EASC Newsletter

A Letter from the Associate Director

Margaret Key

It was a busy fall at EASC, with many activities completed and a number still underway, some of which you will read about in this newsletter. The biggest news is that the EASC is one of three Indiana University winners of the prestigious 2005 Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize for Excellence in International Education, in the Higher Education category. We can be proud of this recognition of the impact our K-12 outreach programs have had on the quality of international education in the United States.

Another important piece of news is that in November the EASC and the University of Illinois's Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies submitted a Title VI proposal that seeks to establish the two centers as consortial partners in a Comprehensive National Resource Center (NRC) for the grant term 2006-2010. Thanks in large part to faculty and departmental staff, who responded quickly and amply to our requests for data and proposals, we believe we put together a very competitive proposal to the U.S. Department of Education, but we will have to wait until spring to hear the results. This grant would enable us to undertake many new initiatives in teaching and outreach.

Along with the NRC grant, we have also applied for FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) fellowships. Support for our many excellent graduate students is an ongoing issue, and FLAS awards would be a big help.

We look forward to an equally busy spring semester as we prepare to host a major international conference in May, “Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics.” We will also be gearing up for the start of a new five-year program that begins this fall, the POSCO TJ Park Foundation NGO Fellowship Program, which will bring two Korean NGO leaders to IU each year for year-long sabbaticals.

This spring we also continue to strengthen our ties with East Asianists at the University of Illinois, our partner in the IL/IN East Asia Initiative. Six of our faculty will be participating in the East Asian Graduate Seminar at Illinois this semester, leading sessions on Japanese colonialism (Michael Robinson), comparative welfare systems (Greg Kasza), “development” as a historical construct (Scott O'Bryan), global cities (Jeff Wasserstrom), and ethnic politics (Gardner Bovingdon and Sara Friedman).

Finally, let me remind you to check out the on-line catalog of our video lending library on our home page. We have more than 1,000 feature films, documentaries, and television dramas in our collection and have recently added some 400 new Japanese videos.

With wishes for a peaceful and happy 2006,

Margaret Key
Associate Director
East Asian Studies Center

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