UB Chinese history scholar assists colleagues, students through video series

As universities switch to remote and hybrid learning during these times of COVID-19, they have been getting creative in how they present material to students. And that has provided an opportunity for UB faculty member Kristin Stapleton to help other instructors around the world while expanding her educational reach to students beyond UB.

A professor of history who specializes in modern China, Stapleton has adapted two essays she wrote on Chinese writers to video presentations that are part of the new MCLC Modern Chinese Literature Video Lecture Series presented by the MCLC (Modern Chinese Literature and Culture) Resource Center at Ohio State University. The MCLC Resource Center is the online face of the print journal Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.

Stapleton says colleagues at the Ohio State resource center asked her to make a video presentation for the series on an essay she had written on the Chinese writer Ba Jin that had been published in the “Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature” in 2019. After that, she volunteered to film another video on the Chinese writer Li Jieren, whom she’s also written about. She is currently translating one of Li Jieren’s novels, which is set in western China during World War II, into English.

“When I was asked to participate in this project, I was happy to join in, since I believe it’s important to provide excellent open access resources for instructors, especially during this difficult time,” Stapleton says.

“My own scholarship has focused on the early 20th century and China’s less familiar interior cities, and my contributions to the video lecture project discuss 20th-century cultural upheaval and regional differences, both important to understanding China today.

“Given the tensions in contemporary world politics, particularly in U.S.-China relations, I hope more Americans will deepen their understanding of China’s long and complex culture,” she says. “Literature is a very good way to do this.”

Stapleton made the videos at home with PowerPoint, and says the project’s organizers “worked to improve them a bit — improving the sound quality mostly, and making sure they followed the model they had created for all of the videos.”

“Having taught online since the pandemic started in mid-March, I had a little practice making video lectures, but I still had to re-record each of them five or six times before I decided they were OK,” she says.

Stapleton says she first became interested in China as a high school student. “I have always valued K-12 education, and have tried to help improve curricula at all education levels to strengthen Americans’ understanding of Asia,” she says.

A UB faculty member since 2007, Stapleton has written two books on the transformation of Chinese cities in the 20th century, one focusing on the adoption of Western-style institutions such as professional police and municipal governments, and one that examines how Ba Jin’s “Family,” one of China’s most famous 20th-century novels, represented city life.

She is a fellow in the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and a member of the Global Urban History Project.

She serves on the editorial boards of the journals Twentieth-Century China and Education About Asia, a publication of the Association for Asian Studies that she calls “a very helpful tool for all teachers in the humanities and social studies.”