Keeping Informed as Teachers: What We Need to Know About Xinjiang Today – Virtual Program

This is a virtual program, instructions on how to join this meeting will be sent the day before the event.

You have read the headlines: “The Chinese government has reportedly detained more than a million Muslims in reeducation camps.” Join us as we discuss the stories beyond the headlines and grapple with Xinjiang’s complex history. Who are the Uyghur? When did mass detentions of Uyghurs and other Muslims begin? What does Beijing say about these incarcerations? What is happening inside and outside the camps? We will discuss day to day life in rural and urban areas of Xinjiang today.

Join Professor Darren Byler, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as he discusses these and other issues facing Uyghurs as they struggle to maintain their religion and cultural identity. Following Professor Byler’s Xinjiang overview, Tese Wintz Neighbor, who has been taking American groups to Xinjiang annually for more than a decade, will moderate a discussion with your questions, including what American travelers and teachers can do in learning about Uyghur culture and teaching its ancient history.

This program is co-sponsored by University of Washington's East Asia Resource Center and the World Affairs Council’s Global Classroom.

If you are an educator attending and would like to receive clock hours, please register as a K-12 Educator. Educators will earn 3 clock hours by attending the program. You will also be sent a resource guide via email.

About the Speaker
Darren Byler is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His book project titled Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession in a Chinese City focuses on the effects of digital culture production and surveillance, new forms of capitalism, and mass internment in the lives of Uyghur and Han migrants in the city of Ürümchi, the capital of Chinese Central Asia (Xinjiang). He has published research articles in the Asia-Pacific Journal, Contemporary Islam, Central Asian Survey, and the Journal of Chinese Contemporary Art, and contributed essays to volumes on ethnography of Islam in China, transnational Chinese cinema, and travel and representation. In addition he has provided expert testimony on Uyghur human rights issues before the Canadian House of Commons and writes a regular column on these issues for the website SupChina. He also edits the art and politics repository The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia, which is hosted at livingotherwise.com