On October 8-10, 2015, the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations hosted the Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch to great success. They聽hosted about聽80 domestic and international participants, 52 of which presented papers. The feedback received from participants as well as the audience鈥攎ostly colleagues and graduate students in Chinese Studies鈥攚as overwhelmingly positive. This event undoubtedly helped聽to strengthen the excellent reputation and visibility of the Chinese program at Boulder, both within the US and abroad.
The success of the meeting is not the least owed to the聽visit of the keynote speaker, Professor Xiaofei Tian of Harvard University. Owing to her outstanding reputation in our field, Professor Tian鈥檚 presence may well have been one of the reasons that the number of participants was higher than we had expected so that there had to even be concurrent panels for part of the time. Apart from the keynote speech itself, which introduced a fascinating facet of medieval Chinese literary history, the M.A. graduate students, some of whom are considering to continue to PhD studies at Harvard, had the opportunity to make Professor Tian鈥檚 personal acquaintance.