J.P. Sniadecki, China
The Padnos scholarship, which I thankfully received in its first year
of existence in 2000-2001, allowed me to study in Shanghai, China, for
a full academic year as the first student in the new GVSU-East China
Normal University exchange. This year abroad not only allowed me to
gain fluency in Chinese and travel throughout the country to lay seeds
for future film projects, but it also opened a wide, expansive door to
the rest of the world. From the then modest campus in Allendale to
the international dormitory in Shanghai, my understanding of the world
and my network of friends and contacts exploded to all corners of the
globe. My neighbors were from Mali, Sudan, Togo, Benin, Uganda, Iraq,
Japan, Korea, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Argentina. I
formed friendships with China scholars that still persist today, and I
was able to travel around the world to visit these friends and colleagues.
The first four years following GVSU, I traveled as much as possible
both in the US and abroad and drove trucks, washed dishes, taught
English in China, and served as an assistant director of a prison
education reform program. Then I embarked on an MA in East Asian
Studies at Harvard, which rolled into a PhD in Social Anthropology,
which I completed in May 2013 at Harvard. I was a founding member of
the innovative Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab, which combines film,
anthropology, and art, and I have made seven award-winning films (six
of which take place in China) that have shown at festivals (such as
the New York Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival,
San Francisco International Film Festival, the American Film
Institute, and Rotterdam) and art venues (such as the MoMA, the
Whitney Biennale, the Shanghai Biennale, the Guggenheim, and the UCCA
in Beijing) and universities around the world and have been featured
in the New York Times four times. I am currently teaching at
Northwestern as a professor of Documentary Media and I am working on
several new projects. I owe a great deal to the legacy that Stuart
and Barbara founded, and I hope many more GVSU students can take
advantage and grow from their generous gift.
