Tyler Denison
Tyler Denison is no stranger to new places. A current resident of Epsom, New Hampshire, Tyler lived in Washington and Arizona before his travels took him to China in the fall of 2003. The exposure to this diversity of peoples and places has given Tyler a distinct curiosity about “the human condition: who we are, what we believe, how we interact, how we see the world, what we did in the past, and what we may do in the future.” Though it was most satisfying for Tyler to get to know the Tibetans of the Deqin area and “how they live their lives and understand the world around them,” he felt quite limited, as many researchers do, by the time constraints. Ideally, he would spend up to two years in China conducting research, but his many other interests and obligations do not make it easy. “I want to eventually go to graduate school and later be a professor, but also continue with rock climbing, photography, and making music as much as I can.” But above all, this soon-to-be graduate of the University of New Hampshire (Spring 2006) wants to use his degrees in history and anthropology (with an Asian studies minor) “just to be happy and keep learning.” Tyler hopes that his research will interest readers, and “provide insight into the reality of life for one group of Tibetans in China, as there are a lot of misinformed stereotypes that are not always valid.”
Dr. Lu Yan
Dr. Lu Yan, a native of Shanghai, is currently an associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. Her primary academic focus is modern Chinese history, “especially transformation of Chinese culture and society, particularly Chinese-Japanese relations and Hong Kong as a global city and its influence on the mainland.” Working with Tyler was an interesting process for Dr. Lu because of his “cross-disciplinary work on a subject that’s just caught historians’ attention in the recent decade or so.” She finds his observations “original and refreshing, giving us insight to the complex interactions between the Tibetans’ local place, Western influence, and the market force unleashed during China’s reform years.” Dr. Lu was most impressed with Tyler’s perseverance in working with extremely difficult subject matter (for a non-native speaker of either Tibetan or Mandarin) and in conducting field research in a distant land. When Dr. Lu is not hiking in the great New Hampshire forests or drinking tea and chatting with friends, she is planning new academic experiences for her students. She is hoping to make the class “Modern China through Film” a permanent offering in the University curriculum and to introduce a new course on “East Asian Civilization.”
Read Tyler Denison’s feature article, Reaffirmation of "Ritual Cosmos": Tibetan Perceptions of Landscape and Socio-Economic Development in Southwest China >>
