The UT Dallas Confucius Institute has forged a new partnership with Southeast University in Nanjing, China, that will help redefine the Institute as a home to creative connections, a place where arts, technology, culture and language meet.
Dr. Ming Dong Gu
“The new partnership has inspired us to promote the teaching of Chinese language and culture through the cutting-edge disciplines of arts and technology, emerging media and communication,” said Dr. Ming Dong Gu, director of the UT Dallas Confucius Institute.
“We will make full use of the academic strengths and resources of both universities to give the Confucius Institute a reshaping so that it will have a distinct identity among several hundred Confucius Institutes in the world.”
The UT Dallas Confucius Institute was established in 2007 through a partnership with China Three Gorges University, and has aimed to increase mutual respect and cooperation between the people of China and the U.S. Southwest. The Institute offers courses on Chinese language and culture, Chinese teacher-training workshops, public lecture series on Chinese culture, and serves as a testing site for Chinese proficiency exams. The Institute also works with the UT Dallas Center for Translation Studies and the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies. Other cultural institutions, including the Margaret and Trammell Crow Collection of Asian Art, collaborate with the Institute to promote scholarly research.
To celebrate the new partnership, a group of folk artists from the Jiangsu Province of China will perform and demonstrate Jiangsu folk art and dance. The guests will also play the guqin, an ancient Chinese zither, and perform a puppet show. Other attractions will include a demonstration of Chinese paper-cutting art.
The event, scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 14, at 7:30 p.m. in the Alexander Clark Center, is free and open to the public.