Billings secures prestigious Mellon grant

Author: Katie Hylas

This March, Associate Professor of English Timothy Billings was awarded a $181,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation - one of the largest grants ever offered to a Middlebury professor. The grant is intended to foster higher level interdisciplinary competence. Billings will use the money to study at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and work towards a master's degree in Sinology - the study of Chinese language, literature or civilization - over the course of the next year.

Billings admitted that he is hesitant with the subject of Sinology because he does not possess an advanced degree in the study. He also suggested that this tendency among academics to behave tentatively towards studies which were not originally their own causes a dearth of research in areas where academic subjects overlap.

Billings plans to break the mold, "Ever since I was a kid my passion has been for Shakespeare, but for the last 15 years, I have led a secret life as a China scholar."

"The goal of my research," he continued, "is to make a genuinely unique contribution to the field of early modern European literary studies by extending the recent scholarship on representations of 'other worlds' at the margins of Christian Europe through original work in the relatively neglected area of travel writing on China."

He also plans to use the expertise he will acquire to write a book to be titled "Illustrating China," which "will give a comprehensive overview of the literary depiction of China in European writing."

Before he heads to SOAS to begin the one-year Master's program in Sinology, Billings plans to jumpstart his year-long academic journey by enrolling in the Chinese course right here at Middlebury College Summer Language Program. He achieved the equivalent of a BA in Chinese while he was working towards his PhD and will thus be fine tuning his classical Chinese.

Though Billings has studied both modern and classical Chinese he feels he has only scratched the surface of Sinology. SOAS proclaims that its members must acquire "an armory of specialized skills - in bibliography, chronology, biography, linguistics, philosophy and so forth - that are essential for the in-depth study of cultural China both past and present."

In the professor's own words, the program "focuses on mastering the breadth of complicated methods for sinological research in both modern and classical Chinese studies, which [I have] gleaned only haphazardly from within the field of early modern European literary studies while doing research on travel narratives about China."

During SOAS's month-long spring break, Billings plans to apply for a residency as a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome so that he can study the archives which relate to European contact with China during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Additionally, he plans to spend time inspecting Queen Elizabeth's letters to China. He will travel to Lancashire to examine and possibly photograph the letters. He also plans to take a week-long trip to Poland over the summer to investigate and perhaps contest the legitimacy of a map allegedly used by Samuel Purchas. After Poland, he will finish up the purely academic portion of his trip by studying collections in London, Rome and Paris and tying up loose academic ends. Afterwards, he will take a three week tour of late Ming and early Qing historical sites and relics in China. During his stay in China he plans to acquire photographs and engravings of key objects and sites.

This interdisciplinary grant will allow Billings to simultaneously combine his academic passions and contribute to an area of study which remains largely untouched.

Billings' students will benefit as their professor enriches his knowledge of Shakespeare with his access to the Royal Shakespeare Company and their performances. Hopefully he will return to Middlebury with new insights on Shakespeare and the performance of his works. He commented lightheartedly, "I admit, though, that I'm not looking forward to taking exams. But maybe going through that again after all these years will help me be a better teacher, too."

The interdisciplinary approach and advanced education sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation will enrich both Billings individually and the Middlebury community as a whole.

"This opportunity is a literal realization of my dream in becoming a professor, which is to remain intellectually active - in essence, to remain a student - for the rest of my life, constantly learning while guiding others through discoveries of their own," said Billings.