EASC Newsletter

A Letter from the Director

Heidi Ross

Dear EASC Friends and Colleagues,

“Lights! Camera! China!” This title of a recent article in IU Home Pages captures for me the seemingly inexhaustible interest in East Asia around campus. The article describes a documentary on U.S. higher education featuring three IU undergrads and EALC Professor Scott Kennedy that is being aired to millions of families in the P.R.C. Scott, who was interviewed for the film in Chinese, described the initiative as “terrific … because it allowed us to speak directly to potential Chinese students without any intermediaries…. We're a global university, and hence, it's critical to have students from around the world in Bloomington.”

The film is just one among a number of initiatives that cast a spotlight on the importance of faculty and student exchange between IU and East Asian institutions. Counting China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan as among IU’s most strategically important countries, several IU administrators, including Provost Michael McRobbie, have recently traveled to East Asia to strengthen IU’s strategic partnerships and enhance collaborative research and teaching capacities. How far IU has come since its first international student—from Japan—graduated in 1890!

I invite you to share in our excitement about these developments by attending this semester’s East Asian Studies Center Colloquium series. IU Professors Jean Robinson and Sue Tuohy open the series with reflections on the 50 th anniversary of the build up to China’s Great Leap Forward. We also look forward to a special presentation in February on “The International Language of Science and Technology” by Provost McRobbie. Provost McRobbie’s talk marks the formal beginning of EASC’s 4-year program with University of Illinois on “Science and Technology in the Pacific Century,” an initiative you will hear more about over the course of this year.

As we plan for this initiative and others, I continue to be amazed and gratified by our collective faculty and student strengths in East Asia. Professor Nancy Abelmann, Director of the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign, recently told me she was likewise “dazzled by our combined faculty resources…. Time and again when I bemoan a lack at the U of I, I have been able to call upon IU Asia experts. Critical visits of IU faculty to graduate and undergraduate seminars, IU faculty participation in panel conversations, and increasingly the participation of IU faculty on U of I dissertation committees is really transforming the breadth and depth of our campus Asia profile.” And, of course, the same is true for Indiana as we draw upon our Illinois colleagues’ expertise for our teaching, research and outreach projects.

As we galvanize our resources and our imaginations to make the most of IU’s current East Asia wave, one of the most significant activities for which I will be enlisting your help is an external review of the East Asian Studies Center, to be conducted throughout 2007. Clarifying our short, medium and long term goals must be a critical priority. I thank you in advance for your support and advice as we chart our course for the next decade.

Finally, we are about to enter the Year of the Boar, the 12 th and last animal of the Chinese zodiac. At least according to come-ons for long distance phone cards (if not according to folklorists, who remain skeptical), this year’s pig is special indeed—a golden pig, come round not just once every dozen years but every 60 (or in some legends 600), when the 12 th sign of the zodiac aligns with a counter-cycle of the five elements: gold, wood, water, fire and earth. This astrological pas de deux supposedly brings good luck and fortune—particularly to children born during this year. Stay tuned for an update on whether predictions that South Korea will experience a 10% spike in birthrate prove accurate. Until then, may the Year of the Golden Pig bring happiness and good fortune to us all.

Best wishes,
Heidi Ross
Director, EASC