EASC Newsletter: May 2006 EASC Newsletter: May 2006A Letter from the Director
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Dear Colleagues,
My time as Director of the Center is rapidly drawing to a close and there are two main things I want to do in this letter, which will serve as my farewell contribution to the Newsletter. First, express gratitude to all of the people who have helped me during my term as Director, and all that these same people did to make it possible for me to be leaving at a moment of celebration – due to the exciting news just in that we will be able to give out FLAS awards to graduate students again! And second, celebrate the fact that EASC will be in such good hands when I step down and Heidi Ross takes on this always challenging but rewarding position on July 1st.
I am thankful most of all to the staff of the Center. Here, I include everyone who is currently employed at EASC, and also all of those who have gone on to take up new challenges, such as Jacques Fuqua, Benita Brown and Mary Hayes, after giving a great deal to the Center. When I made the decision to take on the post of Director, I did so largely because I was confident that with such a good staff in place it would be an excellent place to work. It is with a great sense of satisfaction that I know that a similar sense of confidence has helped Heidi make her decision to sign on, and that she can start her term as we continue to revel in all this excellent staff, collectively, has accomplished, from gaining us the Goldman Sachs Award for our superb outreach record in 2005 to regaining us the ability to give FLAS awards in 2006.
I am also grateful to many other people, and at the risk of leaving out some people who deserve thanks, I want to mention a few of them. One is George Wilson, my predecessor as Director and someone who gave me the benefit of much wise counsel when I was starting out. Two others whom I want to thank are Susan Nelson and Bob Eno, the chairs of EALC with whom I have had the good fortune to work closely during my time at EASC. Last but not least, there are three high-level administrators I need to single out for the great support they have given me and the Center as a whole during my time as Director: Michael McRobbie (of OVPR), Kumble R. Subbaswamy (of the College), and of course Patrick O'Meara (of OIP). I could go on. There are, for example, many individual faculty members who have been particularly active in helping the Center thrive in recent years (from Sumie Jones, who has taken the initiative so often in bringing stimulating speakers to campus, to Mike Robinson, who has traveled on our study tours and allowed participants in these events to benefit from his deep knowledge of East Asia) and could be thanked one-by-one. But since this letter needs to be a short one, it is best to move on now to its second aim: celebrating Heidi's accession to the position of Director.
When we were able to bring Heidi here as a Professor of Education, as part of a series of wonderful hires funded by the Undergraduate Initiative Grant we received from the Freeman Foundation, the East Asian studies program at Indiana University got a major boost. She has, as all who have interacted with her since arrival know, been a superb colleague in every conceivable way. Personally, I've learned much about China from hearing her talk about her research and field experiences, and I've appreciated the way she has thrown herself into the life of the Center, especially by being such a good-spirited, creative and hard-working member of EASC's Executive Committee. I am confident that she will carry forward the initiatives that are underway, ensure that the Center remains a good place to work and a valuable asset to the University, and take EASC in exciting new directions.
It is a great feeling to be able to say goodbye knowing that someone like Heidi is taking over.
Best wishes,
Jeff
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
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Heidi Ross teaches social foundations and comparative and international education courses in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department. She conducts field-based research on Chinese education and society and is particularly interested in how China's changing economic and social contexts shape the way parents and communities use public and private schools to enhance their children's life chances. Ross has written widely on educational ethnography, Chinese secondary schooling, “educational for all,” literacy and language policies, gender and education, and environmental education. Her publications include China Learns English and The Ethnographic Eye. Her current research focuses on Chinese private higher education, the relevance of the concept of social capital formation to understanding school reform in China 's local communities, the impact of non-governmental organizations on Chinese educational reform and expansion, and girls' education. This summer she and two doctoral students will be conducting survey research on educational expectations and aspirations among urban and rural junior middle school girls and boys in Shaanxi Province. Professor Ross has served as president of the Comparative and International Education Society and is currently co-editor of the field's leading journal, Comparative Education Review.
For a longer and more personal profile, see the October 2003 issue of the EASC Newsletter.
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Midwest East Asian Studies Network Doctoral Dissertation Workshop
Building on an inaugural conference at the University of Illinois organized by Director of the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, Nancy Abelmann, Heidi Ross (EDUC/EALC) hosted the second meeting of the Midwest East Asian Education Network on Saturday, April 22 at Indiana University 's School of Education. The day-long meeting was designed as a dissertation workshop, in which participating Indiana and Illinois students and faculty discussed one chapter from three students' dissertations. Indiana and Illinois doctoral students served as discussants for each workshop session. This dissertation workshop was made possible through funding from the School of Education, the East Asian Studies Center, and the Office of International Programs.
POSCO TJ Park Foundation NGO Fellowship Program Participants
The EASC will be participating in a new fellowship program generously funded by the POSCO TJ Park Foundation, the philanthropic organ of the Korean steel corporation of the same name. The program is designed to enable key personnel of Korean non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to spend time at leading North American universities gaining knowledge and experience that will further the development of NGOs in Korea.
Indiana University is part of a five member consortium of universities (Stanford, University of British Columbia, Columbia, and George Washington University) that will each host two fellows each year for five years, starting in September 2006.
The first NGO fellows to be hosted by Indiana University, Ms. So-Yeon Kim and Ms. Yu-Seok Chung, were selected this April at the Annual AAS meetings in San Francisco. Kim is Director of the Research Institute of the Citizens' Movement for Environmental Justice. Her fellowship research topic is “Public Policy Conflict and Participation of Citizens,” and she will be working with conflict resolution specialists at SPEA. Chung is Director of the Women's Rights Bureau of the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center, and her fellowship project centers around "legal mobilization strategies” in a movement to combat violence against women. We hope the East Asian Studies community at Indiana University will welcome these first fellows in the coming year.
March 2007 workshop: “Monsters and the Monstrous in Premodern Japanese History and Culture”
The East Asian Studies Center has received a grant from the Toshiba International Foundation to hold a workshop titled “Monsters and the Monstrous in Premodern Japanese History and Culture” on March 30-31, 2007. Thomas Keirstead (EALC/HIST) will direct the project, which will bring together scholars from Japan and the United States to consider the cultural work that monsters, ghosts, and other supernatural creatures do and to investigate the place of monsters and ideas of the monstrous in premodern Japanese history and culture. While the primary goal of the workshop is to increase and refine the scholarship on the topic, a set of web-based resources for teaching and learning about Japanese monsters will also be designed as an aid to educators who seek to introduce Japanese ideas about monsters and the monstrous into their curricula.
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Robert Campany (REL) published the following two articles in 2006:
"Secrecy and Display in the Quest for Transcendence in China, ca. 220 B.C.E.-350 C.E." History of Religions 45.4 (May).
"Two Religious Thinkers of the Early Eastern Jin: Gan Bao and Ge Hong in Multiple Contexts."Asia Major 3rd ser.18.1 (Spring).
In January, Campany presented the paper “The Functions of Narratives in the Self-Presentation and Reception of Xian-Seekers,” at the International Conference on the World of Thought in Early Medieval China held at the National University of Singapore.
Also in January, he presented two papers, “Seekers of Transcendence in Early Medieval China: A Performance-Reception Model” and “Some Aspects of Chinese Thought, ca. 450-250 B.C.E.,” at the University of Southern California.
In February, he presented two papers, “Transcendence-Seekers in Early Medieval China: A Performance-Reception Model” and “Death and Immortality in Early China,” at Boston University.
Sara Friedman (ANTH/GNDR/EALC) presented the paper “The Ties that Bind: Female Homosocial Bonds as Counterintimacies” at the April workshop “On Chinese Kinship and Relatedness: Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives,” sponsored by the University of Manchester and the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon.
Scott Kennedy (EALC/POLS) presented the paper “The Political Economy of Standards Coalitions: Contrasting Wireless LAN and Home Networking Standards Development” at the workshop “China 's Technology Standards Policy: Implications for the United States and China,” organized by the National Bureau of Asian Research (Seattle). The workshop took place in January at the Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management, Beijing.
While there, he also participated in Salon No.108, “Lobbying and Business Associations in China,” a discussion group on business associations in China.
In February, he presented the paper “Conquering the Middle Kingdom: Globalization and Foreign Political Influence in China,” at the research colloquium "Corporate Political Activities in an Internationalizing Economy" at the Free University, Amsterdam.
In March, he participated in “Discussion of The Business of Lobbying in China,” hosted by the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies's Reading Group on Law & Society at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
In March he also gave a talk titled “The Chinese Dragon: Economic Competitor and Military Threat?” for the Indiana University Men's Faculty Club.
Ethan Michelson (SOC/EALC) presented the paper “Guanxi in the Chinese Legal System” at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in February.
In April at the annual conference of the American Asian Society, Michelson organized a panel titled “Reassessing Village Governance and its Future in China: Findings from Three Recent Rural Surveys.” He also presented the paper “‘Peasants' Burdens' and State Response: Explaining the Causes and Predicting the Consequences of Popular Tax Resistance in Rural China.”
Michelson has organized a panel for the Law and Society Association's (LSA) July conference titled “Popular Legal Advice: Comparative and Historical Research on Rights Consciousness and the Media.” He will also present two papers: “Dear Lawyer Bao: Institutional Change, State Power, and Popular Resistance in China” and “Challenges and Coping Strategies in China 's Criminal Defense Bar.”
Anne Prescott (EASC) gave a talk on “Japanese Koto: An Ancient Instrument in Modern Times” for the Asian Studies Center at Michigan State University in March.
Michael Robinson (EALC) participated in a colloquium on the topic of Korean colonial literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in January.
Michiko Suzuki (EALC) presented the paper “Constructing Abnormality: The Female Invert and Sexology in Prewar Japan” at the annual Indiana University Cultural Studies Program conference in February.
Natsuko Tsujimura (EALC/LING) published the paper “A Constructional Approach to Mimetic Verbs” in M. Fried and H.C. Boas (eds.) Construction Grammar: Back to the Roots published by John Benjamins.
In January, Tsujimura was a discussant on the panel “Linguistic Research and Language Teaching” and presented the paper “Linguists and Language Teaching: Challenges and Opportunities” at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Albuquerque.
In March, she presented a paper with Kyoko Okamura (Ph.D. in LING) titled “Language Change and Language Pedagogy” at the Fifth International Conference on Practical Linguistics of Japanese, held at San Francisco State University.
Yasuko Ito Watt (EALC), as an invited guest speaker, presented “The Five Cs and Anime and Manga as Instructional Materials” at the 18th Central Association of Teachers of Japanese Conference at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in March.
Also in March, Watt served as the head judge at the Twentieth Annual Midwest Japanese Language Speech Contest at the Consulate General of Japan in Chicago
Illinois/Indiana East Asia Initiative
As part of the joint effort between the East Asian Studies Center and the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the following Indiana University professors taught graduate seminars at UIUC this semester:
Michael Robinson (EALC) on colonialism and post-colonialism in Asia
Greg Kasza (EALC/POLS) on comparative welfare systems
Scott O'Bryan (EALC/HIST) on development as historical construct
Jeff Wasserstrom (HIST/EALC) on global cities
Gardner Bovingdon (CEUS) and Sara Friedman (ANTH/GNDR/EALC) co-taught on nationalism and ethnic politics
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Liora Sarfati (Ph.D. in FOLK and EALC) has been awarded the 2006-07 Society of Friends of Korean Studies (SOFOKS) Fellowship, an annual fellowship that supports graduate training in Korean studies at Indiana University. She will spend the fall term of the fellowship finishing her coursework and preparing for her qualifying examinations in EALC. She will also teach an EALC course on East Asian shamanism. In the spring she will begin her dissertation fieldwork in Korea.
Stephan N. Kory (Ph.D. in EALC), Johnathan Pettit (Ph.D. in EALC), Erik J. Hammerstrom (Ph.D. in REL), and Michael Stanley-Baker (M.A. in EALC) participated in a panel titled “Power, Medicine and Religion in the Tang,” at Columbia University's 15th Annual Graduate Student Conference on East Asia in February. Hammerstrom presented the paper “Flower People: The Cult of the Huayan Scripture and the Imaging of Lay Religiousness in Tang China.” Pettit spoke on “Erecting a Goddess: Seventh Century Propaganda of the Zhou (690-705) Imperial Cult.” Kory presented a paper titled “An Auspicious Omen Inscribed on Stone: The History and Significance of the Baotu.” Stanley-Baker presented the paper “Cultivating Life or Cultivating Self: A Phenomenological Reading of a Tang Dynasty Health Manual.”
Also at this conference, Michael Stanley-Baker acted as discussant on the panel “Bodies in Flux: Changing Views of Interiority in China.”
At the University of Toronto 's Sixth Annual Graduate Conference in March, Stephan Kory (Ph.D. in EALC) presented the paper “Like a Cicada Leaving Behind its Shell: Changing Accounts of the Early Medieval Chinese Holy Man Shan Daokai.”
Joannah Peterson (M.A. in EALC) and Adrianne Renberg (M.A./Ph.D. in HIST) have been admitted to the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama. Renberg will attend the summer and ten-month programs, and Peterson will attend the ten-month program starting in the fall.
Joanne Quimby was awarded a Paul V. McNutt and Kathleen McNutt Watson Graduate Fellowship and a Louise McNutt Fellowship by the College of Arts and Sciences for 2006-07. These fellowships were established through the estate of Louise McNutt to support graduate fellowships.
Quimby has been conducting dissertation research at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan, and will be returning to Bloomington to complete her dissertation during the 2006-07 academic year.
In March, she presented a talk in Japanese at Ritsumeikan titled “‘Women's Poetry' or ‘Feminist Poetry'? Performance, the Body, and Ecriture Feminine in the Poetry of Ito Hiromi.”
Vance Schaefer (M.A. in EALC) was awarded the prestigious Lieber Memorial Teaching Associate Award. Initiated in 1961, these awards have been presented each year to outstanding teachers among the University's graduate students who combine their programs of advanced study with instructional employment in their schools and departments. The Lieber Associate Instructor Award winners receive, in addition to the certificate, a one-time cash award.
Geoff Waters (Ph.D. in EALC, 1980) has the following forthcoming publications:
"Bo Juyi and Guan Panpan: The Swallow Tower Poems" Translation Review (2006).
Broken Willow:The Complete Poems of Yu Xuanji, SUNY Press (2006).
White Crane: Love Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama (from the Tibetan), White Pine Press (2007).
Kyoim Yun (Ph.D. in FOLK and minor in EALC) had an article based on a dissertation chapter published in a special issue of The Journal of Korean Studies (Spring 2006). T itled “The 2002 World Cup and a Local Festival in Cheju : Global Dreams and the Commodification of Shamanism,” the article also won the Don Yoder Student Paper Prize from the American Folklore Society.
The following undergraduate students have been awarded EALC scholarships:
Joseph Brantly, Steven Shyu, and Hillary Demmon have been awarded the Uehara Scholarship. This scholarship was created in honor of the late professor Toyoaki Uehara for undergraduates showing excellence in East Asian studies.
Brett Norris has been awarded the Yasuda Scholarship which was created in honor of Professor Emeritus Kenneth Yasuda for undergraduates demonstrating excellence in Japanese studies.
Daniel Stanko has been awarded the Gines Scholarship given by EALC alumni James Gines and his wife, Noriko, for undergraduates combining excellence in an East Asian language with excellence in professional school studies.
Allison Buess has been awarded the Paul Nutter Memorial Scholarship. This scholarship was created in memory and honor of Paul Nutter, an EALC undergraduate Japanese major, for students in any East Asian language demonstrating the same heart and commitment to learning that Paul expressed.
Alyse Hashi (Japanese) and Kristen Olsen (Chinese) have been awarded the Advance to 200-Level Language Scholarship. This award was created by Travis Selmier (MBA, 1986 and Ph.D. in POLS) and his wife, Madeline Wing (M.A. in EALC, 1986), to encourage students in a first-year Chinese or Japanese class to continue on to the second year.
The following undergraduates have been awarded EASC prizes for excellence in Asian studies:
Michael Folkmeir has been awarded the Undergraduate Award for Chinese Studies.
Shaun Bengson has been awarded the Alpine Prize for Japanese Studies.
Brett Hunsaker has been awarded the SOFOKS Award for Korean Studies.
Summer 2006 IU-Tochigi Cultural Experience Program
Through generous funding from the Freeman Foundation, the EASC offers a two-week summer homestay program in Tochigi prefecture, Indiana's sister state in Japan. The Tochigi prefectural government and Hakuoh University in Oyama City, Tochigi also provide financial and logistical support, arranging cultural exchange forums with local citizens and opportunities to interact with university students.
As a result of a highly competitive application process, the following four students were selected to participate in this summer's program from June 14 to June 27:
Eric Cox, an EALC major at IU-Bloomington
April Hall, an EALC major at IU-Bloomington
Keleih Kitano, a Japanese major in the Individualized Major program in IUPUI's School of Liberal Arts
Michael Westlake, a New Media major in IUPUI's School of Informatics
In addition to the homestay and cultural exchange components, the four participants have designed research projects to carry out while in Tochigi and will submit a report of their findings when they return.
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Profile
Judy Stubbs is the Pamela Buell Curator of Asian Art at the Indiana University Art Museum (IUAM). She received a Ph.D. in East Asian art history in 1993 from the University of Chicago where her major was in Japanese art history and her minor was in early Buddhist sculpture in India and China. She spent a brief period of time in Bloomington in 1993 when she taught for a semester as a sabbatical replacement for Susan Nelson (EALC/FINA) in Asian art history. Afterwards, she worked at the East Asian Studies Center until she obtained a tenure-track teaching position at the University of Utah.
After teaching art history at the University of Utah for eight years, she began her job as curator at IUAM in 2002. Although she had acted as an informal consultant on East Asian art at the University of Utah, she had never before acted as a curator, and her training has been a process of on-the-job learning with assistance from a supportive museum staff. She is grateful to have found a job that fits both her skills and her interests—a job that keeps her active and offers a wide variety of tasks, that allows her to interact with wonderful art objects, and that gives her the opportunity to teach an undergraduate or graduate seminar every three semesters. She also enjoys writing for a general audience, such as writing museum labels and other explanatory texts, which entails explaining very complicated subjects in simple, short formats.
Aside from the Asian art collection that is on permanent display, the museum has approximately one thousand Japanese prints in storage. While most of the sculptures are on continuous display, works on paper and silk must be rotated every three months in order to protect them from being damaged by sunlight and hanging. One part of her job that Stubbs finds especially rewarding is giving tours of the Asian collection and leading special behind-the-scenes tours. She also offers showings of art for specific educational or professional needs. For information on using this service, please see the contact information listed below.
This fall, her newest show, Conspiring with Tradition: Contemporary Painting from the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy, will open in the Special Exhibitions Gallery and run from September 30 to December 17. The genesis of this show illustrates the often unexpected ways in which exhibits are created. The idea came from a cocktail party held by a friend of her mother last year. Asked if she had ever seen the Chinese collection of an art collector named Herman Mast, she arranged to view the collection which in turn inspired her to contact the members of the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy, a group of artists ranging from age twenty to ninety-two who had banded together in the 1990s for mutual support and funding advantages. The group has had exhibits in Japan and throughout Asia, but the Bloomington show will be its first exhibit in the United States. About a dozen of the artists plan to attend the opening. Stubbs will follow Conspiring with Tradition with another East Asian show in 2007, an exhibit of modern Japanese prints from local Bloomington collections.
http://www.artmuseum.iu.edu
Location: 1133 East Seventh Street
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Contact: 855-5445 iuam@indiana.edu
Tours : 855-1045
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New Staff
EASC welcomes Mary Beth Kennedy as the new Accounts Coordinator. Kennedy has an M.A. in Public Health from George Washington University and a B.A. in Economics and Environmental Science from the University of Virginia. She joined EASC on a temporary basis in November and has since become a permanent staff member.
EALC welcomes Lara Tokarski as the new Administrative Secretary for the department. Tokarski has a B.A. in Linguistics from Indiana University.
Summer Language and Culture Courses for IUB Faculty and Staff
The East Asian Studies Center is pleased to announce our Summer Language and Culture Programs on China, Japan, and Korea. Fun and interactive, these three special two-week courses offer faculty and staff of Indiana University-Bloomington the opportunity to learn about the cultures of these East Asian countries and to acquire some basic language skills in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in a low-pressure, hands-on environment. The courses are free and all resources will be provided. Pre-registration is required due to space limitations.
The Korean course will run from Friday, May 19 to Friday, June 2 (no class on Monday, May 29), 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Ballantine 314. It will be taught by FOLK/EALC Ph.D. student Liora Sarfati.
The Japanese course will be team-taught by EALC Ph.D. student Susan Furukawa and EALC M.A. student Vance Schaefer. It will be held from Monday, June 5 to Friday, June 16, 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. in Student Building 140.
The Chinese course will be taught by EALC Ph.D. student Jonathan Pettit, from Monday July 10 to Friday July 21, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Ballantine 337.
Registration forms are available online and can be mailed or faxed (855-7762) to EASC.
For more information, please contact Nancy Alexander at 855-3765 or easc@indiana.edu.
Current and Upcoming Art Exhibits
The Mathers Museum of World Cultures presents: Japan-in-America : The Turn of the Twentieth Century. March 23 to December 20, 2006. This exhibit samples the vast number of images, stories, performances, and accounts of Japan that circulated in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. The project director is Gregory A. Waller, chair of the Department of Communication and Culture. The Mathers Museum is located at 416 North Indiana Avenue and is open Tuesday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. |
Indiana University Art Museum presents: Conspiring with Tradition: Contemporary Painting from the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy September 30 to December 17, 2006 Special Exhibitions Gallery The beautiful landscape of Guilin, China has nurtured a group of superb local painters from the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy. The IU Art Museum is proud to be the exclusive venue for the first-ever exhibition of their paintings in the United States. Conspiring with Tradition: Contemporary Painting from the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy will feature approximately sixty large-scale contemporary paintings, the majority of which have been painted in the last two years. The Guilin Academy artists show great diversity in their themes and techniques as well as in their life experiences—the oldest member of the academy is in his nineties, the youngest in his thirties. Some are highly acclaimed masters; others are rising new stars. Against long odds, these artists have held sacred the shared goal of giving life to a contemporary “ Guilin School ” of painting, reflecting their profound artistic heritage. The exhibition is made possible with support from Indiana University 's New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Program. The Indiana University Art Museum is located at 1133 East 7 th Street and is open Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and on Sunday 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
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Indiana University Chinese Culture Club
This year marks the Chinese Culture Club's (formally known as China House) second year as an official IU student organization. The club sponsored an early semester meeting attended by undergraduates and graduates for an informal gathering and Go tournament. In October, along with Delta Sigma Pi, a fraternity from the Kelley School of Business, the club sponsored a seven-course Chinese dinner at the Forest Greenleaf dining center with Scott Kennedy (EALC/POLS) as guest speaker. The club also partnered with the Indiana University Asian Culture Center to host a hot pot ( huo guo ) open house which was attended by students and people from the local community, and it plans to end the semester with an end-of-year banquet. The club hopes to continue its outreach efforts and establish further partnerships with other Indiana University organizations.
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