Taisuke L. Wakabayashi (Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory)

Tai is a PhD student in the Department of Landscape Architecture, holding a master’s degree in Architecture and a bachelor’s degree in English. His research explores the profound role of design thinking in the emergence of nuclear infrastructures and landscapes, encompassing both built and unbuilt environments of the 20th and 21st centuries. These environments, born from military experiments or shaped by disasters, serve as propositions, offering insight into humanity’s negotiation with the enduring and hazardous nature of radioactive toxicity. Drawing from Poststructuralism and New Materialism, Tai scrutinizes the intricate, techno-political aspects of nuclear technology, emphasizing the production, management, and disposal of radioactive waste. He uses deep geological repositories to demonstrate how such designs delegate environmental responsibilities to geological space and time. Central to his research is the concept of “entrusting” to characterize humanity’s reliance on ecology’s self-healing capacities.

Haiyi Li

Hi! Welcome to our program page. I am Haiyi. I am a graduate student in the Department of History at UIUC. I enjoy meeting new friends and organizing public events. https://history.illinois.edu/directory/profile/haiyili2

Qinglin Luan

Hi! I am Qinglin. I am currently a 6-year PhD student studying Chinese media and communication. My dissertation is about online Chinese youth movements and I am looking at a few Reddit subs. 欢迎来冲浪！ https://www.journalismliberty.org/illinois-project

Luming Xu

Born and raised in China’s Northeast, I am interested in the history of my homeland and the coming into being of this region, both politically and intellectually. In history, the place of China’s Northeast, also known as Manchuria, was both the center of the Qing empire’s homeland and the important borderland of modern China. I am now working on the history of China’s political transformation from an empire into a modern nation state, and how that grand process of historical change intertwined with the regional history of Manchuria through the periods of empire, nation-states, and colonial times from the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. https://ealc.illinois.edu/directory/profile/lumingx2

Jinju Wu

https://ealc.illinois.edu/directory/profile/jinjuwu2

Xiaoyan Ren

I was born and raised in Shandong, China. I’m curious about all kinds of healing traditions, among which I practice yoga, meditation, Taiji and Chinese therapeutical exercises (导引) on a daily basis – they lend me not only physical and mental energy but also academic inspirations. https://ealc.illinois.edu/directory/profile/xren13

Zhanqiu (Patrick) Du

Hi, I am DU Zhanqiu 杜瞻湫, and you can also call me Patrick. I received my B.A. from Fudan University in Shanghai. I was an Electronic Engineering major but transferred to the College of Philosophy to study Chinese philosophy and philology. In my leisure time, I love practicing Chinese calligraphy and cooking.  I am mainly passionate about Confucianism and the history of late imperial China. I am also interested in Chinese intellectual history, printing culture, popular religion, and Confucianism as religion.

My-Xuan Hillengas

My-Xuan is a current first year M.A. student of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They completed their Bachelors degree studying International Affairs at Sweet Briar College in 2021. Their current area of interest is in pre-modern Japanese history and the botanical art at the time.