Reaching for the Stars as a Global Citizen

Dr. Peter Larson earned his Ph.D. in history from Rutgers in 2004. His most recent book, Rethinking the Great Transition: Community and Economic Growth in Durham, 1349-1660, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. His new project is a long-term study of commercialization in northern England. Larson joined UCF in 2006 and has been the chair of the Department of History since 2016. He has been Associate Dean of the UCF College of Arts and Humanities since 2023.

Dr. Yogesh Joshi is Indian Community Endowed Assistant Professor and Director, India Center. Dr Joshi is co-author of three books: India and Nuclear Asia: Forces Doctrines and Dangers (Georgetown University Press, 2018), Asia’s Emerging Balance of Power: The US ‘Pivot’ and Indian Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and India’s Nuclear Policy: A Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Before joining UCF, Dr Joshi led the National Security and Foreign Policy program at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. He also taught at Yale-NUS College. He was a MacArthur and Stanton Nuclear Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. He is also an alumnus of Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy, Columbia University, International Nuclear History Boot Camp, Woodrow Wilson Center and Strategic Forces Boot Camp, Dartmouth University. He has a Doctorate in International Politics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Trained in folklore studies (MA, Indiana University 1991; PhD University of Pennsylvania 1993), Arzu Öztürkmen is a professor of folklore, oral history, and performance studies at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. Following her dissertation on ‘Folklore and Nationalism in Turkey’ (1993), she published several articles on the cultural history of Turkey. She is also the author of The Delight of Turkish Dizi: Memory, Genre, and Politics of Television in Turkey (2022) and the co-editor of Medieval and Early Modern Performance in the Eastern Mediterranean (2014) and Celebration, Entertainment, and Theater in the Ottoman World (2014). Öztürkmen served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Women’s Studies, the Journal of American Folklore, and the International Journal of the Middle East. She also served on the boards of oral history and folklore associations like ICTMD, IOHA and SIEF. She has acted as the Chair of the Confucius Institute at Boğaziçi University from 2013 to 2021, and is currently chairing the History Department and the Asian Studies Center at Boğaziçi University. She recently received the lifetime Fellow title of the American Folklore Society.

Giray Fidan is a Professor of Chinese Translation and Interpreting Department at Ankara Haci Bayram Veli University in Ankara. He received his B.A., M.A., and PhD. in Sinology from Ankara University and studied at the Beijing Language and Culture University and the Min Zu University of China. Fidan conducted research at Princeton University as a visiting scholar. His research interests are Sino Turkish, China Near Eastern relations, Chinese perception of the Ottomans and Republican Turkey.

Prof. Fidan’s scholarly contributions particularly in translating seminal Chinese classics into Turkish. His translation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War has achieved remarkable success, selling over 400,000 copies and undergoing 29 reprints. He has also translated Dao De Jing, Zhuangzi, The Analects of Confucius, and Lao She’s The Cat Country. He is currently undertaking the significant project of translating Dream of the Red Chamber. Beyond translation, he is the author of three books and more than 40 articles and books on China. Dr. Fidan is a Distinguished Expert of the World Sinology Center at the Beijing Language and Culture University.

Seungki Lee is an agricultural economist. His areas of expertise include agricultural economics, environmental and resource economics, and industrial organization. Seungki’s research at present focuses on R&D activities and the impact of new technologies in the agricultural sector. Specifically, his current projects are centered on advances in biotechnologies, such as genetically engineered seeds, with a specific emphasis on uncovering their implications on farmers’ welfare, environmental effects, and sustainability to climate change.

Bryan W. Van Norden is James Monroe Taylor Chair in Philosophy at Vassar College (USA), and Chair Professor in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University (China). A recipient of Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Mellon fellowships, Van Norden has been honored as one of The Best 300 Professors in the US by The Princeton Review. Van Norden is author, editor, or translator of ten books on Chinese and comparative philosophy, including Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (2011), Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (2017), Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy:  Han to the 20th Century (2014, with Justin Tiwald), Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (3rd ed., 2023, with P. J. Ivanhoe), and most recently Classical Chinese for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners (2019).  He has also published multiple featured op-eds in the New York Times, and written a Ted-Ed video on Confucius that has been viewed over a million times. His books and articles have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Estonian, Farsi, German, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. His hobbies are poker (he has played in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas) and video games. His website, which includes a bibliography of primary and secondary sources on Chinese philosophy, may be found here.

Dr. Richard Wang is Professor of Chinese Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Florida. He is the author of Lineages Embedded in Temple Networks: Daoism and Local Society in Ming China. (Harvard University 2022), The Prince and Daoism: Institutional Patronage of an Elite (Oxford University Press 2012), and The Ming Erotic Novella: Genre, Consumption, and Religiosity in Cultural Practice (The Chinese University Press 2011). He earned his PhD from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Hui Zou is a Professor of architecture at the University of Florida. He teaches architectural history, theory and design and supervises graduate theses at both master and PhD levels. His research fields include architectural history, garden history, theory and philosophy, comparative cultural studies, Chinese architecture and gardens, and Eastern aesthetics.

Dr. Zou is a former Fellow of Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University) and the Asian Cultural Council (New York). He is the author of the monograph books A Jesuit Garden in Beijing and Early Modern , Chinese Culture (2011), 碎片与比照: 比较建筑学的双重话语 (Fragments and Mirroring: The Twofold Discourse of Comparative Architecture) (2012), and the Chinese translation 建筑在爱之上 (2018) of Alberto Pérez-Gómez’s book Built upon Love. Dr. Zou’s research explores in-depth hermeneutic meanings of architectural history regarding the fundamental relationship of poetical dwelling, nature and culture. His current research focuses on an interdisciplinary study of genealogy, poetry, and architecture of Qing-dynasty China.

Stephanie Assmann’s research interests are foodways and culinary politics, life in rural Japan, and employment and diversity. She is co-editor of Japanese Foodways, Past and Present (with Eric C. Rath, 2010, University of Illinois Press) and editor of Sustainability in Contemporary Rural Japan: Challenges and Opportunities (2016, Routledge).

Wenxian Zhang is Professor and Head of Archives & Special Collections at Rollins College’s Olin Library. He is also the college’s liaison librarian to the Anthropology, Archaeology, Asian Studies, Environmental Studies, Mathematics and Computer Science Programs. A member of the Rollins faculty since 1995, Zhang is a recipient of the Cornell Distinguished Faculty Service Award, and Arthur Vining Davis Fellow at Rollins. He has also won the Patrick D. Smith Award for his academic work with Dr. Maurice O’Sullivan on A Trip to Florida for Health and Sport (FHS Press), the Community Service Award from the Orlando Chinese Professional Association, and the Award of Excellence from the Society of Florida Archivists.

In addition to articles on library information studies, historical research, and Chinese business management, his recent book publications include The Biographical Dictionary of New Chinese Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders (Edward Elgar, 2009), A Guide to the Top 100 Companies in China (World Scientific, 2010), The Entrepreneurial and Business Elites of China: The Chinese Returnees Who Have Shaped Modern China (Emerald, 2011), A Winter in Sunshine (Shanghai University Press, 2012), China Visualized by Americans 1840-1911 (Peking University Press, 2017), China Through American Eyes: Early Depictions of the Chinese People and Culture in the US Print Media (World Scientific, 2018), and China’s Belt & Road Initiative: Changing the Rule of Globalization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

Geri Smith is Professor of French and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Her research interests include late-medieval poetry and theater, with a particular focus on women authors and representations of women, and evolving concepts of author and text in the late Middle Ages. In 2017, she published her translation of Christine de Pizan’s Mutability of Fortune with the Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series (Toronto: Iter Press). She is also the author of The Medieval French Pastourelle Tradition: Poetic Motivations and Generic Transformations (University Press of Florida, 2009).

Lanlan Kuang is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida. She holds a Ph.D. in Folklore and Ethnomusicology from Indiana University, Bloomington and was on a Fulbright in China in 2008-2009. Specializing in Asian arts and humanities, aesthetics, museum and heritage studies, her research focuses on media and cultural policies and their impacts on socioeconomic developments.

Kuang’s first monograph, Dunhuang Performing Arts: The Construction and Transmission of “China-scape” in the Global Context, is a part of the Pishu series published by the prestigious Social Sciences Academic Press (SSAP), the top think tank in Asia according to Foreign Policy magazine. Her second monograph, Staging Tianxia: Dunhuang Expressive Arts and China’s Cosmopolitan New Heritage, is published by Indiana University Press in 2024. Kuang serves on the editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals and book series internationally and is chair of the Florida Folklife Council.