We hope you all had a great first week of the semester! Asian Studies is excited to kick off a couple of new series featuring updates on all the big things happening for students and faculty in the program. We want to start things off with none other than our Asian Studies Director, Professor Fan Yang!

This summer, Professor Yang was invited by Professor Simone Cinotto from the University of Gastronomic Sciences to teach a course on Food, Media, and Global China—all the way in Italy! The course is part of the Master's program in World Food Studies there. It drew on her invited contribution, “Chinese Foodways in the Digital Age,” to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies.

If you're interested in learning more about these topics, be sure to save the date for November 10th! This fall, we will be hosting a special session on Food, Empire, and Global History with none other than visiting scholar Simone Cinotto himself. More details to come!

Our very own Dr. Constantine Vaporis (Founder & Former Director of Asian Studies) spoke on Samurai: Anime, Manga, and Historical Realities during this year's Otakon 2026! Check out his photos and highlights below!

What an experience! 50,000 young people (and some not so young...) lining up for three city blocks to get in; many of them in full anime/manga attire. It was such a positive, supportive environment--people enjoying each others' costumes, taking photos of each other in various poses (including one whole floor for staged photos for social media), workshops on armor making, costume making, language acquisition. A huge floor where vendors and artists displayed their wares (photo included).

There was standing room only for my talk (sponsored by the Embassy of Japan), with over 300 in attendance. There actually was a line to get in after I started (as reported to me). Rousing applause BEFORE I even spoke. Great questions. Too many for the allotted time. A number of former students were there representing UMBC and I've included a photo of two of them Peri Johnson and Randy Duran (both Asian Studies, both gave their permission to use the photo on social media). They allowed me to sell my samurai encyclopedia afterwards and I sold all the copies I brought (too bad the new book isn't out yet but I had a display with the discount code).

All in all, a great experience.

Best,

Constantine

Happy summer everyone!

Asian Studies is pleased to release our 2nd newsletter for the program filled with student/faculty achievements, upcoming events, and more.

Big shout out to our Publicity and Student Program Coordinator, Michelle Yang, for helping us put this together!

Please check out our Asian Studies Highlights - Fall 2025 Newsletter!

Check out this podcast featuring our former Director, Dr. Meredith Oyen (Associate Professor of History), who will be teaching ASIA100 in Spring 2026!