Faculty Fellow Reflection

KIN-YEE IAN SHIN

2021-22 HELMUT F. STERN FACULTY FELLOW reflection

Finding new vistas

What would technology that is unproductive look like? Can dogs speak—and why did human psychologists care? While these were the types of fascinating questions we pondered each week at the Institute for the Humanities, through them we were really confronting fundamental problems of the human condition. What does it mean to be human? How should humans relate to one another across different social hierarchies? How did these hierarchies come to exist in the first place?

As I reflect on my fellowship, what I will miss most is the camaraderie that our group of twenty faculty and graduate students fostered in pursuing these questions together thoughtfully and energetically. An unexpected perk of the fellowship, too, was our exposure to the exhibitions curated by Amanda Krugliak in the institute’s gallery, which beckoned us every time we entered the South Thayer Building. Shizu Saldamando’s portraits in When This Is All Over/ Cuando Este Termine and James Hosking’s photographs in Beautiful By Night especially moved me as a gay Asian American scholar of migration and cultural exchange.

On a personal level, my fellowship gave me much needed time for focused research and writing for my book project, and to make progress on several others. I began my year at the institute by reframing and honing the central argument of my book manuscript on Chinese art collecting in the United States and the cultural origins of America’s “Pacific Century.” Presenting a revamped introductory chapter to the other fellows at our weekly seminar yielded critical feedback. Additionally, I conducted archival research at the Bentley Historical Library and traveled to libraries at Harvard University, which led to several crucial discoveries of primary sources to complete drafting my manuscript. Finally, I revised and submitted one journal article, and began work on another. All these activities were not only possible due to my fellowship at the institute, but indeed made richer through it.

In the end, I recognize that my year at the Institute for the Humanities was as much a pleasure as it was a privilege. I am grateful to the staff of the institute for taking such good care of us both intellectually and physically. Even more, I cherish the generosity and time of my brilliant colleagues, many of whom have become dear friends—and, in at least one case, a stalwart tennis partner. I return to the classroom this fall with renewed enthusiasm for the power of the humanities, and a greater appreciation for the important place they hold at the University of Michigan.

—Kin-Yee Ian Shin is assistant professor, history and American culture