David Dettmann, Assistant Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at UW-Madison, will talk on Chinese media's representations of Uyghurs.
David began his interest in East Asian cultures with study abroad in Guangzhou, China in the 90s. There he studied Mandarin and the 4-stringed Chinese lute (pipa). Later, beginning with annual travels in western China, he became interested in Turkic-speaking groups of Northwest China. He went on to do his MA in Central Asian Studies at UW-Madison with a focus on Uzbek literature--Uzbek being a close relative of Uyhgur, a major language in China. David today continues to be fascinated by the languages and cultures of western China's minority regions. He teaches a course entitled Islam in China, which focuses on the two largest Muslim identities in China, the Uyghur and the Hui.