Humboldt State University

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Department Name

Faculty::Wurlig Bao

Wurlig Bao (Borchigud)
wb1@axe.humboldt.edu
(707)826-3826
(click here for Professor Bao's teaching philosophy)

Education

Ph.D. (Aug. 1994) Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Dissertation: When Is a Mongol? The Process of Learning in Inner Mongolia.
M.A. (Dec. 1988) Anthropology, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA.
M.A. (May 1986) Alaska & Pacific Rim Cultures, Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage, AK.
B.A. (Jan. 1980) English as a Foreign Language, Shanghai Institute of Foreign Languages, Shanghai, China.
A.A. (Aug. 1974) Political Science, The Central University of Nationalities, Beijing, China.

Professional Work Experience

Publications

Presentations and Research Papers

Research and Other Related Experience

Research Interests

Ethnicity/race, regionalism, nationalism and transnationalism in the U.S. and Asia.
Globalization, urbanization and cultural commodification in the U.S. and China.
Globalization and postmodernist socialist ideologies in China, Russia and Mongolia.
Cultural diversity and commonality in local and global perspectives.
Asian American identity politics in the U.S.
Asian Hmong Communities in the Humboldt County, CA.
Chinese diaspora in the U.S. and Pacific Rim.
Multiculturalism and the U.S. education system.

Courses Taught in Colleges

Introduction to Anthropology (four-field perspectives, at TCC)
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (at TCC and HSU)
Introduction to Cultural Minorities in the U.S. (at HSU)
Asian American Identity Politics: Collaboration and Resistance (at HSU)
Chinese and Japanese Americans (at HSU)
Critical Thinking in Research (at HSU)
Culture Contact (at HSU)
Culture of China (at HSU)
Ethnicity and Race in Global Perspectives (at HSU)
Ethnicity and Race beyond U.S. Borders (at HSU)
Ethnic Women in America (at HSU)
Chinese Language (basic and intermediate levels at ACC and HSU)

Teaching Interests

Asian American History
Asian American Studies
Asian American in the New Age: Globalization, Transnationalism & Cultural Hybridity
Asian American Women in the U.S.
Chinese and Japanese Americans
Chinese Diaspora in Transnational World
Chinese Language and Cultural Perspectives
Critical Thinking in Cross-cultural Understandings
Cross-cultural Learning and Self-empowerment
Comparative Racial & Ethnic Relations in the U.S.
Comparative Studies of American Indian Education and Chinese Minority Education
Comparative Studies of Ethnic Minorities in the U.S. and Asia
Comparative Fieldwork Studies in Asian Diaspora Communities
Ethnicity & Race in Cross-cultural Perspectives
Ethnic Women in America
Fieldwork Studies in Ethnic Communities
Migration & Mosaics
Research Methods in Cross-cultural Settings
Theories and Methods in Ethnic Studies

Language

English: fluent reading, writing and speaking.
Mandarin Chinese: fluent reading, writing and speaking.
Mongolian: basic competence in speaking.

Professional Memberships

American Anthropological Association.
The Association for Asian Studies.
Chinese Historians in the United States.
The Mongolia Society (in the U.S.).
Humboldt Asian Culture Society.

Grants, Fellowships and Awards

1996 (Fall) HSU Foundation Small Grant Awards (for a paper presentation at the American Anthropological Association Annual Conference).
1994-1995 Post-doctoral Fellowship, Program for Cultural Studies, East-West Center.
1992-1993 Graduate Student Research Travel Grant, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington.
1992 (Fall) Dissertation Fellowship, The Graduate School, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Washington.
1991 (Fall)Fritz Fellowship, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington.
1987 (Winter) An award for the outstanding service as an interpreter in Yao Unified Script Conference in 1984, U.S. Yiu-Mien Association of Oregon, Inc.
1986-1987 Olson Fellowship, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington.
1984-1986 International Student Scholarship, Alaska Pacific University.

A Statement of My Teaching Philosophy--Wurlig Bao

My teaching philosophy is to instill and inspire in my students an appreciation and fascination for other cultures as well as their own, thereby encouraging an openness to explore self and other. I believe that education should be dialectical and dialogical. In my opinion, students should build upon their past understanding, and move to new positions through interaction with others, readings, lectures, films/slides, and research. Knowledge is deeply embedded in the practices of everyday life. I seek, in all my teaching, to involve students in study that will encourage them to apply their new insights to their own experience.

In my academic career the issue of education has been always my focal point in connection to other social issues in the systems of power. My own educational experience and training in both China and the U.S. provide me with an insightful analytical tool. One of the main problems in general education system is the issue of ìhidden curriculum.

In order to change the current education system, we have to recognize how monolithic and monological pedagogy legitimizes the natural rights of the dominant culture in the school knowledge. We also need to become aware of how this teaching process prevents the students growing up within the dominant culture from learning about other cultures with different frames of reference. At the same time, it symbolically violates the minds of students from marginalized groups by erasing their cultural perspectives in the system. As a result, the importance of cultural diversity is hidden from students in the dominant group as well as it is hidden to the minority students who find no expressions of their own cultural perspectives. This process of training is especially harmful to students who have experienced social oppression. Without a proper guidance to help these students to understand the causes of their oppressive experience, a self-limiting view of victimization could easily take root in these already violated minds. In this situation, the victims either withdraw from the self-improving process in the system or violently resist their identified victimizers; they, in turn, can later transform themselves into victimizers. This inner-cycle of victimization at the individual level must be recognized and dealt with seriously by all educators.

Although the US education system has been promoting the idea of diversity or multiculturalism for decades, its frame of reference on diversity is monolithic and monological in nature. This tokenistic diversity euphemizes cultural differences by marginalizing ethnic minorities as "others." Institutional programs for human diversity studies often become a politically-correct cultural showcase to avoid meaningful interactions and social changes among diverse cultural groups and individuals. In order to change this tokenistic image of diversity in today's American education system, a new vision of human diversity is important. In my view, Ethnic Studies should provide a sociocultural space to not only reveal silenced and marginalized voices from different frames of cultural reference but also recognize how they interconnect and interplay with the dominant voice in the power hierarchies in local and global contexts. Ethnic Studies should set up a new model for critical thinking and social change. In the process of training, creating a student-centered and inclusive learning environment is crucial for us to understand how the issue of human diversity and commonality is important to our own living experience. The inclusive learning process encourages us to see the interconnection between diverse human experiences and not reduce a given person's or group's life to a single factor.It helps us better understand the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and religion in the experiences of all groups, including those with privilege and power. In awareness of human interconnection in diversity and commonality, we then can carry out meaningful interactions for change and social justice in the 21st century.

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