[KS] Fwd: FW: Nancy Abelmann

[Aaron Miller]

Very sad news from the University of Illinois. A huge loss to the field and
to everyone who knew her. My condolences to her family, friends, and
colleagues.

Aaron R. Miller
Assistant Director
UCLA Asia Institute

11286 Bunche Hall
Box 951487
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1487
(310) 825-0007
armiller at international.ucla.edu



*From:* Burklund, Sandy S [mailto:sandyb3 at illinois.edu]
*Sent:* Thursday, January 07, 2016 2:47 PM
*To:* eaps-wb-l at listserv.illinois.edu
*Subject:* Nancy Abelmann



Dear Colleagues,



It is with greatest sorrow that I share with you the news that Nancy
Abelmann passed away on January 6, 2016.  Nancy was a world-renowned
anthropologist of Korea and Professor of Anthropology and East Asian
Studies, with additional appointments in Asian American Studies and Gender
and Women’s Studies.



Nancy served as Director for the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies
from 2005 to 2008. Under her stewardship, the Center grew from a collection
of successful but independent programs into an integrated and comprehensive
nexus for East Asian and Asian interests across campus and the center of a
vast network of scholars, students, and international visitors working on
Asian topics. Nancy also had the vision to reach out to colleagues at
Indiana University’s East Asian Studies Center to form the partnership that
has been the basis for our Joint National Resource Center in East Asian
Studies, funded by the Department of Education and running steadily since
she helped found it in 2006.  As with all of Nancy’s endeavors, her
directorship of CEAPS was a continuous act of intellectual generosity.  She
created opportunities for faculty and students to collaborate, explore new
avenues of joint research, and grow, here on campus, with our partner
institutions at Indiana, and abroad.   Her tenure as Director brought
robust and lively programming to the Center, including brown-bag lectures
where faculty and advanced graduate students could share ideas; lecture
series featuring prominent scholars from other institutions; and
scholarships supporting students in their study of East Asian cultures and
languages.



Nancy’s contributions to our community reached far beyond the Center. Her
programmatic initiatives and personal efforts in support of colleagues as
Associate Vice Chancellor of Research have enabled many individual scholars
and research teams to formulate proposals that won them prestigious grant
support, support that has already resulted in monographs, seminars, and
long-term research projects.  In addition to her robust individual research
profile, she also helped found the Ethnography of the University Initiative
in 2003, and she served as co-director of The American University Meets the
Pacific Century project and was co-principal investigator on The Korean
Family in Comparative Perspective project, supported by the Academy of
Korean Studies.  In all of her endeavors, she reached out to colleagues and
students across campus, delighting in creating opportunities for all of us
to examine our work from new perspectives and learn from each other as we
created more solid and exciting research.  She was beloved as a mentor to
graduate students in Anthropology and Korean/East Asian Studies, and her
numerous advisees represent more than a generation of top-ranking
Koreanists around the world.



The light that is extinguished with Nancy’s passing burned brighter and
warmer than those around it.  Her students, her projects, and the projects
of others that she nurtured are testaments to her selfless devotion to her
field and the pursuit of intellectual excellence.  As we honor her legacy
and strive to follow her example, we mourn the loss of our irreplaceable
colleague, mentor, and friend.  The Center will be thinking about a way to
celebrate her legacy in the coming year, and we extend our condolences to
her family and all those she touched.



Elizabeth Oyler, Director
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