Tom Lavallee
Tom Lavallee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Chinese and Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis in 2004, and his Master of Arts in Chinese Literature from the same institution in 1994. Lavallee also holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in Chinese and English Literature.
Lavallee has taught a variety of classes at SIUE, including Elementary Chinese Language, Introduction to Chinese Culture, FL345 Literature in Translation, Honors 250: Connections The Real and Unreal in East Asian Literature and Visual Culture, and Honors 100: Living, Working Learning – Pro-seminar. In addition, he has co-designed and taught business-related classes such as GBA 489/MBA595: Travel Study to China and co-led travel study groups from several academic departments at SIUE to China yearly from 2002 to 2018.
Lavallee has presented at conferences, including the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs, the Association for Asian Studies, and the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference. His presentations have covered topics such as "Cultural Mobility by the Beach: Redefining Cultural Space at the Guanyin Shan Seaside Entertainment Area, Xiamen, P.R.C." and “Divination Systems in Hubei Province”. He also conducts research related to photographs of sacred space in China such as “A Digital Imaging of Temple Art and Decoration in the Xiamen City Area” funded by a SIUE S.T.E.P. grant.
In addition to his teaching and research, Lavallee has served as the Department Chair of Foreign Languages and Literature at SIUE from 2014-2017. He is a member of the Association for Asian Studies.
In his spare time, he enjoys hiking and crafting art from photographs, found objects and recycled material
