EASC Newsletter

Student News

Recent EASC FLAS Recipients
Last spring, EASC awarded 2006-07 academic year Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships to three IU graduate students. The FLAS program is administered by the U.S. Department of Education to make funds available for foreign language and area or international studies. According to the department’s website, the program has three main goals: “(1) to assist in the development of knowledge, resources, and trained personnel for modern foreign language and area/international studies; (2) to stimulate the attainment of foreign language acquisition and fluency; and (3) to develop a pool of international experts to meet national needs.” The benefits of the FLAS Fellowships include tuition fee remission, a stipend for living expenses, and enrollment in the graduate student health insurance program.

The following are the 2006-07 recipients of EASC’s FLAS fellowships:

Curtis Ashton, Ph.D. student in folklore, is studying Mandarin Chinese at IU as he finishes up coursework before beginning his dissertation research next year. His research centers on ideas of “cultural heritage” in contemporary China and how such ideas of heritage are maintained. He is interested in how the government, cultural institutions, and people’s everyday lives intersect to formulate this concept of heritage.

Thomas Dolina, who is working on an M.A. in East Asian studies in the EALC department and a J.D. in the School of Law, is studying at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP) on the campus of Tsinghua University in Beijing. While at IUP, he is focusing on achieving competency in media, legal, and diplomatic Chinese. Upon completing the program, he plans to resume his law studies and then go on to work for the U.S. government, with the ultimate aim of becoming a politician.

Joannah Peterson, M.A. student in Japanese in EALC, is studying at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Studies in Yokohama. Her studies focus on Japanese literature, with an emphasis on Murasaki Shikibu and The Tale of Genji. Upon completion of her M.A., she plans to work for a nonprofit Japanese cultural organization (such as Japan Society), with the eventual goal of earning a Ph.D.

Anyone interested in applying for a FLAS fellowship for summer 2007 or the 2007-08 academic year should check the IU FLAS website at http://www.indiana.edu/~flas after November 1, at which time application materials and deadline dates will be available.

Student Features

Thomas Dolina (M.A. in EALC; J.D.) spent the summer studying the Uyghur language in the city of Urumqi, which is located in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. According to Dolina, he decided to study there “because Urumqi provided me with the ideal environment for improving both my Chinese and Uyghur language skills. Although I took only Uyghur language classes, I was still able to practice my Mandarin outside of the classroom.” Due to its location in the northwest of China and its shared borders with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirghiszstan, Tadzhikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, Xinjiang is a unique point of intersection of Islamic culture and Han Chinese influences. Dolina explains, “Xinjiang is the nexus between China, Central Asia and Russia. . . . Uyghur culture integrates foreign borrowings with unique Uyghur customs and traditions. For example, Uyghurs are Muslims, yet the variety of Islam practiced by the Uyghurs is different from those varieties found elsewhere. In recent times, Uyghur has received significant influence from Han Chinese culture, especially in business habits and professional life. Of course, Uyghur culture maintains much of its core, as evidenced in Uyghur dancing, singing, folk customs and remarkable sense of hospitality and generosity.”

As mentioned in the previous section, this year Dolina will be studying Chinese in Beijing on a FLAS fellowship. He sees his experiences this summer in Xinjiang and his studies of the Uyghur language to be complimentary to his ongoing work on China, saying that they have “given me an in-depth exposure to Chinese affairs within a global context. . . . Since my broader interests include Chinese foreign policy and Sino-Russian relations, this experience has provided me with an invaluable glimpse into the mood of China’s periphery. Moreover, in a way, I consider Xinjiang to represent the ‘real’ China. The region is quite distant from the Western influences and investment that have affected the coastal areas.”

Research News from Ph.D. Students in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department

Yuhao CEN is a first-year doctoral student in the Education Policy Studies program of the School of Education’s Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department. Prior to her move to the United States this fall, she received her B.A. degrees in English language and literature and economics from Peking University. In China she participated in the dissemination and analysis of several surveys on rural education, migrant labor, and family-school education. She also worked part-time in Junior Achievement, an educational NGO, handling the translation and publication of textbooks. In addition to her studies, in the coming years she will assist Professors Heidi Ross and Margaret Sutton with their editorial responsibilities for the Comparative Education Review. Cen describes her current interests as “Chinese higher education, particularly the relationship between education and social/economic circumstances, as well as the role of NGOs in Chinese education.”

With a major in curriculum studies and a minor in international and comparative education, Ming-Chu HSU has been exploring educational reforms across cultures and countries. Says Hsu, “I am currently working on a project called ‘Sharing and Learning: Service Learning Images of Taiwanese and American Students and Administrators,’ supported by a Daisy Jones research fellowship from the Curriculum and Instruction Department.” Hsu will be finished with most of her data collection from both Taiwan and the United States by the end of October. The object of this international comparative study is to engage Taiwanese and American teacher education students and service-learning program administrators through a research methodology called Photovoice in order to develop transnational and multicultural understanding that can help improve course development in teacher education programs. Because she has participated in an American service learning project and co-authored a community-based research paper in the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in spring 2006, this particular research experience has drawn her attention to “how a service-learning project can be socially and culturally defined and shaped in terms of students’ images of the meaning of service and learning. I see a significant need for investigating students’ images of service learning and reexamining its conceptual framework as a powerful means of achieving civic engagement.”

As a doctoral student in the Education Policy Studies program, Jingjing LOU has been actively seeking opportunities to work with educational development agencies. “Funded partially by an International Enhancement Grant from the Office of International Programs, I worked this summer as an intern in one of the organizations most closely associated with girls’ education, the Shaanxi Women’s Federation (SWF), which is guided by the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF) and serves nearly eighteen million women and girls in the province. ACWF is the largest NGO in China, advocating the welfare of women and girls in all social spheres and empowering them with necessary practical and life skills.” At SWF she worked with the Office of Children’s Affairs and was involved in surveying one thousand girls receiving multi-year scholarships from a California-based NGO, The 1990 Institute, which is the biggest NGO scholarship project for girls in need in China. The survey project was initiated by Professor Heidi Ross in partnership with SWF. After a three-week-long survey investigation in more than twenty rural schools, Lou returned to the SWF office and worked on other Spring Bud scholarship projects. (The Spring Bud program, started by the All-China Women’s Federation, provides education for girls in poverty-stricken areas of China.) In particular, she managed the fourteen Spring Bud girls’ classes established in fourteen counties by the U.S.-based Cyrus Tang Foundation. Lou remarked, “It is truly an honor and privilege for me, both as a researcher and as a practitioner, being part of a team that plays such an important role in influencing the educational experiences and eventually the life paths of thousands of girls living in poverty.”

As a second-year Ph.D. student from Taiwan interested in the relationship among education, politics, immigration, and globalization, visiting three Taiwanese schools in China this past summer inspired Hsiang-ning WANG to rethink their mutual dynamics and influences . She describes the context of her research in this way: “Based on the educational demands of a sharply escalating number of Taiwanese children temporarily or permanently migrating to China due to their parents ’ work, since 2000 the governments of Taiwan and the PRC have been separately creating their own educational regulations and policies for the establishment of Taiwanese schools in China, even during politically tense cross-straits periods. These schools look like local Chinese schools or schools in Taiwan; however, the fences of these schools are the boundaries of two separate worlds. Taiwanese students from preschool to high school use textbooks delivered from Taiwan that are examined by the PRC government for politically sensitive materials. Teachers of different subjects are from both Taiwan and China.” Wang interviewed principals, teachers, parents, and students of these schools and observed some students’ daily lives by following them to and from school. Following this pre-dissertation trip, she plans to remain in contact with students from these schools, particularly students at the high-school level, to gain a greater understanding of how their study and life experiences in China and past experiences in Taiwan influence their cultural and national identity formation.

One of Lei WANG’s major academic foci since joining the Education Policy Studies program two years ago has been educational equity, particularly in her home country of China. Since China joined the worldwide “Educational for All” movement as a high-profile player in 1990, the problem of rural girls’ lack of access to quality education has been a national focus. This summer, with funding from the Office of International Programs and help from the Shaanxi Women’s Federation, she was able to conduct a seven-week pre-dissertation fieldtrip in southeastern Shaanxi. Said Wang, “During the field trip, I visited all rural schools which participate in The 1990 Institute project (see Jingjing LOU above) and conducted interviews with the principals and homeroom teachers. My research provided me with crucial data regarding how gender, education, poverty, and social development interact at the micro-level. The trip also enabled me to use the rich resources of the National Library and to meet leading Chinese scholars and activists who have done or are doing development work in the area of gender and basic education.” For example, interviews with the former principals and students of two well-known girls’ schools helped her understand the issues of girls’ education from domestic practitioners’ perspectives and will provide a basis for comparison of how the relationship between female identity formation and schooling may differ for wealthier urban girls and for impoverished rural girls in The 1990 Institute project.

Ran ZHANG conducted a summer internship at the College of Educational Administration, Beijing Normal University with a partial award of the 2006 International Enhancement Grant from the Office of International Programs. This institution hosts the National Principal Training Center for Primary Schools, an affiliation to the Ministry of Education and one of two principal training centers nationwide. Said Zhang, “The goal of my internship was to gain a better understanding of educational law teaching and educational law development in China. In my internship, I first exchanged ideas with the educational law professors.” With help from the dean of the college, she was able to interview various officials from the Ministry of Education and got to know the policy process behind some recent educational law changes in China. She was also asked to proofread the Chinese translation of Public School Law, a book on American educational law co-authored by IU professor Martha McCarthy. To Zhang’s knowledge, this will be the first book on educational law translated into Chinese.

Additional Student News

Brian Flaherty (M.A. in EALC) studied for a year at Nankai University in Tianjin, China as an exchange graduate student through the Office of International Programs. As an exchange student, Flaherty was entitled to audit classes at the university and used the opportunity to improve his classical Chinese. Of his time abroad, Flaherty says, “It was a great experience, since I was free to use my time however I liked. Some of the professors I met are amazing. It was also interesting to sit in on regular classes (both undergrad and grad) at a Chinese university and make comparisons with my U.S. experience.”

Clarke Hudson (Ph.D. in Religious Studies) is teaching at Carleton College this year as he finishes his dissertation “Writing Salvation: Chen Zhixu and the Social, Soteriological, and Literary Contexts of Fourteenth-Century Chinese Inner Alchemy.”

David Nelson (Ph.D. in History) presented a paper at the Western Conference of the Association of Asian Studies in September at Weber State University in Ogden, UT. His paper was titled “Creating Japan’s Imperialist Image: Colonial City Building in Formosa and Manchuria.” This year, David is teaching at IU Kokomo in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences as part of the Preparing Future Faculty Program, where he is teaching classes about Western civilizations as well as premodern and early modern Japan.

Brian Ruh (Ph.D. in Communication and Culture) published the chapter “The Robots from Takkun’s Head: Cyborg Adolescence in FLCL” in the collection Cinema Anime (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). He had presented an earlier version of the paper in 2004 at the national conference of the Popular Culture Association, which he attended thanks to an EASC Graduate Student Conference Travel Grant.

Michael Stanley-Baker (M.A. in EALC) received a fellowship to study Taiwanese this year from Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, which he will use in the summer of 2007.