Acknowledgements

This book project was made possible by a generous grant from the ACM under the EMKE project, funded by the Mellon Foundation. I would like to thank AMC Vice President Brian Williams, and Professor Laine and Professor Guneratne at Macalester for their support. I wish to thank Prof. Emeritus Joseph Allen, who was theChair of the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures at the time, for his interest in the project and encouragement.

Before the project was officially initiated, in April 2016, and then later in the process, in April 2017, we held workshops. In the first workshop, Professor Tej Bhatia and Professor Vijay Gambhir were generous enough to come to the Twin Cities to impart their knowledge and experience to the developers, from which we benefited greatly. I really appreciated their encouragement and wisdom and would like to thank them again for their time.

My greatest thanks go to the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing Services for extending their help with the online project. I especially express my gratitude to Shane Nackerud and Eric Wigham who put all the developed materials into Pressbooks despite the fact that they do not know the language. I marveled at their expertise and ability to put all the materials into the right place without knowing the words. I am deeply indebted to them.

Last but not least, my collaborators deserve special thanks. Without their contribution and cooperation, this project would not have materialized. The team had weekly Friday meetings throughout the academic year of 2016-2017. The online book is a product of their time, effort and commitment. I also want to thank our student employees, Anoop, Abigail, and Sumitra, for their assistance with website building and material development. The other content developers and I reviewed the manuscript and the online units a number of times to minimize the occurrence of typos and errors.