UNC Wilmington is excited to announce the 23rd Sherman Emerging Scholar Lecture with the theme “Silk Roads: Past, Present, Future” presented by the Department of History.  

The series, which is held annually in honor of Virginia and Derrick Sherman, provides a platform for young thinkers with compelling insights into the connections between the past and the present. There are few academic venues where a promising early scholar is given the opportunity to be center stage to share their intriguing ideas with a university audience and the wider community, including concerned citizens and fellow lifelong learners. 

"We are grateful for the continued generosity and active participation of Philip and Birgitta Sherman, who make the events of 'Sherman Week' possible,” said Taylor Fain, history department chair. “These are among the most important events in the annual life of the history department and the university." 

This year’s Sherman Scholar is En Li. Li is a historian of late imperial and modern China, focusing on the social and cultural history of China and overseas Chinese communities. She earned her doctoral degree in history from Washington University in St. Louis and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Chinese literature from Sun Yat-sen University in China. Her first book, Betting on the Civil Service Examinations: The Lottery in Late-Qing China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2023), highlights the significance of weixing, a highly-organized lottery game where money was bet on surnames that would pass the civil service exams, and reveals critical development with Chinese culture and society in the late 19th century. Li’s talk is titled “Betting on a New Life: The Chinese Diaspora through the Lens of Gambling.” 

“Dr. Li is an important new voice in her field. Her lecture will open a new window into an extremely important subject: the migration of Chinese across the world in the 19th century and the ways they assimilated in their new homes,” said Fain.  

The history department hosts the Sherman Scholar on campus, during which time they visit UNCW classes, provide interviews to the local press, meet with faculty members and present a public lecture for the Wilmington community. All lectures are published by the UNCW Publication Laboratory and distributed to UN Repository Libraries. 

In addition to the lecture, the annual event includes a roundtable discussion. This is an opportunity to delve deeper into the key themes with distinguished researchers nationwide. Participants include:  

• Amy Gordanier, assistant professor of East Asian history at the College of Charleston 
• Carl Kubler, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University and global historian of modern China and people of Chinese descent 
• Tonio Andrade, professor of history at Emory University and global historian with a geographical expertise in China

The lecture will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 16 at 7:30 p.m. in the Warwick Ballroom. The roundtable will follow on Thursday, Oct. 17 from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Registration is not required.