Aristotle X

Student, Columbia University
  • People
  • United States of America

I am a/an:

Undergraduate Leadership & Research Scholar

University

Columbia University

Laidlaw Cohort Year

2023

Research Topic

Ethnic & Racial Studies Performing Arts

Influencer Of

Topics

Rooms participated in:

Columbia University

Recent Comments

Jul 28, 2024

Hi Joe,

Thanks so much for your insightful comment. I really appreciated your question as well. I hope to share my digitized findings with the Chinese American Arts Council, which supports and organizes Chinese Opera performances in Flushing. I also hope to share them with younger Sino-diasporic artists and art educators, who are interested in the art form, even though it is less visible/prevalent in NYC than in, say, Beijing. I hope this knowledge can also equip me to better help in organizing/documenting the Council's performances of Chinese Opera and increase their outreach towards younger audiences as well (since I have noticed the audiences do not have many young people).

Jul 28, 2024

Post #6
For your final post, reflect—either in a video presentation or in narrative form—on your project: What was the goal of the project, and what was its significance or impact (real or potential). Finally, please consider how your understanding of leadership (curiosity, empathy, teamwork, resilience, etc.) has informed your work or been deepened by your work.

This project took me to China, where I used my DSLR camera, leadership skills, and humanities research experience from my first Laidlaw summer to work on digitizing & preserving Chinese Opera. Having worked with the NYC Sino-diasporic artist community for this past year, I have come to understand the significance of cultural arts education. The Chinese diaspora in NYC holds a deep and rich history of performing arts that manifests in different mediums – from ceramicists to opera performers to photographers and painters. By assisting my faculty supervisor this summer with her work on transnational Chinese actresses and opera performers, I was able to document and digitize Chinese Opera from the Northeast of China to the Southeast. My project took me to different spaces, such as live performance venues (such as the People’s Theater in Beijing, or the street performances in Southern China), museums (many theaters store/curate historical cultural artifacts as well), and libraries. This range of cultural spaces allowed me to record different information not just about the performances, but their accompanying history and connection to the Chinese diaspora — oftentimes, it feels as if there is a big separation between mainland Chinese and diasporic Chinese histories and cultures. It’s my hope that this project can help to bridge that connection by preserving the rich history and present-day resonance of Chinese Opera and performance in the Chinese diaspora.

I hope to share my work in the form of a digital scrapbook with NYC Sino-diasporic cultural workers, especially the Chinese American Arts Council, which hosts and supports Chinese Opera performances in Flushing. Using my experience with editorial design and zine-making, I have contributed a one-page spread to Azine, an Asian/American queer and woman-centered arts collective based in NYC. My spread contained an introduction to a Peking Opera performance I recorded in Beijing, featuring one of Mei Lanfang’s staged plays, The Cosmic Sword. I used this space to also share more about the NYC Chinese Opera community, which I hope will attract younger audiences to the performances in Flushing Town Hall. I also contributed information and knowledge from books on the transnational history of Chinese Opera (specifically related to Mei Lanfang), some of which were only accessible in libraries in China. I’m hopeful that this information exchange will allow more people, especially Sino-diasporic peoples, to learn about the history of Chinese Opera and the transnational histories of Chinese performers, such as Columbia TC student Soo Yong (co1926), who was Mei Lanfang’s cultural interpreter for his tour of Chinese Opera in America. I’m hopeful that this work will support my community by sharing and celebrating parts of our history and culture that have decreased in visibility in recent times.

My understanding of leadership has been deepened as I understand the shared curiosity that we all hold, and I have also learned that leadership is a practice of connection and listening. Being able to share my own experiences as a student in America was generative as I learned more about the lives of performers in China and the history of Chinese Opera, especially as it connects to Chinese American history. 

Jul 12, 2024

Post #5
What new skills and/or knowledge have you gained from your summer experience? Have you met anyone who has been instrumental in shaping/helping you conduct your project? Briefly, how has this person impacted you? What have you learned about leadership from this individual, and how might it influence your actions, work, and self in the future?

I've been able to work on my Mandarin skills a lot this summer, which has been really important for me. I grew up speaking Mandarin, but, especially as a Chinese American, I really haven't had an environment where I can speak Mandarin with so many other people in a long, long time. I'm very grateful for that opportunity. I've also learned a lot about the different investments people have in performance as a form of labor and relation -- there are so many different traditions, histories, and movements, and they are all connected to different themes ranging from Third World Internationalism to folktales to religious communities. So many people have been so kind and helpful to me throughout my project, but I am particularly indebted to my supervisor for this project, who has taught me that leadership is an act of persistence - even in spite of many challenges, and moments where I worried I was not able to push through, my supervisor told me that these valleys and mountains are inevitable components of any project. She's taught me to be flexible, to view things from new perspectives, and to constantly pursue curiosity even in the face of different or new environments and challenges. 

Jul 11, 2024

Hi Kira,

I'm glad that you're able to ground your work in community engagement. It certainly sounds challenging to think about this research in connection with direct engagement or concrete impact, but I think your reflections are really inspiring for me to think about how research and study can and should be in service to the public!

Jul 11, 2024

Hi Joe,

Hoping you're well! Your work sounds very pertinent right now, especially in regard to LLM programs and how they've affected many students and teachers' lives. I thought it was interesting that you brought in the differences between American and EU perspectives on this matter, especially when you mentioned your unconscious commitments. I'm glad that you had so many opportunities to listen, and that you were able to leave with lots of new knowledge and experience!

Jul 11, 2024

Hi Krishan,

This sounds like an important and insightful presentation! The connection between nuclear international law and environmental accountability is definitely something I'd love to learn more about, especially as it impacts ecosystems including+beyond humans. I hope you had a generative second summer, and I'd love to hear more about your work!

Jul 11, 2024

Hi Kelly,

This sounds like a challenge I and other students have also had to face this summer, and I really appreciated your perspective on this topic. Especially in thinking about decentering ourselves, this can be an astute moment for realizing what kinds of assumptions we carry with us as American college students. I also appreciate that you mentioned your work in background research and understanding more about the differences in the UK vs. the United States, which seems like a generative learning moment!

Jul 09, 2024

Hi Roli,

I hope you are well! 

I loved getting to learn about the different types of work that you have been engaging in. This sounds like a lot of different skills and community members are involved, which sounds so amazing! This multifaceted approach really resonates with me as it helps me understand that community engagement doesn't just take one form or practice, but is sustained by a web/network of multiple different pillars of support.