Melissa H🍁

Modern Chinese lit, sci-fi, environmental humanities, and DH. (Amateur theater reviewer on occasion).

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

Big day!

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

"Andor" series finale: spellbinding! Heart wrenching!

This show is the most sci fi of the entire Star Wars franchise.

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

@mingxiasays Wow! I didn't know either.

It's the Luke Daniel version. I'm surprised, because this audiobook is very well produced and Luke's acting is good otherwise. But oh, the pronunciations are a major deterrent!

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

The English audiobook version of "Three-Body Problem" has a problem. The narrator horribly mispronounces the Chinese names. For example he pronounces "Ye Wenjie" as "Ye Wen-see-yeah." And Liu Cixin as "Liu Cheston." Did no one at minimum coach him on the most important names?!

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

"Zhang" is pronounced differently each time it's said. Zhang, Zong, Cong.....

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

It makes me seriously regret allowing my students to listen to the audiobook in preparation for class.

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

@vyadav That sounds like a great topic for a seminar!

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

I also banned technology from the classroom. I noticed student engagement improved from last year. ✅

But here's the problem: many students aren't accustomed to taking notes in a physical notebook. I used PPTs and explicit instructions to remind them what to write down.

(4/4)

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

"She is one of the best professors I had at Stanford so far!!!"

I am humbled to receive this positive teaching evaluation this quarter!

Interestingly, this class was outside of my area of expertise. In the past, I struggled to teach it. Here's what I used to improve:

(1/4)

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

For specific lesson activity ideas:

🙋"The Discussion Book" by Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill
📝"Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom" by John Bean and Dan Melzer

(3/4)

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

Great time at #AAS2025!

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

Hiring freeze!

I'm confident in my skill as a dedicated instructor, mentor, & researcher. I know I contribute to my team's work ethic & intellectual rigor. I know my mission to promote cultural exchange & deep understanding is worthy. I hope to endure this career uncertainty!

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

Big question in class today: why does Omelas *need* to have a suffering child?

My theory: it is either a cosmological requirement of the fantasy world

OR

It is an ancient practices that has simply become accepted, uncritically, as truth.

Are there other ideas?

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

From the NEH website...how is this not a first amendment violation?

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

Article by a friend!
https://t.co/gQ4nWZFE9v

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

Just arrived! This is one of my favourite books. A bit expensive, but 100% worth while! It offers a bifurcated personal and objective account of the aesthetic evolution of Tiananmen as a space of multiple, shifting political meanings.

[ACLS @ACLS1919]

Today, ACLS launched a new website for the China Studies Digital Archives Mapping Project. It offers a free guide to open databases for #ChinaStudies research and a list of leading university libraries that offer services to unaffiliated scholars: https://t.co/dMm6ayCxzT

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

I'm imagining a class where students watch "Crazy Rich Asians" (2018) and "幻土A Land Imagined" (2018) in the same week.

2 Stories about Singapore. 2 wildly different films.

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

Interesting take on this new trend

[Glenn @GlennLuk]

Xiaohongshu is the first time where a mass scale of Americans are getting exposed to the real** China, in a medium where Chinese voices dominate content creation.

** ofc even here it isn't 100%; filtered via moderation + userbase selection bias (well-to-do younger women)

[Melissa H🍁 @MelissaHITAP]

My new article is out!

"Ecology, (Post)Humanism, and Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem,"

Published through Duke University Press's journal, Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature.

https://t.co/XcvH676pbH