Congratulations to history Ph.D. candidates Melissa Brzycki and Stephanie Montgomery, who were recently awarded the UNC Phillips Ambassador 10-Year Anniversary Award for their public history podcast! To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Phillips Ambassadors Program, five awards of $10,000 were presented to Phillips Ambassadors alumni in support of their further engagement with Asia. They also received the U.S. State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship Alumni Development Program to help fund the project.
Melissa and Stephanie, who both study modern Chinese history at UCSC, are using the funds from the awards for East Asia for All, a podcast which explores East Asian media and cultural products, including movies, TV series, documentaries, fiction, and memoirs. In their podcast, they discuss these works from a historian’s perspective and show their relevance to understanding different aspects of historical and contemporary East Asian life and culture. East Asia for All is especially committed to framing conversations to help make these works decipherable not only to academics and educators, but for anyone with an interest in East Asia and East Asian culture. Past episodes include the Chinese documentary Under the Dome and a discussion of Japanese fascism. Watch out for their upcoming episode on Japanese author Nosaka Akiyuki and the beloved anime Grave of the Fireflies based on his writings.
You can follow East Asia for All on Twitter, or visit their website and Facebook page for show notes and more information about the podcast. To receive updates on episodes, subscribe to their newsletter!