Eric Schluessel

Let's get you to high table in our adorable hall

Oh right! I should announce that here!

Balancing What Can Be Said with What Can Only Be Implied | ChinaFile The young Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet is now in a Chinese prison for “actively participating in terrorist activities.” He was likely targeted because he had studied in Turkey between 2010 and 2016. It is always difficult for what China calls “ethnic minority” (i.e. non-Han Chinese) filmmakers to make the films they want to make inside China, where review by the state Film

The Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet Ikram is behind bars on political charges. Shelly Kraicer reviews his four short films, and explores what they tell us about how “ethnic minority” artists can—and cannot—work inside China's system:

www.chinafile.com/re...

Strange choices from the university whose library is building America's biggest collection of Uyghur books. And a press that published @seanroberts.bsky.social The War on the Uyghurs.
press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
library.princeton.edu/about/librar...

Slightly blurry selfie of me, a middle aged white woman wearing glasses, holding a copy of my book after just having unboxed it.

Back cover of my book, which includes the summary and two blurbs that are available in full here: https://press.umich.edu/Books/T/Teaching-and-Transformation-in-Popular-Confucian-Literature-of-the-Late-Qing3

Author copy fresh out of the box! I'm shaking!

@uofmpress.bsky.social made the publication process so smooth! And huge thanks for hosting an open access version, which will be available on my official publication date: August 5.

But if you'd rather buy a hard copy, use code UMWEB30 for 30% off!

Introduction to Chaghatay, Summer 2025 This is an application form for the not-for-credit summer course in introductory Chaghatay language to be held through the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University in Summer ...

This summer, June 7-August 7, I'll be running an online course in "Introduction to Chaghatay!" 12 meetings. $280 for the whole thing. Open access textbook + videos to walk you through grammar and readings. Fees will support GW's Uyghur Studies Initiative. Apply here!

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

They’re back!! ❤️😭🫡

Aw, thanks, Emily!

Trump’s Cultural Revolution | by Orville Schell - Project Syndicate Orville Schell sees obvious and troubling parallels between the US president and Mao Zedong.

My friend and mentor Orville Schell puts very clearly what many people with experience in 20th century China are thinking:

The parallels with the nihilism and chaos-for-its-own-sake of the Cultural Revolution years.

www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/d...

Available today: a report, authored by myself and my friend and colleague @davidstroup.bsky.social , exploring the aims and impacts of the sinicisation of Islam campaign in Hui communities. See here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I live every day in mortal fear that this site will cease to function.

I’ll do you one better: Stein’s maps, stitched together, with each location pinned: dsr.nii.ac.jp/digital-maps... Hedin and Huang Wenbi’s are elsewhere on the site. Essential resource for historians of the region.

Monday, Nov 18, 4:00–5:00 Eastern Time/10:00–11:00 CET, we'll host an online talk by Prof. Don Wyatt on Africans in Early Modern China! Register here.

www.eventbrite.com/e/through-po...

Hosted by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies/East Asia NRC

Aw, thanks!!

There are ages of reason and ages of 囧

Wait wait wait wait what about 囧?

🀄📚😩

The Tarikh-i Ḥamidi: A Late-Qing Uyghur History Research on the modern history of Xinjiang has undergone a steady expansion in recent years. Owing to the sustained contributions of researchers ever since the publication in 1986 of Andrew Forbes's s...

Um, "Sinology" 🀄, I guess? (Emoji for labeling purposes.)

*Two* positive reviews of my Tarikh-i Ḥamidi translation came out this week!

From Jun Sugawara in the JAS: doi.org/10.1215/0021...
From Tristan Brown in the Journal of Chinese History: doi.org/10.1017/jch....

Florida’s New College Trashes Library of Books at Gender and Diversity Center PEN America has condemned New College of Florida’s destruction of a student-run library of books on gender, part of the College’s abrupt closure of the student-led gender and diversity center on Thurs...

"An ideologically motivated effort to silence viewpoints and remove resources and information on gender on the New College campus." My statement at PEN America on New College literally tossing the library of its student-led gender and diversity center into a dumpster: pen.org/press-releas...

It's already on my graduate readings syllabus for this fall. :)

sometimes it consoles me to remember whatever work I do today, it cannot be worse than the Cybertruck

And Y. Yvon Wang (Toronto), "'Taking Life Too Lightly' or 'Martyred for Righteousness'? Officials' Suicides in the High #Qing"

This is a great spread of classic topics in #Ming-#Qing history, revisited through new lenses. Love being on the LIC editorial board.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Kwangmin Kim (CU–Boulder), "Fighting to Keep the Land Wild: Huifang and Vernacular Forestry in Nineteenth-Century #Manchuria" #Qing (3/4)

muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Yiyun Peng (more Chicago!), "Mountains as the Lifeline": Shifting Agricultural Policies in Upland Southeast China, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries" #Ming #Qing ... (2/4)

muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

The June 2024 issue of Late Imperial China is out! muse.jhu.edu/issue/52704 We have four articles on gender, agriculture, forestry, and suicide:

You Wang (Chicago), "Women Till and Women Weave: Rice, Cotton, and the Gendered Division of Labor in Jiangnan" #Qing ... (1/4)

Sun Chuanfang, as misspelled by one of my students, 2021

The Sigur Center for Asian Studies at GW seeks an Assistant Director (Taiwan specialist)! ~25% research and ~75% admin. Starts August. AD would report to me as director and help lead a great budget and events team. Taiwan expertise is essential, as is experience managing budgets and writing grants.

“UCLA’s administration has taken a decidedly hands-off approach to its student protesters, allowing them to continue their peaceful assembly. Seeing it’s possible to proceed without violence makes it even clearer that the cops and administrators harming students are making an active choice.”

I've said this several times but it is worth repeating:
You don't ask an LLM something, you are giving it a prompt.
You don't get back an answer, you get plausible sounding text.

Using the incorrect words for what they do allows the people peddling the technology to get away with ridiculous claims.

Currently revisiting Season 6 and just watched “Far Beyond the Stars.” Amazing storytelling, and I’ve learned to appreciate Avery Brooks more every year. (This season’s goofy episode/serious episode alternation still works, too.)