to impose his stamp on China. Even Wei, who is a critic of Mao, acknowledges his many accomplishments. Mao is remembered for ending what the Chinese call the “Century of Humiliation”—a period during which Western powers and Japan dominated large portions of China. Mao reunified a fragmented country after decades of warlordism, civil conflict and foreign invasion. For millions of Chinese, this achievement alone secured his place in history, Wei says.

The early years of communist rule brought significant social reforms. Perhaps most notably, Wei notes that land redistribution programs transferred land to hundreds of millions of peasants. He also credits the new government with launching a successful industrialization campaign, expanding public health initiatives, increasing access to education and implementing legal reforms designed to improve the status of women. Additionally, the country’s literacy rates improved dramatically, infant mortality declined and new public health programs reached rural communities for the first time.

At the same time, Wei emphasizes that many of these achievements came at an extraordinary human cost. He notes that land reform redistributed property on a massive scale, but at the cost of upwards of a million landlords as well as others targeted as “class enemies.” Meanwhile, industrialization generated rapid economic growth, yet it unfolded within an authoritarian framework that tolerated little dissent.

Twin tragedies

The darkest chapters of Mao’s rule came with the Great Leap Forward starting in 1958 and the Cultural Revolution starting in 1966. Wei describes the Great Leap Forward as a man-made catastrophe, as land collectivization policies, unrealistic farm production quotas and widespread falsification of agricultural data combined to create a disaster that by some estimates resulted in 35 million to 45 million deaths—making it one of the deadliest policy failures in human history.

The Cultural Revolution inflicted a different kind of damage. Initiated after Mao’s standing had been weakened by the failures of the Great Leap Forward, Wei says it was both a political power struggle and an ideological crusade, as Mao sought to eliminate rivals and prevent what he viewed as a drift toward capitalism.

“One of the things Mao believed was in his theory of continuous revolution,” Wei explains. “Permanent revolution believes the revolution never ends, even when you have a seizure of state power, because the party, in this case the Chinese Communist Party, could itself become a new ruling class.”

Wei says the campaign produced persecution and social chaos, as cultural and religious sites were destroyed, schools and universities were shut down and an entire generation lost years of educational opportunity.

For that reason, Wei sharply disagrees with the Chinese Communist Party’s official verdict that Mao was “70% right and 30% wrong.” He reverses that formula, arguing Mao was “70% wrong and 30% right.” While recognizing Mao’s role in reunifying China and advancing certain social reforms, he insists that Mao must be held responsible for the immense anguish caused by his policies.

“Mao left behind a complicated legacy,” Wei says. “But I stand by my original assertion that he was, to use the Chinese formula, seven parts wrong and only three parts right. As a historian, I’m not going to let him escape responsibility for the millions of deaths and all the suffering he caused.”

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It’s more than just feeling good or bad

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:23:04 +0000

It’s more than just feeling good or bad Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/31/2026 - 15:23

Rachel Sauer

In her recently published book, CU �Ǹ�Թ� scholar Antje Richter explores health and the art of living through illness narratives of early medieval China

In his masterpiece The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Chinese monk and court librarian Liu Xie observed, “If we melt away our vital energies and cramp the harmonious flow of our vital breath, then holding the writing tablet will hasten our death, and moistening the brush will hack away at our life.”

This might have been a surprising observation from one of the most eminent writers of his time, but nurturing life has long been central to Chinese thought, says Antje Richter, a �Ǹ�Թ� professor of Chinese in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. In fact, ideas about health and illness significantly shaped the literature and culture of the early Chinese medieval era—about 200 CE to 600 CE. And Liu Xie, who was mainly concerned with writers of literature, may have been the first to present advice about writers’ and knowledge workers’ occupational health.

CU �Ǹ�Թ� scholar Antje Richter is a professor of Chinese whose research focus includes early medieval Chinese literature.

In her recent book Health and the Art of Living: Illness Narratives in Early Medieval Chinese Literature, Richter explores how themes of health and illness are woven through the literature of the era, from informal letters between friends to sacred texts and the highly regarded genre of sickbed poetry.

“We as humans are not either healthy or unhealthy,” Richter says. “We are constantly adapting to new states of our body. This is interesting to me as a challenge that we are all facing in one way or the other. And it's not a binary; it's a graduated scale that's constantly evolving.

“In one of the chapters, I write about Sima Qian, the father of Chinese historiography, who was famously emasculated as corporal punishment but chose not to end his life, as was expected of him, but continued working on The Records of the Historian. He didn’t die of the punitive mutilation he suffered, but he coped. He finished this groundbreaking historical work, and everybody in China knows him and his story because we also have one of the letters he wrote. So, I use his example to say adaptation to new states of health is possible and that in the literature of this time we have a very nuanced understanding of what it means to be healthy or well.”

Discovering narratives of health and illness

Richter, whose research focus is the early medieval era in China, came upon this significant theme in Chinese literature while writing her previous book, Letters and Epistolary Culture in Medieval China.

“We have thousands of letters transmitted from that period, and among those letters there was a good portion that mentioned illness, and I found it quite interesting,” Richter explains. “There’s one celebrated calligrapher, Wang Xizhi, and much of what he wrote was transmitted and not thrown away. Even if he wrote, ‘I have terrible diarrhea,’ that letter was preserved.”

During her time researching that book, Richter collaborated with a longtime friend in �Ǹ�Թ�, Charles “Chip” Chace, who was a Chinese medicine practitioner, to unlock those letters of Wang Xizhi that deal with illness.

Richter’s research of Wang Xizhi’s letters led her, in 2011, to apply for a grant to study for a semester at the Needham Research Institute, which was founded by famed sinologist and historian of Chinese science Joseph Needham.

“This was when I realized, oh, it’s not only letters that have these illness narratives, but also biographies and poetry and religious texts and stories,” Richter says.

“It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the hallowed writers of old clearly understood themselves as living, thriving, aging and, often enough, also suffering bodies,” says Antje Richter.

Richter points to the painting on the cover of her book to describe her main intentions in writing it. The painting, held in the Smithsonian’s collection, shows the beloved early medieval poet Tao Qian—also known as Tao Yuanming—being carried in a basket because he was suffering from a foot illness and could not walk on his own. This detail of Tao Qian’s life is reported in early biographies, and in later centuries became popular in painting as well.

Richter says that to her mind, this episode shows that illness sits right in the middle of life and in the middle of Chinese literature and culture—and that she wanted to emphasize this fact and to help connect medieval Chinese studies to the global medical humanities.

How to live

Surviving texts of the literature of early medieval China, including letters, indicate that openly discussing topics of health or illness carried little or no taboo in certain genres, such as letters, Richter says, while high-register poetry only alluded to mundane or graphic physical aspects of life.

Further, Richter believes that the growing esteem of the literary genre of sickbed poetry in medieval China was inspired by Buddhism, particularly the Vimalakirti Sutra, a Buddhist text expounding on ideas of emptiness and the appearances of the world as mere illusions.

Several chapters of the Vimalakirti Sutra are set at the sickbed of a lay Buddhist, who feigns illness so people will come to his bedside and he can preach.

“Then, he and the visitors that come to his sickbed have conversations about, oh, this body is like a bit of foam that cannot be grasped, this body is like a cloud which changes and disappears in an instant, and Chinese poets were very inspired by that,” Richter says. “So, we have this genre of sickbed poetry that first only reflects on the joys of sick leave and the company of friends during this time, but later also on illnesses that ravaged the body and the illusion of existence, the temporariness of our existence.”

Richter notes that while a significant body of illness narratives from the early medieval era have survived, they generally are the narratives of wealthy and connected men. Despite these limitations, Richter says, illness narratives wove with common threads of human experience.

She says she hopes that readers will come away from the book with a strong sense of the lived reality in the Chinese Middle Ages. “It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the hallowed writers of old clearly understood themselves as living, thriving, aging and, often enough, also suffering bodies,” she says.

“We share many of their concerns: how easy it is to overwork ourselves, how there are points in our lives and biographies where health and illness take center stage, how we are looking for a way to accept illness as part of the human condition. Trying to empathize across centuries and cultures is a good way to practice other types of empathy as well.”

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In her recently published book, CU �Ǹ�Թ� scholar Antje Richter explores health and the art of living through illness narratives of early medieval China.

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Top illustration: Scene of poet Tao Qian being carried from scroll "The Lotus Society." (Illustration: Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art)

Recent grad finds purpose among the gibbons

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:20:50 +0000

Recent grad finds purpose among the gibbons Rachel Sauer Wed, 06/24/2026 - 15:20

Cody DeBos

Asian studies alumnus Lucas Lowenfish, soon to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar, experienced ‘a big trajectory change’ during Primates of Vietnam study abroad program

Before the sun rises in Cát Tiên National Park in Vietnam, the forest is wide awake. Lucas Lowenfish recalls slipping into the humid darkness with a few friends from his study abroad group to hike toward a tree they’d been told about.

This particular tree hosts a family of gibbons that congregates every morning to sing just as light begins to filter through the canopy.

“They start jumping and dancing around and doing their songs. It’s a coordinated singing that sounds unlike anything I’ve heard before,” says Lowenfish, a recent �Ǹ�Թ� graduate in Asian studies.

Recent Asian studies graduate Lucas Lowenfish pivoted his career path after participating in the Primates of Vietnam study abroad program.

Later that morning, Lowenfish and a friend wandered deeper into the forest. Upon rounding a bend in the trail, they found themselves just feet from two gibbons mid-call. Close enough that, as Lowenfish puts it, “You can feel it in your head.”

That morning in the forest, and others exploring Cát Tiên and the jungles of Vietnam, gave Lowenfish a new direction for his career.

An unlikely primatologist

Lowenfish grew up in Washington, D.C., asking his parents for more time at the primate exhibit every time his family visited the zoo. He arrived at CU �Ǹ�Թ� as an Asian studies major after taking Chinese classes in high school.

A career in primatology had never crossed his mind.

Then came a study abroad program led by CU �Ǹ�Թ� anthropology professors Jonathan O’Brien and Herbert “Bert” Covert. The duo takes students through an immersive tour of the biodiversity of Vietnam, visiting national parks, conservation NGOs, research centers and wildlife rehabilitation facilities.

For Lowenfish, the trip was an eye-opener.

“I’d never really thought about how studying monkeys could be a job, you know? But then my professors are in the field and we’re meeting people who are doing this full-time. Now that I was seeing that this is a thing, I knew I totally wanted to do it, too,” he says.

He calls the trip a “big trajectory change” for his career goals.

The “Primates of Vietnam” program runs each summer and draws a small cohort of eight to 15 undergraduates for a three-week adventure. Lowenfish says the experience rewards a certain kind of student.

“You definitely have to be adventurous and willing to step pretty far out of your comfort zone. But if you can do that, it’s like the greatest trip ever.”

What’s killing the gibbons?

After completing the study abroad trip, Lowenfish returned to �Ǹ�Թ� and began writing a senior thesis on gibbon conservation across Southeast Asia.

Gibbons, natives of not just Vietnam but also Myanmar, India and Bangladesh, are among the most endangered primates on Earth. The threats driving their decline are consistent across borders.

Lowenfish says the main contributors are habitat loss from logging, industrial agriculture and expanding construction projects in the old-growth forests gibbons need to survive. Poaching is also a factor, with gibbon hunting feeding both the traditional medicine trade and the illegal pet market.

Lowenfish’s thesis draws on a study in which researchers examined dozens of established and potential gibbon habitats across several southeast Asian countries.

“The finding is pretty straightforward. These areas need immediate protected status, and that kind of systemic mapping needs to happen across all southeast Asia,” Lowenfish says.

But the tension between conservation and rapid economic development makes that work harder. Lowenfish watched this play out firsthand in Da Nang, where a critically endangered primate called the red-shanked douc lives on a coastal peninsula.

“These development companies, mostly doing hotels and resorts, because they’re right on the beach in Da Nang, have been able to lobby to get more and more of the land. They’ve been able to get it unprotected and develop on it,” Lowenfish says.

“They’re just building more hotels and there’s already like 50 hotels there. Half of them don’t even make money, but they just keep building them, and it’s ruining the habitat.”

Lucas Lowenfish and other participants in the Primates of Vietnam study abroad program walk through the forest (left); sunset on the Dong Nai River in Vietnam. (Photos: Lucas Lowenfish)

A cooperative solution

Lowenfish is careful not to let the scale of the problem crowd out the solutions. His thesis makes the case that meaningful conservation is happening.

Formal protected areas are the most effective intervention for gibbon populations. In Indonesia, a Wildlife Crimes Unit assembled a large ranger force in one national park and produced measurable population gains. Lowenfish says this model has since expanded to other countries in the region.

But the interventions he finds most compelling are the ones that work with local communities rather than ignoring their economic realities. He describes a project he learned about in Vietnam, in which an outside organizer partnered with slash-and-burn farming communities to offer a better solution.

“They taught these guys how to grow their own coffee more sustainably, package it and sell it,” Lowenfish says.

The same logic supports an eco-hostel project on an island critical to sea turtle nesting.

“The operators hired local rangers to patrol the shoreline and act as guides for the tourists. And these are the same guys who were hunting the turtles before,” says Lowenfish.

By creating new sources of income for local communities, these initiatives and others like them offer an alternative to clearing forest habitats for development or hunting endangered animals to sell to black-market buyers.

“You can’t just go in and tell someone to stop doing something and just expect them to do that for the good of the gibbons, especially when it’s their livelihood. You have to find ways to work together so everyone can benefit,” Lowenfish says.

Next stop, Madagascar

This fall, Lowenfish heads to Madagascar as a Peace Corps volunteer. While most of his time will be spent teaching English, Madagascar is home to lemurs, a primate lineage found nowhere else on Earth—and one that struggles with the same conservation challenges Lowenfish has been writing about.

He’s already picturing how to spend his free time.

“I’m hoping I can volunteer with a research center or something like that. Hopefully I can get into some real primatology stuff there, but even just getting to hang out with some lemurs would be pretty cool.”

It’s a fitting next chapter, but gibbons are still his focus right now. When asked to make the case for gibbon conservation, Lowenfish had an immediate answer.

“They are some of the most unique and beautiful creatures on Earth. They’re the only species with that particular combination of song and choreography.”

But there’s a practical argument, too.

“Gibbons are the premier seed dispersers in Asian forests. They eat fruit and distribute the seeds across huge territories,” Lowenfish says.

“Once we lose them, the entire forest suffers.”

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Asian studies alumnus Lucas Lowenfish, soon to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar, experienced ‘a big trajectory change’ during Primates of Vietnam study abroad program.

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CU �Ǹ�Թ� scholar tracks Hindu nationalism’s global disguise

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 22:15:45 +0000

CU �Ǹ�Թ� scholar tracks Hindu nationalism’s global disguise Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/11/2026 - 16:15

Some traditional Hindu iconography and sacred symbols, including the Omkar, have been adopted by the Hindu right wing. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Cody DeBos

Ethnic studies Professor Nishant Upadhyay delves into the gap between image and reality in Hinduism

Hinduism, like most religions, has a reputation.

According to Nishant Upadhyay, a �Ǹ�Թ� associate professor of ethnic studies, it is tied to a deep and ancient reverence for the natural world and offers a peaceful, colorful alternative to the spiritual traditions many Westerners grew up with.

For Upadhyay (they/them), that reputation poses a problem.

Nishant Upadhyay, a CU �Ǹ�Թ� associate professor of ethnic studies, notes that Hinduism, like most religions, has a reputation.

“Hinduism has this reputation, especially in a place like �Ǹ�Թ�, where it’s seen as this religion that’s environmentally friendly, animal friendly, cares about women and queer folks, cares about peace and non-violence,” they say.

“But it has always been deeply caste-ist and patriarchal,” Upadhyay adds.

That gap between image and reality is at the heart of Upadhyay’s new paper, published in the Amerasia Journal, which traces a pattern of right-wing Hindu diaspora organizations forging “solidarities” with Indigenous peoples across the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

They argue these gestures are not acts of genuine allyship, but more calculated moves in service of Hindu nationalism, a political ideology with a far different agenda than the one being advertised.

“We have to be very careful when Hindu nationalists use this framework of indigeneity because this is deeply fraught and violent. We can’t come here and say Hindus are in solidarity when Hindus are actually oppressing indigenous, caste-oppressed and Muslim communities in India,” Upadhyay says.

Indians on Indian lands

Upadhyay, associate chair of Graduate Studies in CU �Ǹ�Թ�’s Department of Ethnic Studies, is also the author of Indians on Indian Lands: Intersections of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity. The book was recently awarded “Outstanding Contribution in Social Sciences” by the Association of Asian American Studies. Their recent work is a continuation of the book that closely examines the proliferation of the Hindu nationalist movement in the diaspora.

To understand Upadhyay’s argument, it helps to understand the landscape in which their work is taking place.

“I’m looking at more recent formations of the diaspora in the last 100 years to North America, which is a very different form of migration than indentured labor migrations of South Asians to the different colonies under the British empire,” Upadhyay says.

“My focus is more on folks who are willingly moving with caste, class and religious privileges, capital and mobility. A lot more ‘skilled’ workers have moved more willingly in the past several decades, mostly to North America, Western Europe and Australia,” they add.

Upadhyay argues that dominant-caste Hindu immigrants in the U.S. and elsewhere aren't simply racialized minorities navigating racism in white settler states. Rather, in the way these communities relate to the lands they now inhabit, Upadhyay likens them to settlers rather than allies of indigenous peoples.

“Because India was able to become independent in 1947, when we move here, we are racialized, but we don’t really understand the realities of violence that indigenous communities continue to face,” they say.

Hindu nationalism further complicates the picture.

“The Hindu nationalist ideology is about a century old. The project claims that India should only belong to Hindus, specifically dominant caste Hindus, and anyone who’s not a Hindu should not be part of it,” Upadhyay explains. “So the violence is targeted primarily at Muslim and Christian communities in India.”

“Saffronwashing is a way to talk about how Hindu nationalists normalize and make invisible the violences perpetuated against caste-oppressed, indigenous and religious-minority communities in India. They portray Hinduism as environmentally friendly, peace-loving, non-violent, yoga-loving, colorful festivals and spicy food,” explains CU �Ǹ�Թ� scholar Nishant Upadhyay.

Under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, now in his third term, that ideology has become deeply entrenched in Indian political and social life. Upadhyay says it has also traveled with the diaspora.

A familiar playbook

The attempts at allying with indigenous communities Upadhyay examines follow a similar script.

In 2016, during the Standing Rock protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline, Hindu American organizations issued statements claiming kinship with the Standing Rock Sioux.

“Hindu nationalist groups started coming out with these statements saying, ‘We are indigenous to India, and we were colonized by the British. You are indigenous, and you’ve been colonized by the Europeans and the American state. So, we understand your struggles, and we want to be in alliance with you,’” Upadhyay recounts.

The pattern repeated when unmarked graves of Indigenous children were discovered at former residential school sites in Canada, and again when Native Hawaiian protectors rallied against the construction of a massive telescope on the sacred summit of Mauna Kea. In Australia, Hindu organizations point to DNA studies suggesting genetic links between Indian and Aborigine populations as evidence of ancient kinship.

Each gesture, Upadhyay argues, is a form of what they and other scholars call “saffronwashing”—a term borrowed from the similar logics of greenwashing and pinkwashing.

“Caste is very important to think about and name. … This is a longer genealogy of violence that dominant caste Indians have imported with themselves when they’ve come here. So, it’s a conversation we need to be having much more proactively and keep fighting against,” says Nishant Upadhyay. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

“They project these cultural things about Hinduism but erase the violences that hide beneath those cultural practices.”

For Western audiences unfamiliar with caste, the danger in these solidarity gestures may be hard to see. That disguise is the problem.

Caste is among the oldest systems of structural oppression in human history. It predates European colonialism by thousands of years and extends well beyond the borders of India and Hinduism.

For Hindu nationalists in the diaspora, the goal, Upadhyay says, is to normalize and mainstream themselves. Within progressive spaces, interfaith coalitions and anti-racist organizing, Hindu nationalist messaging can be normalized, and any criticism of India’s treatment of its own minorities can be suppressed. In the last decade, there have been cases of diasporic Hindu nationalist groups going after scholars, writers and activists critical of the Hindu nationalist regime in India, caste violence, Islamophobia and the occupation of Kashmir.

Already, Upadhyay points out, Hindu nationalist influence has shaped K-12 textbook battles, hiring cultures in Silicon Valley and the political landscape at the highest levels of American government across both parties.

“This impacts all of us,” they say.

What real solidarity looks like

Upadhyay is careful to distinguish the solidarities they critique from others that they see as genuine and decolonial. Kashmiri, Tamil, Punjabi, Dalit and Tibetan diaspora communities, they argue, have modeled a fundamentally different approach rooted in an honest acknowledgment of their own position, histories and complicities.

“We left our homelands because our people are oppressed and now we are refugees or immigrants here, but we have also become settlers,” they say, describing the framework these communities embrace. “That’s a very different articulation and practice of solidarity.”

At its core, the question is whether a community treats its own suffering as unique and self-contained or accepts its connection to a broader web of struggle and liberation.

For Upadhyay, only one of those orientations can sustain real solidarity.

“We can learn from these decolonial frameworks where interlinking of oppression and liberation is at the forefront,” they say.

That work, Upadhyay says, begins at home. The task they set for themselves, and for others in dominant-caste diaspora communities, is to look inward first.

“We have to examine how caste, race and indigeneity have shaped our own privilege before presuming to stand beside those whose lands and lives remain on the line,” Upadhyay says. “We have to fight together because our liberation is interconnected.”

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Ethnic studies Professor Nishant Upadhyay delves into the gap between image and reality in Hinduism.

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Top photo: Flags of the Party flags of India's conservative Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena. (Photo: Al Jazeera English/Wikimedia Commons)

Rethinking marriage—and divorce—in Muslim Indonesia

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:25:26 +0000

Rethinking marriage—and divorce—in Muslim Indonesia Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/08/2026 - 13:25

Bradley Worrell

CU �Ǹ�Թ� sociologist Rachel Rinaldo’s research uncovers how Indonesian women are re-shaping marriage and its end within Islamic law, with implications far beyond Southeast Asia

When Rachel Rinaldo, a �Ǹ�Թ� sociology associate professor and the faculty director of the Center for Asian Studies, first began studying gender and social change in Indonesia nearly 25 years ago, she entered a field already shaped by deep-seated assumptions.

“There is a common idea in academic literature and media discussions that changes in the developing world are mainly due to ideas imported from the U.S. or Western Europe,” she explains. “That narrative underplays the more internal dynamics of social change.”

Rinaldo’s recently published research paper, “I Have a Right to a Better Imam,” challenges that Western-influence narrative as it relates to Indonesia, instead revealing a much more nuanced and local story.

Rachel Rinaldo, a CU �Ǹ�Թ� associate professor of sociology and faculty director of the Center for Asian Studies, first began studying gender and social change in Indonesia nearly 25 years ago.

Indonesia—the world’s largest Muslim-majority country—offers an especially rich case for understanding changing family dynamics, Rinaldo says. With a population that is roughly 90% Muslim and shaped by a mix of longstanding local traditions, economic transformation and evolving religious interpretations, she says it presents a unique environment in which the meaning of marriage—and the decision by women to end it—is being renegotiated.

“One of the things I argue in the article is that religions are always shaped by the societies where they are adopted. Christianity, for example, looks different in Brazil compared to Italy. The same is true for Islam—it looks different in Indonesia versus, say, Egypt,” she says. “In Southeast Asia, there has long been a social structure that gives somewhat more power and agency to women, particularly in marriage. Women have historically had more say, and it’s also been more common for women to work outside of the home.”

This longstanding pattern has influenced how Islamic norms are interpreted in Indonesia, producing a version of Islamic family law that—while not fully egalitarian—is more progressive compared to other Muslim-majority countries, Rinaldo says.

Today, Indonesia’s legal system includes Islamic family laws that apply to its Muslim citizens. These laws establish clear frameworks for marriage and divorce, while also reflecting tensions between traditional gender roles and growing expectations of partnership and mutual responsibility.

Rethinking the origins of change

Through her interviews with several Indonesian women, as well as observations in Islamic courts, Rinaldo says she has found little evidence that Western cultural models were the primary drivers of change. Instead, she says the women she interviewed described a gradual shift in expectations rooted in their own understanding of marriage, religion and personal autonomy.

Crucially, these changing expectations are tied to how women interpret Islamic law—not as a rigid system that confines them, but as a set of principles that can justify their desire for a more equitable partnership, Rinaldo says.

Perhaps the most surprising finding of Rinaldo’s research is the role Islamic courts play in Indonesia, many of which are overseen by female judges. Contrary to common assumptions that such institutions are uniformly conservative or patriarchal, Rinaldo says the courts today tend to be pragmatic.

“What struck me was that judges in Islamic courts were fairly sympathetic to women’s concerns. They emphasized that marriage should be a partnership, and that lack of support—financial or emotional—from husbands was a valid issue,” Rinaldo says. “The idea of a more companionate marriage was embedded in legal thinking … and how legal and religious frameworks were being interpreted locally.”

Economic change has played a critical role in enabling this cultural shift in Indonesia, says CU �Ǹ�Թ� researcher Rachel Rinaldo. As Indonesia’s economy has grown, more women have gained access to education and paid employment. (Photo: Lek Nikto/Unsplash)

Rather than attempting to keep marriages intact at all costs, Rinaldo says many judges see their responsibility as arbitrators of outstanding issues resulting from the dissolution of the marriage.

“Judges told me that by the time cases reach them, marriages are often already over, so their role is to facilitate resolution rather than reconciliation.”

Gender differences in divorce law

Despite certain progressive aspects of Indonesian family law, Rinaldo says the country’s legal framework still treats men and women differently when it comes to divorce.

Men can initiate divorce relatively easily, often without needing to provide a specific reason. Women, by contrast, must file a formal case and cite one of several legally recognized grounds for divorce. Rinaldo says these grounds include violence, abuse, financial neglect and even “disharmony”—a broadly defined category that essentially allows women to argue that the relationship is not working.

While this requirement might seem restrictive, Rinaldo says women have become increasingly adept at navigating the system. Many women understand the legal criteria and present their cases in ways that align with judicial expectations, she explains.

Some women even draw on religious arguments, pointing to their spouse’s bad behavior—such as drinking, gambling or neglecting prayer—as evidence that their husband is not living up to his obligations, Rinaldo says.

“Women sometimes use that strategically, knowing judges would respond negatively to behaviors such as drinking or gambling,” she says. “At the same time, religion is an important source of meaning for many women, so these issues were also genuine sources of conflict.”

Evolving expectations for marriage

Underlying these various legal strategies is how women have come to think about marriage itself, Rinaldo says. A recurring theme in Rinaldo’s interviews was dissatisfaction—not with marriage as an institution—but with how it was being lived in their own lives.

“Many women felt their husbands weren’t contributing enough,” she explains. She says the lack of support extended beyond finances, which were historically the husband’s responsibility. In one example, a woman described reaching her breaking point when her husband refused to help care for their children. “She was like, ‘These are our kids; we’re supposed to be doing this together,’” Rinaldo recounts.

Rinaldo notes the women she spoke with were not demanding perfectly equal relationships, but she says they did expect that the marriage involve shared responsibility. When that expectation was not met, she says, it often became a turning point for the relationship.

Economic change has played a critical role in enabling this cultural shift in Indonesia, Rinaldo says. As Indonesia’s economy has grown, more women have gained access to education and paid employment. She says this has expanded their options while also reducing the monetary risks associated with divorce.

In Indonesia, the term "imam" typically refers to a Muslim religious leader. However, in marriage, some Muslim women use it to describe their husbands. (Photo: women at mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia. Mohammed Alim/Pexels)

In some cases, women are the primary earners in their families, which can fundamentally reshape the power dynamics in a relationship. Meanwhile, the experience of divorce tends to differ depending upon Indonesian women’s socioeconomic status. Among lower-income women, divorce is often handled pragmatically, while for middle-class women the process is often more complicated because it often involves shared property and assets, Rinaldo says.

“They really need the assistance from the court to help unwind that kind of situation,” she explains.

From shame to relief and finding family support

Despite various challenges, Indonesian women who divorced their husbands told Rinaldo they ultimately do not regret their decision. While a few expressed feelings of shame—particularly in relation to family expectations—the most common feeling was one of solace.

“I would say the predominant feeling was one of relief,” Rinaldo says.

Regarding their specific motivations for seeking a divorce, Rinaldo says a number of the women told her they did so because they were concerned about exposing their children to unhealthy marital conflict or dysfunction. “They didn’t want that to be the model of marriage that their children were growing up with.”

One issue that many divorced women faced was difficulty obtaining child support that they were owed from their husbands. These payments are often not well-enforced by the Islamic courts. Nevertheless, even when they are entitled to financial support from their ex-husbands, Rinaldo says many women choose not to pursue it because they prefer to have nothing to do with their ex-spouses.

“I think this all reflects broader changes in society, where women today are more financially independent. They have strong support systems today, and they also face less social stigma around divorce than in the past,” she adds.

Faith, authority and the meaning of ‘imam’

One particularly revealing aspect of Rinaldo’s research involves the concept of the “imam.” In Indonesia, the term typically refers to a Muslim religious leader. However, in marriage, some Muslim women use it to describe their husbands.

“The idea is that the husband is . . . their own personal Islamic leader,” Rinaldo explains. This reflects a traditional expectation that wives should obey their husbands. Yet even women who embrace this idea are willing to leave marriages when their expectations are not met, she adds.

“People marrying at later ages and wanting a more meaningful marital relationship, more people remaining single or in non-marital partnerships and people having fewer children are changes happening around the globe.”

In one case, Rinaldo says a woman she interviewed sought guidance from religious authorities about whether to stay in her unhappy marriage or seek a divorce. As a result of the answers she received to her queries, the woman decided the answer was not to endure the marriage but to find “a better imam,” she says.

Rinaldo says that phrase captures the tension at the heart of these transformations: Women are not rejecting their religion but instead are reinterpreting it.

A broader global story about marriage and divorce

Although Rinaldo’s research focuses on Indonesia, she says she believes her work reflects broader global trends. Rising education levels, economic development and evolving gender roles are reshaping marriage and families in many societies, even as religious tradition continues to play a powerful role, she says.

“I think what happens in Indonesia can illuminate the kinds of things that we’re seeing across many countries in the global south, other developing countries and, even more broadly, some similar dynamics in the United States,” she says. “People marrying at later ages and wanting a more meaningful marital relationship, more people remaining single or in non-marital partnerships and people having fewer children are changes happening around the globe.”

In Indonesia, Rinaldo says, those changes are unfolding through the interplay of local culture, legal institutions and individual agency. She says the result is neither a rejection of tradition nor a simple embrace of modernity, but more so a negotiation—a process though which women are redefining marriage from within. And in doing so, Rinaldo says, they are quietly reshaping one of society’s most fundamental institutions.

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CU �Ǹ�Թ� sociologist Rachel Rinaldo’s research uncovers how Indonesian women are re-shaping marriage and its end within Islamic law, with implications far beyond Southeast Asia.

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Top photo: Josh Estey/Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Meet the workers capitalism calls disposable

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:37:29 +0000

Meet the workers capitalism calls disposable Rachel Sauer Tue, 05/12/2026 - 11:37

The constant threat of dismissal keeps workers compliant, says CU �Ǹ�Թ� researcher Shae Freydenlund. (Photo: Rohingya Creative Production/Pexels)

Cody DeBos

CU �Ǹ�Թ� researcher Shae Frydenlund raises questions about a system that profits when workers are left behind

Even before the sun rises over the wholesale food markets of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the work is unending. Produce and poultry move fast, destined for the city’s restaurants and grocers, to be part of meals served in a few short hours.

During the summer months and around holidays, the workers who make this daily cycle happen are mostly stateless Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. They often work for weeks without taking a day off from the back-breaking labor. Doing so risks one being blackmailed.

When fall arrives and business slows, the same workers who were indispensable just weeks earlier are let go without warning. Sometimes the layoff lasts a day, other times for multiple weeks. Left with no other options, these Rohingya workers are put in an unthinkable predicament, unable to provide for their families or plan for life’s tomorrows.

Shae Frydenlund, an assistant teaching professor in CU �Ǹ�Թ�'s Center for Asian Studies, asks in her research, "What does it mean to be left behind by capitalism?"

This is the world Shae Frydenlund moved into for nine months, living alongside Rohingya day laborers just north of the city. The stories she heard posit a foundational question about the politics driving both the local and global economy: What does it mean to be left behind by capitalism?

From the mountains to the market

Frydenlund, an assistant teaching professor in the �Ǹ�Թ� Center for Asian Studies, arrived at her most recent research with a decade of expertise. After graduating from Colgate University in 2010, she spent a year as an IBM Thomas J. Watson Fellow, traveling between the Tibetan Plateau, the Andes and the Amazon to study global trade in high-value medicinal plants and animal products.

After a brief skiing detour in Vail, her passion for research brought her back to academia.

“My master’s thesis focused on labor relations, ethnicity and race in Nepal’s Everest industry,” she says. “My PhD dissertation was a study of how Rohingyas, ethnic minorities violently displaced from the Chittagong Hill Tract region of what is today northwest Myanmar, became invaluable to industrial manufacturing and meatpacking sectors in Colorado.”

Her most recent paper, published in New Political Economy, grew directly from this work.

“The paper we are talking about is based on a chapter of my dissertation, which theorizes the relationship between refugee labor and the accumulation of capital more broadly,” says Frydenlund.

A new way of thinking about surplus

The heart of Frydenlund’s research is a concept she calls “dialectical disposability.”

“To put it simply, the idea of ‘dialectical disposability’ is about recognizing the constant movement and change that shape experiences of work—including unemployment,” she says.

For many years, scholars have used the idea of “surplus population” to describe groups who are unemployed and largely shut out of the formal economy. This includes refugees, stateless people, and indigenous communities. Embedded in this term is an assumption that these are people capitalism has passed over and left behind.

Frydenlund pushes back on this, drawing on Marxian political economic theory and nine months of on-the-ground ethnographic research. She argues that reality is both more dynamic and more nefarious.

“Not only are unemployed people valuable to ‘the economy,’ I suggest that this value is created from the process of jerking people in and out of the so-called surplus population,” she says, adding, “People who are deemed economically useless are far from it.”

In other words, instability created by employers is the game. Indeed, those who need labor for market work in Kuala Lumpur and industrial jobs in the U.S. alike depend on this cycle of hiring and firing workers who are easy to exploit.

The constant threat of dismissal keeps workers compliant, says CU �Ǹ�Թ� researcher Shae Freydenlund. (Photo: Rohingya Creative Production/Pexels)

The constant threat of dismissal keeps workers compliant. After all, there is always someone willing to take your place.

This system also suppresses wages and keeps labor costs flexible enough to absorb the shocks of a volatile food market. However, it’s the workers who pay the price.

Levers of exploitation

Understanding how the system works requires a look at the structures that make it possible. Frydenlund is direct about what those levers are.

“Exploitation requires the production of difference. This is at the heart of theorizations of racial capitalism,” she says.

In Malaysia, that difference is manufactured through a combination of racial hierarchy, statelessness and immigration enforcement.

Rohingya workers—most of whom lack official documentation—are racially profiled, publicly framed as threats to the economy and denied the legal protections afforded to even low-wage Malaysian workers. This leaves them with little-to-no leverage.

“Immigration enforcement is vital for maintaining an apartheid labor system that separates workers based on citizenship status and nationality. Employers also offload the costs of immigration violations onto workers themselves, leveraging the risk of employer-paid fines as justification for paying lower wages,” Frydenlund says.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same mechanics are at work in the United States, where Frydenlund’s earlier research followed Rohingya refugees into meatpacking and industrial manufacturing jobs in cities like Denver and Greeley.

“I found that the refugee resettlement system acts as a labor broker, supplying firms with cheap, supposedly docile workers,” she says.

The theft of time

In her fieldwork, Frydenlund witnessed the human cost of this system up close. In households where unpredictable, weeks-long unemployment is the norm, families struggle to pay the bills and plan for the future. The question of when work might return hangs like a dark shadow over everything.

“I would describe the impacts of precarity as a form of psychological torture that makes people frantic. I think of the insecure and temporary employment that has become so common now, from platform work to Amazon warehouse work, as a system of organized crime that steals future time from people,” Frydenlund says.

The consequences are far reaching.

"We can’t fully understand exploitation, uneven development or climate change without detailed attention to places and people."

“Being chronically unable to plan for future purchases, rent, hospital bills, childcare, food, vacation (because we all deserve to rest and play), it’s a form of physical and psychological violence,” she says.

Repairing the system

Giving refugees the legal right to work is a common policy response to the type of labor exploitation Frydenlund studies. She understands the appeal but rejects this “fix” as insufficient.

Legalizing access to formal labor markets, she argues, leaves the underlying structure of racialized inequality untouched. Malaysian food markets, like American meatpacking centers, are embedded within systems of racial hierarchy and economic exploitation that aren’t fixed by issuing a work permit.

What Frydenlund observed in the field, however, offers some hope. In Kuala Lumpur’s markets and beyond, she documented communities building solidarity outside the formal economy. From coalition work to engagement with unions and everyday acts of mutual care, these communities are slowly unifying.

“This is solidarity in unpaid social reproduction work, and it’s magnificent,” she says.

It’s a reminder that the workers at the center of her research are more than data points in a global economic behemoth. They are people. Paying close attention to them, Frydenlund argues, is the only way to understand the abstract forces shaping all our lives.

“We can’t fully understand exploitation, uneven development or climate change without detailed attention to places and people,” she says.

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CU �Ǹ�Թ� researcher Shae Frydenlund raises questions about a system that profits when workers are left behind.

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Top image: Rohingya man U Kyaw Win Chay prepares netting (Photo: Myanmar Now/Wikimedia Commons)

As a new space race takes shape, a CU �Ǹ�Թ� class asks: Do we understand China?

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:16:14 +0000

As a new space race takes shape, a CU �Ǹ�Թ� class asks: Do we understand China? Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/29/2026 - 11:16

'China's Space Dream,' ASIA 4100, brings aerospace engineers, Chinese language students and international affairs majors into one room—and a visiting journalist from the South China Morning Post into the conversation

Days after Artemis II splashed down in the Pacific, returning four astronauts from the first crewed voyage beyond low Earth orbit in more than half a century, a science journalist who has spent years reporting on China's space program from inside its scientific institutions sat down with a CU �Ǹ�Թ� classroom full of students who had been tracking the same story from the outside.

The conversation that followed put the American triumph in a wider frame. When the International Space Station was being designed in the 1990s, China had little to offer a partnership even if one had been on the table. Three decades later, the country operates its own permanently crewed space station, has returned the first-ever samples from the far side of the Moon, and is on track to bring back the first Martian soil before the United States does. The students, aerospace engineering majors sitting next to Chinese language and civilizations majors, history students alongside international affairs specialists, already knew these facts. What they wanted from Ling Xin was something harder to find out, what does this moment look like from the other side of the space race?

ASIA 4100, “China’s Space Dream: Long March to the Moon and Beyond,” is a course developed through the support of CU �Ǹ�Թ�’s interdisciplinary Space Minor and taught by Lauren Collins, a teaching assistant professor and director of the Asian Studies program in the Center for Asian Studies. Now in its second iteration, the class will be offered again in spring 2027.

Collins designed the course around an observation that kept surfacing in her own work. US-China space competition is one of the defining dynamics of a shifting world order, but the people who understand the engineering often lack the cultural and historical context, and the people who study China often aren’t following the technical developments.

Four astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft atop the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket launch on the agency’s Artemis II test flight, Wednesday, April 1, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Photo: NASA)

“The mix in the classroom is the whole point,” Collins said. “Aerospace and astronomy students know something about orbital mechanics and mission design. Chinese language and civilizations students know something about political culture and history. International affairs students understand geopolitics. But the interconnectedness across all of those domains is what surprises everyone, including me.”

The course weaves together Chinese culture, history, geopolitical contexts, and the race to the Moon as it unfolds in real time. Students study the origins of China’s space program, the role of the “space dream” in Chinese national identity, the Wolf Amendment that bars NASA from bilateral cooperation with China, the military dimensions of space technology, and the case for collaboration.

“Warfare and military applications are clearly an issue,” Collins said. “But the need to collaborate is so key, too. We’re talking about planetary challenges that affect all of us like climate monitoring, asteroid deflection, space debris, deep-space science. These issues don’t respect national borders.”

Learning from a visiting journalist

Ling Xin’s visit to the class came through the Conference on World Affairs classroom visit program, which pairs CWA speakers with CU �Ǹ�Թ� courses during conference week. The 78th annual CWA, running April 13–16, featured more than 60 speakers across 50 panels at the Limelight Hotel �Ǹ�Թ� and across campus.

For Collins, the match was ideal. Ling Xin is one of a small number of journalists working in English who can draw on firsthand access to Chinese scientific institutions, fluency in Mandarin, and formal journalism training in the United States. A former writer for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she holds a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University and has published in Science, Scientific American, Nature, and MIT Technology Review. She has reported extensively on China’s Chang’e lunar missions, the Tiangong space station, and the movement of Chinese scientists between US and Chinese institutions, a phenomenon known as the “reverse brain drain”.

“Having a journalist like Ling Xin in the classroom is a different experience from reading an article,” Collins said. “She can tell students what Chinese space scientists actually say when a reporter asks them about the competition with NASA”.

The timing of the visit was perfect. Artemis II had splashed down on April 10 after a successful nine-day circumlunar flight, making astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen the first humans to fly past the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Koch became the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit. The mission was a triumph (and a relief) after many delays.

But even as the Artemis II crew was being celebrated, the competitive landscape was shifting beneath the surface. NASA announced in February that the first crewed lunar landing has been pushed from Artemis III to Artemis IV, now targeted for 2028. The Lunar Gateway station was cancelled. And Congress effectively killed NASA’s Mars Sample Return program in the FY2026 spending bill, leaving nearly 30 carefully collected sample tubes sitting in Mars’s Jezero Crater with no funded plan to bring them home.

"Let's Go to the Moon!" by Yuko Shimizu

Accelerating push to space

China, meanwhile, is accelerating. Its Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission is targeted for launch in 2028, with samples expected back on Earth around 2031. If NASA doesn’t revive its own program, China will likely become the first nation to return Martian soil, a milestone with enormous scientific and symbolic weight. These debates are a key substance of class discussion.

“When you put an aerospace engineering student and a Chinese civilizations student in the same conversation about whether or not space should be treated as a global commons, you get an analysis that neither of them could produce alone,” Collins said. “Knowledge is co-created.”

The Wolf Amendment, a congressional provision renewed annually since 2011 that bars NASA from bilateral activities with Chinese space agencies, is a recurring thread in the course. The policy, which effectively excluded China from the International Space Station partnership, is widely credited with accelerating China’s independent development of the Tiangong station, the Long March 5 rocket family, and the full suite of crewed spaceflight technology that now positions the country as NASA’s primary competitor.

In 2026 alone, China plans to launch two crewed missions to Tiangong, including its first year-long stay, and host a Pakistani astronaut, the station’s first international crew member. The Chang’e-7 lunar probe, targeting the Moon’s south pole to search for water ice, is scheduled to launch later this year. A crewed lunar landing is targeted before 2030.

Collins also brings science fiction into the classroom to explore the cultural dimensions of space ambition. The global success of Liu Cixin’s “Three-Body Problem” trilogy has made Chinese science fiction a shared cultural reference point that crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. “Science fiction adds a layer that unites all of us,” Collins said. “These are universal concerns about what technology is doing to human civilization, especially now in the age of AI.”

The course is one of several electives offered through CU �Ǹ�Թ�’s Space Minor, a campus-wide program open to students regardless of major that provides an interdisciplinary foundation in all aspects of space. The minor, part of CU �Ǹ�Թ�’s Grand Challenge initiative, requires five courses: the foundational “Pathway to Space” and four electives drawn from departments across the university, ranging from aerospace engineering to music to environmental design.

CU �Ǹ�Թ� has a singular claim on the subject. The university is the only academic institution in the world to have sent instruments to every planet in the solar system and Pluto, and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics has been a leader in space research since 1948.

“This university has extraordinary depth in the technical side of space,” Collins said. “What the Space Minor makes possible is courses like mine that bring the human dimensions like culture, history, geopolitics, and collaboration into the same conversation. That’s what students will need to navigate a world where the US and China are building competing lunar bases and competing for leadership in the space economy.”

ASIA 4100, “China’s Space Dream: Long March to the Moon and Beyond,” will next be offered in spring 2027. The course is open to all CU �Ǹ�Թ� students and counts toward the Space Minor.

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Top illustration: A Chinese flag added to famed photo of astronaut James Irwin on the moon. (Original photo: NASA)

Looking at the big picture (book) of East Asia

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 20:36:45 +0000

Looking at the big picture (book) of East Asia Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/12/2026 - 13:36

Lily Elliott (EBio, AsianSt'25) reads Rice to elementary school students. (Photo: Christy Go)

Alexandra Phelps

An innovative project in the Program for Teaching East Asia brings culture and history to Colorado K-12 students

Colorado students don’t need to book a flight or get a passport to experience East Asia, because a program from the �Ǹ�Թ� is bringing the region’s culture and history to them.

For the past two spring semesters, students participating in a CU �Ǹ�Թ� outreach program to K-12 classrooms have been using a favorite childhood medium: picture books.

The program is coordinated by Lynn Kalinauskas, director for the Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA); Catherine Ishida, assistant director for Japan and Korea Projects; and Christy Go, the program’s graduate student assistant. They have varied their program to involve many East Asian countries, yet the central goal of their program has always been to develop students' cross-cultural understanding.

Lynn Kalinauskas (left), director for the Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA), and graduate student assistant Christy Go (right), along with colleague Catherine Ishida, assistant director for Japan and Korea Projects, coordinate a CU �Ǹ�Թ� CU �Ǹ�Թ� outreach program to K-12 classrooms that uses a favorite childhood medium: picture books.

Building a program

Three years ago, Kalinauskas, who is also the co-director of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, envisioned a new classroom outreach program that would bring East Asia into K-12 Colorado classrooms via picture books.

In spring 2024, with funding support from the Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship and the Freeman Foundation, the program used books that taught elementary and middle school students about natural science. Books in the program, such as Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean and When the Sakura Bloom, allowed students to see agriculture and plant cycles within an East Asian context.

“Picture books offer a wealth of information. You can look at an image and learn so much,” remarks Kalinauskas. Go noted in an article about the first run of the program that teachers were receptive to the medium that offered a beautiful window into another culture. One educator who is grateful for what the program has done for their classroom said, “The carefully chosen picture book prompted interesting reflections and questions. The artifacts enhanced children's understanding and appreciation of the topic. I appreciated how the presenter drew connections between the children's lives and the experiences of the protagonist of the story.”

As the program progressed, Kalinauskas and her colleagues expanded its scope to cover a new topic. In spring 2025, students learned about the geography of East Asia, and the spring 2026 semester will center on learning about the contributions of famous Japanese people.

Pictures of East Asia

The process of choosing which picture books will be used involves a number of factors. At CU �Ǹ�Թ�, the Program for Teaching East Asia is a coordinating site for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. This national organization administers the Freeman Book Awards that recognize quality books for children and young adults that contribute meaningfully to an understanding of East and Southeast Asia. Many of the books chosen for the project have won the Freeman award.

Excellence in Civic & Community Engagement Programming Awards

The Teaching East Asia through Picture Books program recently received an Excellence in Civic & Community Engagement Programming Award from Campus Compact. The award recognizes the many forms that effective on-campus civic and community engagement can take to address areas of need and make deep and long-lasting positive change.

In the spring 2025 semester, the five books chosen were The Ocean Calls: A Haenyeo Mermaid Story by Tina Cho, Warrior Princess: The Story of Khutulun by Sally Deng, The Sound of Silence by Katrina Goldsaito, Rice by Hong Chen Xu and Mommy’s Hometown by Hope Lim.

A book such as Rice can be an important addition to the curriculum as it highlights agricultural practices in southern China, informing the reader about the impact geography has on people’s daily lives, their environment and cultural practices.

Students teaching students

Organizers note that the program is innovative not because it teaches students through picture books, but because it gives an internship opportunity to CU �Ǹ�Թ� students of all disciplines and brings these new interns into Colorado classrooms.

Every fall, TEA staff begin recruiting for the spring outreach. Applicants have to submit short essays and participate in an interview. It is important that students selected be excited to teach about East Asia.

The process of working with the CU �Ǹ�Թ� students is individualized and collaborative. Go says she works as a mentor for the students, adding that the staff work with student interns on multiple levels from how they should dress when presenting in classrooms, school procedures and what to expect when teaching children. Students work with the staff to identify the important characteristics of their assigned book and develop a lesson plan. Because students may visit different grade levels, they also learn to adapt their lessons to different age groups.

Teachers participating in the program often try to align the book selection with the material they’re already teaching. “We had kindergarten and second grade classrooms that were learning about the life cycles of plants, so they chose When the Sakura Bloom because they wanted to talk about the connection (between the East Asian representation and their science),” reflects Go. “Tracing the life cycle of the Sakura (cherry blossom) tree in the story not only reinforced student learning of the plant life cycle but also engaged students in discussing cultural events inspired by these natural processes through the presentation of hanami (cherry blossom–viewing picnic events) in the story.”

Lily Elliott (EBio, AsianSt'25) reads Rice to elementary school students. (Photo: Christy Go)

In the classrooms, CU student interns provide background information for students. The CU interns each read aloud while pointing out cultural representations, key characters and concepts, location, relationships between characters and relevant context related to the themes, science or geography. One CU student teaching The Ocean Calls introduced different sea life and later asked students while they were reading to point out the animals. This is followed by a lesson plan and an interactive activity. For one student teaching Sound of Silence, a book about a boy trying to find silence in the city of Tokyo, “our student found sound clips of different places in Tokyo and had students listen and guess where they were,” remembers Go. “Students loved it!” The presentations are like “a traveling show,” says Kalinauskas, who oversees each step of this process.

Beyond their involvement in coordinating with teachers, choosing books and mentoring student interns, staff take their commitment to the program one step further by driving student interns to schools all around Colorado.

More than a cup of noodles

In the first year, 64 classrooms participated; the following year, interns presented in 49 classrooms. The classes are usually in the Denver-�Ǹ�Թ� metro area but have reached as far as Greeley. While mainly aimed at elementary classrooms, program organizers have also brought their CU interns to middle schools and one high school classroom. Additionally, if a school is too far to be reached by car, like one school in Grand Junction, interns have done interactive Zoom presentations.

This program has been enriching for Colorado K-12 students while simultaneously being a great educational experience for the CU �Ǹ�Թ� student interns. Kalinauskas and Go have found that through this program, many students have gained professional skills and experience that have expanded their career pathways. Two former graduate students in education are now teaching in local schools. Another student intern, who taught a book on Korea, was so inspired that she moved to Korea to teach English.

"Picture books offer a wealth of information. You can look at an image and learn so much."

For Colorado teachers, the program doesn’t end when interns leave their classroom. Although the presentations cover only one book, each classroom receives a copy of every book in that semester’s program for students to read for years to come. Teachers also receive cultural information and teaching resources to engage students in learning about all the books in the program. TEA also hosts a fall in-person workshop for Colorado teachers focused on the same books. Kalinauskas and Go note that although they aim to expand their program to many new classrooms, some teachers love it so much they have participated in multiple semesters.

TEA is bringing its program into Colorado schools next spring. The focus for Spring 2026 will be on the biographies of famous Japanese people and Japanese culture. The program features the story of a young female artist in Japan during the Edo period, the first woman to summit Mount Everest and a story about how Momofuku Ando created one of the world’s most popular foods, instant ramen.

“The picture book Magic Ramen not only teaches us about how instant ramen was created but takes us back in time to Japan post-World War II, where a young man was trying to feed people in Osaka,” says Kalinauskas. “We don’t always think about that historical context when we are just having our cup of noodles.”

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An innovative project in the Program for Teaching East Asia brings culture and history to Colorado K-12 students.

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Top image: Isaac Kou (CompSci, EBio'25) reads "The Sound of Silence" to first-grade students. (Photo: Christy Go)

Exploring Colorado’s untapped geothermal energy potential

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 21:00:33 +0000

Exploring Colorado’s untapped geothermal energy potential Rachel Sauer Wed, 10/22/2025 - 15:00

A major question looms over Colorado’s energy future: Why does geothermal energy—a natural renewable resource—remain virtually untapped?

Assistant Teaching Professor Shae Frydenlund of the �Ǹ�Թ� Center for Asian Studies, along with Professor Bri-Mathias Hodge of the Department of Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering, will examine the technological and social barriers that have held back geothermal development in Colorado.

Learn more about this research

A major question looms over Colorado’s energy future: Why does geothermal energy—a natural renewable resource—remain virtually untapped?

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Center for Asian Studies

U.S. teachers explore Taiwan with CU �Ǹ�Թ� faculty and outreach program

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