EASC Events
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2002 Teaching about Asia Participants Travel to
Japan and Korea
Touching down at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on July 8 ended the trip but not the journey for twenty teachers who participated in the EASC’s inaugural three-week NCTA study tour to Japan and South Korea. The journey began in February with assigned readings, plans for post-trip teaching projects, group e-mail and website activities, and pre-departure orientations in April and June. The journey continued in-country with visits to historic and cultural sights, four school visits, formal Q&A’s with local teachers, and immersion into World Cup fever in both Korea and Japan! The journey continues even now as teachers collaborate on a group photo collection, finalize and implement teaching projects, and prepare to report back to EASC on their project successes next spring. The next trip to East Asia is planned for summer 2003. |
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Fourth Annual Literature Workshop Held at IU
Laden with books, notes and questions, twenty-seven high school literature
teachers from around the world (as far as Taiwan, Guam, and Ecuador!) gathered
at the Indiana Memorial Union for the fourth annual Teaching East Asian
Literature in the High School Workshop July 21-26. Made possible by
generous support from the Freeman Foundation, the workshop included history
lectures, literary analysis, pedagogy exercises, cultural activities, and
films. The day devoted to Korean literature, the visit to the East Asian
collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the dinners at local Chinese
and Japanese restaurants were especially popular. For more information on
this year’s program, see www.indiana.edu/~easc.
East Asian Summer Internships Give Students New Opportunities
Two IU undergraduates participated in the first East Asian Studies Center-sponsored
internship program. The particpants were Andrew Sobol, a sophomore majoring
in Business Finance and soon to declare a second major in Japanese, and
Ko-Woon Kay Lee, a senior majoring in Marketing Distribution Management
and Business Process Management. Both students spent three months this summer
working in Chicago; Sobol worked at the Japan National Tourist Organization,
while Lee spent her time at the Korean Trade Center. These internships gave
the two students the opportunity to learn about the culture and business
practices of East Asian companies firsthand, while being required to use
the target language all day. "The internship allowed me to learn all
sorts of things about the many distinct regions of Japan, as well as how
to navigate economically around the country; I learned a great deal about
public relations and promotional activities," Sobol explained. Though
they were still in the United States, Lee and Sobol were able to experience
complete cultural immersion. "The most challenging part of my internship
was getting accustomed to Japanese professional practices. Even some of
the Japanese workers said they did not understand why certain measures were
taken, explaining that 'it is just the Japanese way.' And appropriately
using the honorary and humble forms of Japanese speech was also quite challenging,"
he said. It was a positive experience for the employers as well as for the
students. In fact, because of the success of this summer's internships,
the EASC has forged an alliance with the Indiana Department of Commerce
Trade Office in Yokohama, Japan, and will begin to develop in-country internships
for the summer of 2003. Students doing internships in Japan next summer
will have the chance to live with Japanese families, providing students
with even deeper cultural immersion. Andrew Sobol has already been selected
as one of the students to take part in the 2003 Japan internship. "A
professional experience in Japan has been my goal since I began studying
Japanese language my freshman year of high school. I know it will be a life-changing
experience for me, much more so than my internship in Chicago. To be so
close to reaching this goal is an indescribable feeling; and to have the
opportunity to represent Indiana University and the United States of America
in Japan is literally the chance of a lifetime for me."
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High School Exchanges Off and Running This past June, thirty students from Bloomington High School North and South and North Central High School (Indianapolis) spent three weeks in Japan doing homestays, sightseeing in Kyoto and Nara, and attending classes at high schools in Tokyo and Morioka. Their trips complete the first part of an EASC/Freeman Foundation-sponsored program to facilitate study exchanges with Japanese high schools. In March of 2003, all three schools will host their Japanese counterparts. In addition to the travel/homestay component, American students participated in pre-departure cultural orientations and designed research projects to carry out while in Japan. Students will present their finished projects to their classmates, the community or other local schools this fall. |
The Outreach Division at the East Asian Studies Center continues
to grow. This August, we welcomed three new members to our staff. Anne
Prescott will serve as an Outreach Coordinator. She comes to us from Augustana
College in Rock Island, Illinois where she was a member of the Asian Studies
and Music departments, teaching East Asian music and Japanese Culture,
and directing the Augustana Koto Ensemble. She lived in Japan for eight
years and received a Monbusho (Japanese Ministry of Education) scholarship
to study and do dissertation research at Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku (Tokyo
National University of Fine Arts and Music) on koto performer and composer
Miyagi Michio. She received her Bachelor of Music degree in music education
from Cornell College (Iowa), her Master of Music degree in performance
and Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Kent State University. While living
in Japan she p
erformed
in numerous concerts on koto and shamisen.
Susan Westhafer Furukawa will split her time working on both outreach and public affairs for the Center. Susan is back in Indiana after five and a half years in Japan. She studied Japanese literature and psychology at DePauw University before heading to Japan on the Japan Exchange and Teaching program (JET), sponsored by Monbusho. In 1998, she returned to the U.S. to earn her M.A. in East Asian Studies (with a focus on Japanese literature and society) from Stanford University. Most recently, she was teaching English and American culture to Japanese undergraduates and Japanese literature to international students at Saga National University in southern Japan.
Jeff Payne will work as the Outreach Assistant for Mary Hayes, the veteran Outreach Coordinator. Jeff is from Terre Haute, Indiana. He earned a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from Butler University. He has done fieldwork on community development in the People's Republic of China through the ASIANetwork Student-Faculty Fellows Program funded by the Freeman Foundation. Prior to coming to IU, he worked as the Outreach Director for Near North Community Development Corporation in Indianapolis. Jeff is in a first-year Ph.D. student in the Political Science where he plans to continue his research on civic and community development in the People's Republic of China.
Introducing the 2002-03 East Asian Film Series
Over the course of the current academic year, EASC will be sponsoring both a fall and spring East Asian film series. The films for the fall series have already been scheduled and bring together a mixture of films from Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea in a diverse fall lineup. The film series is a way for the East Asian Studies Center to bring East Asia’s visual media to an audience that would generally not have access to such films. These films focus on such issues as reality vs. perception, love in a modern society, family relationships, and the dangers of the human mind. The East Asian Studies Center selects films we hope will generate discussion in the IU and wider Bloomington community.
The film series schedule is as follows:
October 12: Chunhyang. Korea, 2000, Dir. Im Kwon-Taek, 120
min.
October 26: Onibaba. Japan, 1964, Dir. Shindo Kaneto, 103
min.
November 9: Interview. Korea, 2000, Dir. Byon Hyok, 107 min.
November 23: The Personals. Taiwan, 1998, Dir. Chen Kuo-fu,
104 min.
December 7: From Beijing with Love. Hong Kong, 1994, Dir.
Stephen Chiau Sing-Chi and Lee Lik-Chi, 89 min.
All films are free and open to the public, but are not intended
for a young audience. All films are shown on Saturday evening at 7:30pm
in Woodburn Hall 101, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. A brief analytical
introduction given by a film studies student from the Department of Communication
and Culture will precede each film. For questions regarding the Fall 2002
Film Series, contact Jeff Payne at jespayne@indiana.edu.
2002-03 East Asian Colloquium Series Begins
The
2002-03 East Asian Colloquium Series got off to a strong start with a lecture
entitled, "Identifying a Muslim Terrorist? Stories from 18th/19th Century
China" given by Zvi Ben-Dor, who teaches in the History Department
at Boston University. Jeffrey Isaac, Rudy Professor of Political Science
at Indiana University, provided a comparative comment. Jeffrey Wasserstrom,
the new director of EASC, moderated the second colloquium, a session devoted
to looking at where the Center has been and where it is heading as it strives
to facilitate research and teaching on China, Japan, and Korea here in Bloomington,
while also engaging in a broad range of outreach activities locally, state-wide
and around the country. There were presentations by Associate Director Jacques
Fuqua, Outreach Coordinators Mary Hayes and Anne Prescott, and Outreach
Assistant Susan Westhafer Furukawa, as well as some audio-visual samples
of activities linked to the Center. On October 11, the Center will welcome
Taylor Atkins from Northern Illinois University, who will give a lecture
on "Korean P'ansori and the Blues: Art for Communal Healing."
Richard Bauman, Distinguished Professor of Folklore and Anthropology and
Director of the Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies at Indiana
University will provide a comparative comment. Two weeks later, Kathy Schick
and Nicholas Toth, both professors in C.R.A.F.T. (Center for Research into
the Anthropological Foundations of Technology) will speak. November 15th,
Anne Prescott, an Outreach Coordinator at the EASC will give a talk titled
"Continuity and Change: Miyagi Michio and Shin Nihon Ongaku."
December 6th, Rebecca Nedostup, Assistant Professor of Chinese at Purdue
University will give a lecture on "Civic Faith and Hybrid Ritual in
Nationalist China." We hope you will join us on these dates at 12:30
pm in Ballantine 004 on the Indiana University Bloomington campus. For more
information on upcoming lectures, visit:
http://www.indiana.edu/~easc/eaq/.
Buddhist Literature, Volume 2 Available
The second volume of the journal Buddhist Literature, with articles written by William L. Ames, Gregory Schopen, Paul L. Swanson, and Jan Nattier, is now available. Subscriptions are $25 a year for individuals, $15 for students, and $35 for institutions. International orders require an additional $5 for shipping. Please send orders to Buddhist Literature, East Asian Studies Center; Indiana University; Memorial Hall 207; Bloomington, Indiana 47405.
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