EASC Newsletter

IU East Asia News

Reynolds Named Asian Advisor, McRobbie Visits China and Japan
Shawn Reynolds (EALC M.A., 1987), associate director of IU Bloomington’s Center for International Education Development Assistance, has been named special advisor for Asian initiatives in the Office of the Provost. The position will help coordinate international initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region for the provost’s office and will include working with the Office of International Programs and IU faculty experts and researchers.

Over the next year interim Provost Michael McRobbie plans to visit the top five countries in Asia in which IU has significant activity. In July, McRobbie visited major universities in China and signed an agreement with Tsinghua University for cooperation in Internet management and protocol. He visited Japan in early October to meet with administrators and faculty members from University of Tokyo, Waseda University, and Rikkyo University. The goal of this trip was to develop and strengthen contacts between IU and some of the top-tier educational institutions in Japan. McRobbie plans to visit Korea, Taiwan, and India in 2007.

IU Signs Agreement with Tsinghua University
In July, IU and Tsinghua University in Beijing agreed to establish a cooperative research program that will focus on student exchanges and expanding and improving worldwide use of the Internet for scientific research. The agreement was signed at a ceremony in Beijing by interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Michael McRobbie and Tsinghua Vice President CHEN Jining and sets up cooperative research ventures in engineering, management, and cybersecurity for high-speed, broadband data networks, especially those used by scientists around the world to transfer large quantities of digital data.
Read more at: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/3702.html.

IU’s School of Law Partners with Fudan University in Shanghai
Bloomington recently announced its official partnership with China’s Fudan University in Shanghai. In addition to beginning a student and faculty exchange program, the two universities recently applied for a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to fund additional students from Fudan University to study at IU and to invest in a new Center for Comparative Legal Culture.
Read more at: http://www.law.indiana.edu/front/special/20060901_fudanuniversity.shtml.

AJLS Meeting
With the topic of “Travel in Japanese Representational Culture: Its Past, Present, and Future,” the fifteenth annual meeting of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies (AJLS) was held in Tokyo at Jōsai University, July 1-2. This is the first time that the AJLS annual meeting has been held outside the United States, and IU made a strong showing. Harue TSUTSUMI (EALC Ph.D., 2004) presented the paper “Kabuki Encounters the West: Iwakura Embassy and Hyōryūkidan Seiyōkabuki.” Sumie Jones (Professor, EALC and Comparative Literature) delivered a paper titled “Traveling/Travel-lying and the Invention of Science Fiction in Japan.” Lewis Dibble (Lecturer, English, IUPU Columbus; Comparative Literature Ph.D., 1997) presented “On Not Crossing Over to the Past: Bashō and Benjamin at the Barriers.” The conference was co-coordinated by Purdue University’s Associate Professor of Japanese Eiji SEKINE (EALC Ph.D., 1988). EALC Professors Edith Sarra and Michiko SUZUKI as well as Ph.D. candidate Joanne Quimby were also in attendance.