Melissa H🍁

Big day!

"Andor" series finale: spellbinding! Heart wrenching! This show is the most sci fi of the entire Star Wars franchise.

@mingxiasays Wow! I didn't know either. It's the Luke Daniel version. I'm surprised, because this audiobook is very well produced and Luke's acting is good otherwise. But oh, the pronunciations are a major deterrent!

@MelissaHITAP or one of these? didn't know there are so many narrators.

The English audiobook version of "Three-Body Problem" has a problem. The narrator horribly mispronounces the Chinese names. For example he pronounces "Ye Wenjie" as "Ye Wen-see-yeah." And Liu Cixin as "Liu Cheston." Did no one at minimum coach him on the most important names?!

"Zhang" is pronounced differently each time it's said. Zhang, Zong, Cong.....

It makes me seriously regret allowing my students to listen to the audiobook in preparation for class.

@vyadav That sounds like a great topic for a seminar!

Going to give a talk at my alma mater, DePauw University, this week.

I also banned technology from the classroom. I noticed student engagement improved from last year. ✅ But here's the problem: many students aren't accustomed to taking notes in a physical notebook. I used PPTs and explicit instructions to remind them what to write down. (4/4)

For specific lesson activity ideas: 🙋"The Discussion Book" by Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill 📝"Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom" by John Bean and Dan Melzer (3/4)

"She is one of the best professors I had at Stanford so far!!!" I am humbled to receive this positive teaching evaluation this quarter! Interestingly, this class was outside of my area of expertise. In the past, I struggled to teach it. Here's what I used to improve: (1/4)

Great time at #AAS2025!

Hiring freeze! I'm confident in my skill as a dedicated instructor, mentor, & researcher. I know I contribute to my team's work ethic & intellectual rigor. I know my mission to promote cultural exchange & deep understanding is worthy. I hope to endure this career uncertainty!

Big question in class today: why does Omelas *need* to have a suffering child? My theory: it is either a cosmological requirement of the fantasy world OR It is an ancient practices that has simply become accepted, uncritically, as truth. Are there other ideas?

From the NEH website...how is this not a first amendment violation?

Article by a friend! positionspolitics.org/lilian-kong-an…

Just arrived! This is one of my favourite books. A bit expensive, but 100% worth while! It offers a bifurcated personal and objective account of the aesthetic evolution of Tiananmen as a space of multiple, shifting political meanings.

Today, ACLS launched a new website for the China Studies Digital Archives Mapping Project. It offers a free guide to open databases for #ChinaStudies research and a list of leading university libraries that offer services to unaffiliated scholars: bit.ly/4hgiTua

I'm imagining a class where students watch "Crazy Rich Asians" (2018) and "幻土A Land Imagined" (2018) in the same week. 2 Stories about Singapore. 2 wildly different films.

Interesting take on this new trend

My new article is out! "Ecology, (Post)Humanism, and Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem," Published through Duke University Press's journal, Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature. read.dukeupress.edu/prism/article-…