The Story of Cantonese at Stanford

Speaker bios:

Jamie Tam is an alum of Stanford’s Cantonese program from the Class of 2010 and is one of the leaders behind the campaign to Save Cantonese at Stanford. She is also the founder of Black Lives Matter (BLM) Cantonese, a social media-based language education initiative that aims to equip members of the Cantonese diaspora with language skills for conversations around racial justice. She is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy at the Yale School of Public Health.

A native of Hong Kong, Sik Lee Dennig (Ph.D. ‘92) studied education and linguistics at Stanford. She has taught language and linguistic courses to students of different ages in Hong Kong, Japan, Canada, and the United States. At Stanford, she has taught Cantonese for over 20 years and done research on how heritage speakers maintain and develop Cantonese. Her teaching and research have highlighted the role of sociopolitical context and the interconnectedness between language and identity in heritage language learning.

Gina Anne Tam received her Ph.D. in Chinese history from Stanford University in 2016, and is an alum of the Stanford Cantonese program. She is currently an assistant professor of history at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Her first book, Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960, traces the significance of local languages in China, including Cantonese, to the making of Chinese national identity. 

There will be a Q&A at the end of the chat. Please feel free to come with your own questions.

The event will be held over Zoom. Details will be shared with registered attendees closer to the date.