NEWS: MLCL’s Wiebke Denecke wins Boston University’s first “New Directions” Fellowship from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Wiebke Denecke
Photo by Tim Gray

Wiebke Denecke, Associate Professor of Chinese, Japanese and Comparative Literature in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department has won the first “New Directions Fellowship” from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ever awarded to a BU faculty member. Only a handful of early career scholars earn the honor each year and Denecke will use it over the next couple of years to expand her expertise in Classical Chinese and Classical Japanese Literatures into Korean language and Literature. Why Korea? Generally interested in bringing people together and working in ambivalent areas, Denecke underlines the importance of Korea as the underappreciated “missing link” in the cultural exchange between China and Japan and also wants to foster dialogue between Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans about their shared cultural heritage. “If you go by the current media,” Denecke says, “East Asia is largely defined negatively through the lingering painful memories of war and Japan’s imperialist expansion, colonial exploitation, and more recently economic and military competition. But in this very historical moment many academics, both in East Asia and the West, make decisive efforts to recover the millennia-old positive shared cultural heritage and undertake projects with an interregional East Asian perspective.” Denecke receives this fellowship just as the MLCL department is developing an innovative graduate program specifically designed to train students in comparing the literary traditions of East Asia. “Most scholars of classical East Asia only study one tradition—Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. But we have a rapidly growing number of Chinese students now studying Japanese or Korean or even non-heritage learners doing several East Asian languages. They are truly interested in this kind of “new” comparative literature as opposed to the Europe-focused older incarnation of the discipline.  So we as faculty need to meet our students’ demands by being equally multilingual and researching multiple traditions in conjunction. I think this demographic development in the US is a very healthy antidote against the strong national divisions that have been keeping the research on premodern China, Japan, and Korea apart.”

Although her passion lies with studying early and medieval East Asia, Denecke admits that her decision to take up the study of Korean language and literature was also inspired by her contemporary artistic tastes: “With the ‘Korean Wave’ so many strikingly creative movies are right now coming out of Korea. It’s great to have yet another excuse to be studying Korean!”

Denecke is enthusiastic about her current Korean language tutor, a former BU colleague, and will also take intensive language courses in a Korean language program in Seoul, probably alongside some BU students. She laughs “I haven’t taken exams in a long while. It will be terrific taking exams again and see my students beat me to it!”

To read more about Professor Denecke’s project click HERE.