SCPKU Summer Seminar 2026: Culturally Situated and Arts-Based Approaches to Qualitative Data Analysis and Writing

Program Overview: The Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU) offers Stanford students a special opportunity for short-term study in Beijing. These three-week seminars are taught by Stanford faculty representing disciplines and schools spanning the entire campus and are specifically designed to integrate course content and program location. 

Program Dates: July 6 - 24, 2026

Seminar Details: This summer seminar is designed primarily for doctoral students (and open to master’s students and advanced undergraduates) who are engaged in qualitative research (e.g., ethnographic, narrative, community-based, participatory, archival, grounded theory, and/or action research) and who already have a “qualitative data” corpus. The course centers on theoretically rigorous, methodologically sound, culturally situated, and arts-based approaches to qualitative data analysis and scholarly writing, with a strong emphasis on critical, reflexive, and culturally sustaining research practice.

Integrating theory, creative practice, and experiential learning, students will examine how culture, power, politics, artistic forms, and embodied experience shape qualitative inquiry and meaning-making. Through seminar discussions, writing workshops, and field trips, students will work intensively with their own data using arts-based approaches to data analysis and (re)presentation (e.g., visual, narrative, performative, and embodied methods) grounded in their positionality, relationality, and ancestral wisdom.

A central outcome of the course is that students will complete at least one writing (broadly defined) project aligned with their research trajectory:

• an arts-based data representation that translates empirical material into creative form (e.g., poetry, narrative, collage, ethno-drama script, video);
• a manuscript draft developed toward publication, and/or 
• a positionality and relationality narrative examining the cultural and methodological dimensions of their research practice.

Beijing functions as a setting, a text, and a methodological example for the seminar. Field visits to art districts, 胡同 (hutongs—historic streets), markets, cultural performances, and historical landmarks will provide opportunities for students to consider how culture, place, and bodily movement can inform analytical perspectives and how data analysis and writing can sustain and enrich their own unique cultural practices. By situating qualitative analysis within Beijing’s dynamic artistic, cultural, and historical landscape, this seminar aims to foster methodological innovation, reflexivity, criticality, creativity, and cultural responsibility in the next generation of critical qualitative scholars. 

Field trips/excursions will require walking up to 8 km (5 miles) per day. However, we will remain flexible to accommodate all accessibility needs when we finalize the course design. Additionally, Mandarin proficiency is not required, and we intentionally welcome students from myriad linguistic, cultural, and disciplinary backgrounds into a collaborative learning community.
 

Course Prerequisites and Student Eligibility Criteria:

Students applying to this seminar must meet the following prerequisites:

• Student Enrollment Level
  • Doctoral students, master’s students, and advanced undergraduates with qualitative research experience or training
  • Students from all disciplines and fields across campus are welcome to apply if they use qualitative methods in their research
• Required Qualitative Methodological Background
  • Prior completion of one or more qualitative research courses is required
  • Qualitative research experience is highly encouraged
• Required Qualitative Data Corpus
  • Students must enter the seminar with an existing qualitative data corpus to analyze and write with during the course
  • The data corpus may include, but is not limited to, a combination of: interviews, fieldnotes, researcher memos, observations, focus group conversations, photographs, artifacts, written texts, creative works, artwork, and/or other documents
• Language requirements
  • Mandarin proficiency is not required
  • Students are strongly encouraged to apply if they speak a language other than Dominant North American English 
     

Instructor Details: I, 邱泰然, Tairan Qiu (she/her/她), am the instructor for this course. I am an Assistant Professor of English Language Arts and Literacy Education in the Graduate School of Education. Prior to my doctoral studies, I was an ELA and ESOL teacher. As a transnational migrant and East Asian woman, my research is at the intersection of language, literacy, culture, race, gender, and im/migration. My research agenda is oriented around critically unpacking the dynamic language and literacy practices of transnational youth and families, centering their stories and experiences to shape research-informed change in their schools, communities, and homes, and sustaining their whole cultural, linguistic, and literate repertoire. In graduate school, I found a love and joy for artistic and socially responsible qualitative research. I hope to cultivate that same love and joy in the scholars in this seminar. 

Covered Expenses: SCPKU will cover participating students’ lodging and meals for the duration of the seminar, and class-organized travel expenses within China. Students will be responsible for visa and passport application fees, flights to/from Beijing, pre-departure immunization costs, health insurance, and all other incidental expenses. Note that withdrawal after the cancellation deadline will incur a fee.