Category: Weekly Wanderings
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Weekly Wanderings: May 10, 2026
A few short updates to start: In late March, I wrote about the PWHL game I attended in Detroit and how enthusiastic the crowd was for the city to get its own women’s hockey team. That enthusiasm has now officially paid off, as the PWHL announced on Wednesday that a Detroit team will start playing…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 4, 2026
Back to the Archives Because my job is largely office-based and administrative, I don’t often have the opportunity to stretch the archival research muscles I trained in graduate school. But I’ve long had the idea of digging into the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) historical archives, which are held at the Bentley Historical Library—just a…
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Weekly Wanderings: April 26, 2026
It’s How Old?!? Most notable event of my week: yesterday’s Phi Beta Kappa Greater Detroit Association “glacial geology of Ann Arbor” field trip, which introduced me to this glacial erratic boulder that’s 2.4 billion years old and just sitting along a trail at the Fox Science Preserve. No big deal. Two point four billion years.…
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Weekly Wanderings: April 19, 2026
The Full Wizard of Oz I woke up at 1:30am last Wednesday morning to a sound I’d never heard before. It was loud and piercing—fire alarm?, I wondered groggily—but distant, definitely coming from outside my house. After a minute, my sleep-addled brain connected the dots and I understood: tornado sirens. The tornado sirens are going…
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Weekly Wanderings: April 12, 2026
Mid-April is always when I start to feel like I have a handle on things again. The AAS Annual Conference takes place in the middle of March, and then for various reasons I inevitably have some sort of travel a week or two after that. My schedule takes weeks to calm down to the point…
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Weekly Wanderings: April 6, 2026
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories James T. Areddy, “U.S. Court Ruling Keeps Mao Documents Out of China” Amy Hawkins, with photographs by Ding Gang, “The ‘Third Front’: China resurrects Mao’s military capabilities” Andrew Higgins, with visuals by Qilai Shen, “‘City of Parasites’ or ‘Glamorous Metropolis’? China’s Cosmopolitan Contradiction.” Tyler Quillen &…
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Weekly Wanderings: March 29, 2026
I went to Detroit yesterday for a rare hockey doubleheader at Little Caesars Arena (LCA). The night game featured the Flyers pulling off a win against the Red Wings—I certainly have no complaints about that! The really special game, however, started at 1pm when the New York Sirens and Montreal Victoire took the ice in…
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Weekly Wanderings: March 22, 2026
I am just back from eleven days in Vancouver—first at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, then on a vacation with two friends. During my time at the conference I rarely strayed more than a block from the Vancouver Convention Centre, but that was hardly a hardship. While most convention centers are dim, bland,…
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Weekly Wanderings: March 8, 2026
Happy International Women’s Day! And boo to daylight saving time. This is not a weekend when I can easily lose an hour—because on Tuesday I’m flying to Vancouver for the start of my own personal Super Bowl, the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference. My AAS colleagues and I are in full-tilt “get it done…
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Weekly Wanderings: March 1, 2026
Does anyone else feel like the first two months of 2026 have included enough activity and events for a whole year? I suspect I’m not the only one who has already maxed out. Let’s keep the chaos and upheaval to a minimum in March, hmmm? Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Reviews This…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 