In collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Modern Languages in Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor Johannes DeYoung helps shape an initiative to seed deeper intercultural connections across the university.

Made possible through a generous $100,000 donation from a CMU (Tepper) alum, the Department of Modern Languages, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences has established a new fund to support ways to celebrate cultural differences while deepening common interests and social ideals. The creative team spear-heading the initiative includes Professors Stephan Caspar (Dept of Modern Languages / IDeATe), Johannes DeYoung (School of Art / IDeATe), Gang Liu (Dept of Modern Languages), and Haixia Wang (Dept of Modern Languages).

The Immersive Cultural Innovation Fund will provide an immediate infusion of resources, supporting the development of creative projects, including digital installations and immersive media experiences, workshops and cultural productions, and new collaborative, interdisciplinary courses designed for students from a wide variety of majors.

The team plans a series of creative projects, commencing with projects that explore themes in Chinese language and history devoted to enhancing cross-national understanding through the development of new immersive multimedia experiences for the Askwith Kenner Global Languages and Cultures Room, as well as multimedia cultural productions designed to reach global audiences.

This collaboration explores new and permeable ways of working across boundaries, emphasizing the deep connections we share through stories, materials, and open cultural exchange.