Xinyi Tan

Contact Xinyi Tan

843-349-4165 xtan@coastal.edu

Brittain Hall 209

Fall 2023 Office Hours
Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays 2:00-2:50pm
*Please email for an appointment. 

Au milieu de l'hiver, j'apprenais enfin qu'il y avait en moi un été invincible." (In the depths of winter, I finally learned that there lay within me an invincible summer.") - Albert Camus

Biography 

Dr. Xinyi Tan graduated from the Ohio State University in 2018 with a Ph.D. in French Studies and a certificate in Second Language Acquisition. In the same year, she joined CCU as an Associate Professor of Chinese and French and the Director of the Chinese Program. Since her arrival at CCU, she has developed and taught effectively at all levels of the curriculum in Chinese, French, and LIS, including adding 19 new courses and a new minor in Chinese Studies to the catalogue. Since 2021, she has been serving as the Director of the Intercultural Language Resource Center (ILRC), funded through a Title VII grant. In this role, she has planned and organized various high-impact initiatives centering on enhancing students’ global awareness and intercultural competence. These initiatives include the DEI guest speaker series, the ILRC DEI Fellowship program, panel sessions and mentoring for competitive scholarships for study abroad, and various community-based cultural events and activities. As a teacher-scholar, Dr. Tan’s contributions to CCU and surrounding community have been recognized by numerous teaching and service awards, including the 2023 FIE Award in the category of Global Awareness through Community Engagement, the 2022 COHFA Distinguished Teaching, and three LIS Professor of the Year awards (2021, 2022, and 2023). As an interdisciplinary scholar working in French Studies and Asian Diasporic Studies, Dr. Tan focuses her research on Asian Francophone Fiction by offering analysis of key episodes within Asian and French history. Another thread within her research agenda considers technology-assisted language learning and curriculum design. She has published numerous articles on these topics in Women in French Studies, Dalhousie French Studies, and Lingua Romana, and a book chapter in Designing Courses with Digital Technologies: Evidence and Examples by and for Higher Education Instructors (2021) published by Routledge.

Education

Ph.D., Ohio State University, 2018 with a Certificate in Second Language Acquisition 
M.A., Ohio State University, 2016
B.A., (dual degree), University of South Carolina - Upstate and Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, 2014

Interesting Facts

Dr. Tan has a special connection with South Carolina, a place where she has put down roots. SC is her first home in the U.S. as an international student from China. In 2012, after completing two years of her undergraduate studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, she arrived at University of South Carolina-Upstate through a double-degree program. Before heading to Ohio for graduate school, she made a promise that she would return to SC as a professor one day. Her dream came true the day she took the offer from CCU. Given her personal experience, Dr. Tan believes in the potential of public liberal arts universities like USC-Upstate and CCU in making a difference in their students' lives. The highlight of her career at CCU was being recognized by the 2023 CCU’s Outstanding Student of the Year, Megan Shoop, at the COHFA and Spadoni College commencements on May 6^th, 2023. In her speech, Megan explained how Dr. Tan’s teaching, mentorship, and the significant growth of the Chinese program and the ILRC turned her initial passion for languages into a clear interdisciplinary trajectory, one that led to her next chapter at Duke Kunshan University in China as a graduate student in Environmental Policy Making. As a professor and a language instructor, Dr. Tan is committed to broadening her students' horizons and showcasing the value of diversity in shaping our society through a fusion of her teaching, research, and service commitments at CCU.

Program Affiliations

Asian Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Graduate Faculty

Teaching Areas

French language and culture; Chinese language and culture; interdisciplinary courses

Research Areas

Francophone studies: Asian Francophone authors, migrant and transcutural literatures in Quebec and France - 20th-21st century French literature and culture - Second Language Acquisition (especially theories of Input Processing and its pedagogical implication in teaching grammar and vocabulary)