NIU Today

NIU’s Pick Museum of Anthropology has been awarded a $19,750 grant from the Dunham Fund for a two-year project to document and share the experiences of Burmese Karen refugees living in northern Illinois. Led by the museum’s research assistant, Rachel Drochter, the project employs NIU students who will work with a local Karen Advisory Group...

NIU professor Kenton Clymer has authored a newly published book on the history of U.S. diplomatic relations with Myanmar, and it couldn’t be timelier in light of the historic elections unfolding this month in the country. Clymer is a Distinguished Research Professor in the NIU Department of History and a leading scholar in the history...

The NIU Art Museum and Center for Burma Studies, with support from the Allen Series Fund of the Division of Art History in the NIU School of Art and Design, extends an open invitation to a free public symposium, “Imaging the Others: The Art of Ethnography in Modern Burma,” scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 18, and...

The NIU Art Museum and the NIU Center for Burma Studies are hosting “Dressing Difference: Exploring Ethnicities in Modern Burma,” an exhibition on display at the museum through Saturday, Nov. 15. Questioning concepts of ethnicity and gender through costume and body adornment, the artwork has come from the Burma art collections at NIU and Denison...

Distinguished Research Professor Kenton Clymer is back at the Department of History after spending the month of December teaching at Yangon University in Burma, known officially as Myanmar. The first foreign visiting professor to teach at Yangon’s Department of History since 1962, Clymer was invited by department head and professor Margaret Wong following the visit...

Chris McCord vividly remembers the earnest questions that faculty had about research and their frank disclosures about program needs. “It mattered so desperately to them that I understand what their research questions were and that I give them an idea of how NIU could help them move forward,” he says. “I have never visited a...

It could be the opening scene of a new Indiana Jones blockbuster, complete with a storybook setting that is rich in both mystery and archaeological treasures. After all, more than 2,000 temples and shrines dot the landscape of Bagan, the ancient royal capital of Myanmar. It was here in 1988, amid the country’s political unrest,...

NIU English professor Amy Levin, who spent the month of February as the first U.S. Fulbright Scholar in a public university in Myanmar (Burma) in almost 30 years, will present an upcoming talk and slideshow on her recent experiences. Her informal presentation, titled “Teaching ‘Hamlet’ in Myanmar,” will be held from 12:30 to 1:45 p.m....

The new Thai ambassador to the United States, who happened to be in Chicago on Saturday, March 2, honored NIU’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), by being among the center’s distinguished guests at its 50th anniversary gala dinner in Altgeld Hall that evening. His Excellency Chaiyong Satjipanon and an entourage – Songphol Sukchan, the...

Representatives from NIU will take part in a delegation of 10 U.S. universities that are traveling to Myanmar this week to learn more about the state of higher education in the country and to explore potential partnership opportunities. Catherine Raymond, director of the Center for Burma Studies, and Christopher McCord, dean of the College of...

Amy K. Levin is no stranger to “firsts.” Among her many credits are “Africanism and Authenticity in African-American Women’s Novels,” one of the first texts to study African influences in novels by African-American women. She also edited and wrote parts of “Gender, Sexuality and Museums,” the first major repository of key articles, new essays, and...

Following on the heels of President Obama’s historic trip to Myanmar this week and his stated commitment to advance education, the Institute of International Education has launched an institute-wide initiative involving the participation of nine U.S. higher education institutions in a strategic planning process for developing institutional partnerships with universities in Myanmar and to assist...