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This past spring, in coordination with the Admissions Office and Suzhou University, Drs. Jan Kiely and Lloyd Benson of the Furman History Department organized a summer travel-study program for incoming Class of 2009 freshmen entirely funded by a generous benefactor of the university. Sixteen extremely bright and diverse incoming freshmen, in exchange for joining the program, all committed to completing one-year of Chinese language study at Furman upon their return. This first group of Curry Scholars traveled to China in July and participated in a week-long “Dialogue Across Cultures” with an equal number of Suzhou University students. Each Furman student had a Chinese roommate during the week; they ate, played sports, went on field trips and studied together. For three hours each morning, the Furman and Suzhou students engaged in seminar sessions on topics of intersection between Chinese and Western history, literature and culture that were led by two Suzhou University professors and the Furman professors. This was followed by a study-tour to Beijing, the Great Wall, Mt. Huang, the ancient rural villages of southern Anhui province and Shanghai. Two Chinese members of the incoming class of ’09 joined this tour and became wonderful interpreters of their culture for their new classmates.
Furman Department of History
Furman Department of Asian Studies
