Asia Center Scholar Wins Mellon Fellowship
The Center for the Study of Asia, a regional center affiliated with the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, is proud to congratulate a member of its faculty on winning the first “New Directions” fellowship from the Mellon Foundation in BU history.
Wiebke Denecke, a member of the department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature, will use her fellowship to travel to China, Korea, and Japan to study Classical Chinese poetry.
Denecke’s work was the subject of a recent BU Research article, in which she explained that Classical Chinese poetry is sometimes overlooked by modern scholars for political reasons, but that a deeper study of the language and literature of the past might bring healing to a region still riven by the wounds of modern conflict.
From the text of the BU Research article:
“One of the things that makes East Asia distinctive is that they have a very long cultural tradition,” Denecke says. That tradition has been carried through hundreds of centuries by a writing system still readable today. “You can see the dynamic of literary creation, reception, and renewal play out over a long duration, which we cannot yet see with the comparatively short history of European vernacular languages. Once people realize that Classical Chinese was a tremendous asset before the modern period and the invention of ‘national literatures,’” Denecke hopes, then they can begin moving toward reconciliation by looking back to a shared history.
Wiebke Denecke studied Medicine, Sinology, Japanology, and Greco-Roman philosophy in her native Germany, in Hungary, Norway, Dalian, Taipei, and Tokyo and received her BA and MA from the University of Göttingen and her PhD from Harvard University.
BU scholars, students, and alumni have made significant contributions to the study of Asia at both the national and international levels.