Current NYU Shanghai Global Research Initiatives Fellows

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (September 19 - December 16)： 

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (September 7 - December 18)：

Pfender’s dissertation uses archival materials, theory from the history of science and technology studies, and uncirculated avant-garde films and music, to describe the place of corporate patronage and the intellectual history of cybernetics in the history of electronics and recording technology in the mid-20th century American musical avant-garde. Pfender’s specific research subjects include obscure tape-music pioneers Louis and Bebe Barron, whose working methods (building, overloading, and recording circuits) and creative philosophy were informed by early cybernetics work at the Macy conferences, specifically work by Norbert Wiener, Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead, and Heinz von Foerster, among others. Pfender seeks to work with NYU Professor Anna Greenspan, providing historical perspectives on the work done by the research hub Hacked Matter, which deals with contemporary maker culture in Shanghai, a creative culture which has many points of contact with the Barrons' work. A further possible point of exchange is the cybernetics-inspired philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, specifically his theory of the transindividuation of technical objects. Bernard Stiegler's notion of an "anthropological technics" may also bear significant relation to the relatively loose intentionality inherent in the Barrons' work, and hence also to the circuit-bending hacker culture in contemporary Shanghai.

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (Sept 3 - Nov 30)：

Gill is studying fiction writing and working on her thesis: a novella about the parallel lives of one woman: with children in one section and without children in another. Gill is interested in studying in Shanghai, as she’d like to put her protagonist as far away from America as possible as a means to challenge her during an impending divorce, something devastating, bewildering, and rather exhilarating that she is currently facing after 15 years of marriage, and with no children. Gill believe’s China's distinctive culture, people, and topography would inspire her to enrich this novella with an authentic write what you know: a woman on a journey to discover life on the other side of a broken marriage "hnyn" in Chinese. China has a long, storied, and intriguing history of love and union, with roots in Confucianism and the lore of Nwa and Fu Xi.

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (September 2 - November 29)：

This research project explores pre- and in-service Mandarin teachers’ language ideologies regarding Chinese varieties and language use. In the Han Chinese context, there is a large and complex intersection of languages and cultures subsumed under the single linguistic umbrella of Chinese. However, Mandarin is often referred to as the Chinese language, while other varieties are called dialects or “fangyan”. Indeed, the potential role of Chinese varieties in Mandarin classes remains contested for educational stakeholders. In the current project, through a constructivist grounded theory approach, Cai has conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 pre- and in-service Mandarin teachers studying or working in the New York metropolitan area. The interviews are based on their perceptions and experiences towards language diversity, language use, and Mandarin teaching. The outcome will be a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Chinese varieties and the roles teachers can play in clarifying the sociocultural landscape of Chinese for their students and peers. She is planning to check relevant references and language policy documents at the library at NYU Shanghai. Cai would also like to discuss with professors and researchers the current issues of Chinese language variation and methods of qualitative data analysis. The NYU Shanghai setting is ideal for the study context as the Shanghainese variety is widely spoken side by side with Standard Mandarin.

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (January 6 - February 14)：

On June 1st, 1988, New York City-based, Chicago-born African-American artist Frederick J. Brown became the first Western artist to exhibit works of art in the Museum of the People’s Revolution (now the National Museum of China), the second Western artist to display works of art in People’s Republic of China, and the first artist of African descent to do so. Spanning a twenty-two year period, Brown’s retrospective exhibition included over one hundred abstract and figurative expressionist paintings exploring a breadth of themes including American history and interculturalism, Black American identity and culture, spirituality, cosmology, art historical canon, and memory. The research Brown will conduct examines Frederick J. Brown’s 1988 retrospective in Beijing, China, considering how Brown’s exhibition and artwork became a catalyst for China’s Avant-Garde Art Movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which broke away from state-sponsored social realism towards individualistic expression. Today, China stands as the world’s second-largest art market with Shanghai as the financial focal point. Using New York University’s GRI Shanghai center as a base of operations, he will investigate how the contemporary Chinese art market has developed out of an initial push for new modes of artistic expression that reflected the individual experience within the state, which began with Brown’s 1988 retrospective. In thinking of the faculty present at NYU’s Shanghai campus, the expertise Barbara Edelstein-Zhang, Maya Kramer, and Jian-Jun Zhang would be of great benefit to Brown’s research. Furthermore, the myriad resources on contemporary Chinese art available at NYU Shanghai’s library and art gallery, in tandem with the campus’s proximity to the Shanghai Art Museum and China Art Museum, make NYU Shanghai an ideal home location for his research. In addition to his stay at NYU Shanghai, during his four-week fellowship, he will be traveling to Beijing under the support of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in order to conduct interviews with artists present at Frederick J. Brown’s twenty-two-year retrospective, and visit the Central Academy of Fine Arts where Brown lectured prior to and during his 1988 retrospective. He will bring to light a critical moment when an African-American painter, sponsored by both the Chinese Communist Party and the United States government, opened the door of creative possibility for a new generation of Chinese artists, laying the foundation for the Chinese contemporary avant-garde while demonstrating the power of art to dissolve the perception of ideological, social, and political boundaries.