TEDxUIC: Self, Others and Community

On 11 April, five UIC professors and one student had the opportunity to share their ideas at a TEDxUIC event on the new campus. TEDxUIC is an independently organised TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) event that is arranged by UIC students. TED is a nonprofit media organization that is devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks of 18 minutes or less under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". The theme of this TED event used the Chinese character Zhe, which points towards a larger group of anything more than only people. Ideologically, the existence of a suffix works by allowing availabilities and the ruling three domains, “self”, “others” and “community”.

The first speaker was the Director of the International Development Office (IDO), Dr Katharina Yu. Her talk was called “Creative Morphology & Culture”, which explained what language learning can and eventually will do to you. Dr Yu explained that her talk will be confusing and that was part of the idea. A slide was shown with a mixture of colours and a black pattern that looked more like a smudge when first seen. “What do you see? What does it mean?” Dr Yu asked the audience; they responded with silence. Dr Yu went on to explain that “Automatically you might try to decipher the underlying pattern, analyse the structure find the morphemes, the nuclear shapes of the given picture. You are thinking under the proposition that ‘what I project does have a meaning’. In this case, it does.” Dr Yu explained that per definition a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language, then she described how people try to understand what they see and this is what people do with all kinds of information surrounding us. This was when Dr Yu showed that the image on the slide was of fluorescent bacteria and the pattern that she had morphed in the picture was actually the character for Zhe, the theme of this TEDxUIC talk.



Dr Yu begins and uses the PPT to displays patterns

Dr Yu went further in her explanation using a cultural reference to Pandora’s box about the problems in linguistics that can come from culture, which she explains also shape the universe of our thoughts. This led her to elaborate on foreign language learning and the culture of learning to speak. Using images of other cultural references such as the tower of Babel, Dr Yu used the sentence from the Bible “In the beginning there was the word”. She decided to choose this expression because, for humanity, language is at the centre of our existence. Dr Yu then gave some examples of where the meaning of words can be lost or have a different meaning by showing examples of online translations. She then ended her talk by using a quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein, “So speak, whereof we cannot think.”

The next speaker was Assistant Professor from the General Education Office (GEO), Dr Siuchuan Chan. Her talk was titled “Depoliticising Boundaries: Self, Others and Community” and began by talking about the work of French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic, as well as gay and minority rights activist, Mr Michel Foucault. She focused heavily during her talk on Mr Foucault’s book titled “Madness and Civilization”. The book discussed how Western European society had dealt with madness, arguing that it was a social construct distinct from mental illness. Mr Foucault had traced the evolution of the concept of madness through three phases, which were the Renaissance, the later 17th and 18th centuries, and the modern experience.



Dr Chan talking about the research of famous French philosopher, Michel Foucault

Dr Chan began explaining that in the very early days, people with mental problems or those who had acted oddly were seen as eccentric members of society and there were no effective boundaries for people like this. Gradually as society developed, the ‘Ship of fools’ was created for the insane, morally corrupted, as well as criminals so to keep them separate from civilization as they were considered not fit to live in society. It was only when countries started claiming rivers and seas as territory that society had to think of what to do with the people on the ship something to do. The 17-18th century changed the way society treated the mentally ill not through banishment but by confinement, as eccentric people were imprisoned. The French revolution saw insanity as a sickness and required re-education. These days society tries to apply reason to insanity, which led Dr Chan to finish by saying that society needs to be rational.

Up next was General Education Office (GEO) Associate Professor, Dr Shawn Wang. He started his speech by telling the audience about his own multi-disciplinary crossover experience. He gained five different degrees in various fields including English literature, international cultural exchange, East Asian studies, Buddhist studies as well as religious studies from prestigious universities. Dr Wang chooses Taoism out of several philosophies and religions to follow and further developed an integrated spiritual approach.



Dr Wang explaining his own multi-disciplinary crossover experience

Following Dr Wang was Year 4 English Language and Literature Studies (ELLS) student, Yao Yutong. She has been actively involved in social services and not-for-profit organizations for almost a decade. She dares to speak up and voice her opinion. She wrote open letters to the President of UIC, Professor Ng Ching-Fai, several times to speak on behalf of UIC students. Her experience resulted in her founding a culture conservation organization for Chinese ancestral shrines.



Ms Yao is the only student to give a talk at this event

Associate Professor and Associate Dean of DHSS, Dr Charles Lowe, gave his talk titled ‘Teaching an “Other” Literature’ in China. Dr Lowe explained a little bit about his past when he use to teach in the US and Shanghai, and coming from one to the other, he found difficulties when implementing certain techniques that had been successful in the US into China. An example of this was a naming exercise Dr Lowe used called ‘scansion’, which is reading for meter or beat in a poem. The big problem he found was that Western names are very different to Chinese names and the exercise was not as successful as he had hoped when he used it during class.



Dr Lowe talking about how some teaching techniques don't always work due to cultural difference

During his talk Dr Lowe explained the obstacles of teaching poetry in a different culture, such as the conventional explanation of Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” and the dissonant responses of his students’ to the message of ‘rage’ in the poem. Dr Lowe discussed the possible basis for the students’ reaction to this poem and his initial inadequate response as a teacher as well as the possible opportunities for learning and growth offered by resistance.

The last speaker of this TEDxUIC event was DCC Associate Professor, Dr David Melbye, who received a very warm welcome from some of his students in the audience. His talk was titled “Reimagining the College Experience” and Dr Melbye discussed whatever students do in college, whether it is study to get a good job, party hard or whatever they decide, they should use it for exploring. He gave an example of when he was studying, and he was not really enjoying his major so he looked at other courses and started to find new areas to enjoy. He believes that college should be a lot more than just get a good job and encouraged the students to explore new areas even if that means taking courses outside of their major area.



Dr Melbye tells the audience to discover their passions while in college

Dr Melbye explained more about life patterns and thinking about where you have been lucky and unlucky. “Discover and explore your passions” was the big message that Dr Melbye wanted to drive into the minds of the audience, which were mostly made up of UIC students. He pleaded that nobody should waste such opportunities and the idea is to allow your life’s experiences to add up to something.

Year 2 Applied Psychology student, Xu Shifang, is also the TedxUIC organiser as well as this event’s MC. She summed up the event by saying "TEDxUIC is great for spreading ideas and engaging with the community. We are always open for possibilities".



Music Performance by Jerry Han and Jerry Li of Imusic

Students in the audience said that they benefited a lot and thought that this event brought out a range of valuable ideas that cannot be learnt in class.

Reporter: Samuel Burgess (MPRO)

Photographers: Mai Xinying (Year 3, ATS)

Editors: Deen He, Samantha Burns (MPRO)

(with thanks to the ELC)