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Steven Yao, associate professor of English and associate dean of faculty for diversity initiatives, gave a lecture at Binghamton University as part of the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies Department Spring Visiting Lecture Series. Titled "Transplantation and Modernity: The Chinese/American Poems of Angel Island," the talk was drawn from his book Foreign Accents: Chinese American Verse and the Counterpoetics of Difference in the U.S., 1910-Present, which will be published by Oxford University Press.

Associate Professor of English and Associate Dean of Faculty for Diviersity Initiatives Steven Yao gave a lecture on Feb. 26 at Northwestern University. Invited as part of the "Reading World Literature" lecture series hosted by the Program in Comparative Literary Studies, Yao presented a talk titled "On Gaps, Gradients, and (Pacific) Rims: Rethinking the Space of Comparative Literature."

Associate Dean of Faculty for Diversity Initiatives and Associate Professor of English Steve Yao has been elected to the Delegate Assembly of the Modern Language Association, the largest professional organization focusing on the study and teaching of the humanities and the status of the language and literature in the U.S.

A team of Hamilton faculty led by Associate Dean of Faculty for Diversity Initiatives Steve Yao was recently awarded a grant of $6500 from the Consortium on High Achievement and Success. It was in support of their proposal for "A Pedagogical Practicum for Fostering Productive Dialogue in the Diverse College Classroom." The grant will fund an ongoing practicum for Hamilton faculty to address the pedagogical challenges that arise from addressing "difficult" topics such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class within an increasingly diverse classroom environment. Other signatories to the grant include Professors Shelley Haley, Nancy Rabinowitz and Stephen Orvis.

Associate Professor of English Steven Yao spoke recently at Cambridge and Sussex Universities in England. At Cambridge, Yao presented a paper titled, "Ezra Pound's Cathay and the Languages of Anglo-American Modernism," as part of the international conference on Translations and Transformations: China, Modernity, and Cultural Transmission that was hosted there on May 1-3. While in the UK, Yao also gave an invited lecture at Sussex University in Brighton, where he spoke to the American Studies research seminar on "Asian American Verse and the Limits of Hybridity," a talk arising from his current book project of Chinese American poetry.

Associate Professor of English and Assistant Dean of Faculty for Diversity Initiatives Steven Yao has co-edited a volume of essays titled Sinographies: Writing China, published by the University of Minnesota Press. The volume includes an essay by Yao titled "Transplantation and Modernity: The Chinese/American Poems of Angel Island." It discusses the poetry inscribed upon the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station Detention building in San Francisco Bay, the site of entry for the vast majority of the 175,000 Chinese immigrants to the U.S. between 1910 and 1940.

Associate Professor of English and Assistant Dean of Faculty for Diversity Initiatives Steven Yao, has co-edited a volume of essays titled Sinographies: Writing China, published by the University of Minnesota Press. The volume includes an essay by Yao titled "Transplantation and Modernity: The Chinese/American Poems of Angel Island." It discusses the poetry inscribed upon the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station Detention building in San Francisco Bay, the site of entry for the vast majority of the 175,000 Chinese immigrants to the U.S. between 1910 and 1940. The book was co-edited with Eric Hayot, associate professor of comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University and Haun Saussy, Bird White Housum Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University.

Associate Professor of English and Assistant Dean of Faculty for Diversity Initiatives Steven Yao presented a paper at the Globalizing Modern Chinese Literature: Sinophone and Diasporic Writings conference held at Harvard University on December 6-8. His paper, "Transplantation and Modernity: The Chinese/American Poems of Angel Island," discussed the intricate weave of diverse historical, social and cultural contexts in both China and the U.S. against which the "Island" poems gain their complex significance.

An article by Associate Professor of English and Assistant Dean of Faculty for Diversity Initiatives Steven Yao appears in the latest issue of the journal Representations (Summer, 2007). Yao's article, "Toward a Prehistory of Asian American Verse: Pound, Cathay, and the Poetics of Chineseness," examines the various terms -- tonal, rhetorical, thematic and formal -- by which Ezra Pound sought to present Chinese poetic culture and identity in his renowned collection of translations. This article is part of Yao's current book project, "Foreign Accents: Chinese American Verse and the Counter-Poetics of Difference in the U.S., 1910-Present." Representations is a publication of the University of California Press.

Associate Professor of English Steven Yao delivered a lecture at Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan, on May 25. His lecture, titled "Recent Theoretical Issues in Ethnic American Literature in the U.S.," introduced Japanese scholars and students of ethnic American literature to current debates about the concept of "hybridity" in Asian American and Postcolonial literary theory. He was invited to speak at Meiji University by Professor Yoshiaki Koshikawa. Yao's talk stemmed from his current project, "Foreign Accents: Chinese American Verse and the Counter-Poetics of Difference in the U.S., 1910-Present."