EASC Newsletter

EASC Reports

Staff at EALC
Barb Grinder, after nine and a half years in the EALC department, has retired as office manager and assistant to the chair and has moved to the Department of Theatre & Drama where she is serving as the academic secretary. Her new department has nineteen faculty, fifty graduate students and 300 undergraduate majors. Her kindness and faithfulness to her work will be greatly missed in EALC, but we wish her the best in her new position.

Julia Mobley has joined the EALC staff as the fiscal officer, assistant to the chair, and office manager. She comes to us from a position as accounting associate in the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. Welcome, Julia!

Monsters and the Monstrous in Japanese History and Culture Workshops
The first “Monsters and the Monstrous in Japanese History and Culture” workshop, directed by Professor Thomas Keirstead (EALC and History), was held March 30-31 and brought nine scholars of Japanese culture to Bloomington for two days of presentations and discussion. The presenters—Michael Foster (University of California, Riverside), Hank Glassman (Haverford College), Sumie Jones (IU), Jason Josephson (Princeton University), Thomas Keirstead, Susan Klein (University of California, Irvine), Christine Marran (University of Minnesota), Herman Ooms (University of California, Los Angeles), and Elizabeth Oyler (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)—represented a wide range of specialties, from religious studies to literature and history. Although most of the papers dealt with the premodern period, the workshop as a whole addressed issues of concern to scholars working in all areas of Japanese culture and focused on three major thematic areas. The first considered the place of powerful women in Japanese cultural discourse, the second concerned the subject of demon-slaying and the powers claimed by religious discourse over monsters and the monstrous, and the final theme took up the question of monsters in popular culture. This workshop was generously funded by the Toshiba International Foundation.

EASC recently received another grant from the Toshiba International Foundation to fund a second “Monsters” workshop focusing on the modern period. This workshop will be directed by Assistant Professor Michiko SUZUKI (EALC) and will take place March 21-22, 2008. This workshop will provide a forum for thinking deeply about what these category-defying creatures tell us not only about changes in the cultural imaginary and global marketplace, but also about the agility of human imagination.

IL/IN East Asian Education Network Dissertation Workshop
The IL/IN East Asian Education Network 4 th Doctoral Dissertation Workshop was held at the IU School of Education on Saturday, April 21 st. Twenty-five attendees from IU, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Minnesota, and Kent State University discussed the research of three advanced doctoral students. IU doctoral candidate Christopher J. Frey (Education Policy Studies) presented a chapter from his study, “Kannari Tarō, John Batchelor and Lessons from the School of Mutual Affection.” IU doctoral student Ran ZHANG (Educational Policy Studies and Educational Psychology) shared her dissertation proposal, “Understanding Students’ Legal Consciousness through Due Process Protection in Chinese Universities.” University of Minnesota doctoral student Jae-Eun JON discussed her dissertation proposal, “Internationalization of Higher Education in Korea: Korean Students’ Intercultural Interaction and Intercultural Competence as a Student Outcome.” During the break, IU master’s student Christina Stouder (Second Language Studies) gave a lively talk on her experience working in the NGO sector in China.

Korean Business & Culture Course and Study Tour
This spring the EASC sponsored its fifth East Asian business and culture course and study tour using Freeman Foundation Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative funds. This year’s program focused on Korea and included a three-credit course—jointly offered by the EALC department and the Kelley School of Business and taught by Professor Michael Robinson (EALC)—and a ten-day trip to South Korea over spring break. Of the twenty students who participated in the course, eleven were in the College of Arts and Sciences (among whom seven were Liberal Arts and Management Program students), eight were in the Kelley School of Business, and one was in the University Division .

The study tour took place March 9-17 in Seoul. Accompanying the students on the study tour were Professors Robinson and Munirpallam Venkataramanan (Business). To prepare for the trip, the students studied a variety of texts and listened to lectures on Korean business and culture from a number of guest lecturers, including Professor Roy Shin (School of Public and Environmental Affairs), Professor Lawrence Davidson (Business Economics and Public Policy) and Professor Dong-Gil KO (Information Systems). The study tour included visits to important cultural sites and businesses, as well as time for students to explore the city for their individual research papers. The company visits included a trip to Samsung Electronics and to the Samsung Amusement Park, Everland, where the students had to respond to a lengthy case study about Everland’s strategic business decisions. The students also visited Amore Pacific, one of the leaders in the Asia-Pacific beauty and cosmetics markets.

Cultural sites visited included the Geongbok Palace, the Folk Museum, and the Korean Folk Village, an outdoor museum that recreates traditional Korean housing and craft activities, as well as the Chogyesa Buddhist Temple in downtown Seoul. They also visited the Namdaemun Market, a traditional sprawling open air market and participated in a half-day tour of the Demilitarized Zone, which included a tour of the North Korean infiltration tunnels and the ancestor shrine to North Korean relatives.

The students fared well in the large city, making good use of public transportation and taking advantage of opportunities to meet with young Koreans. For at least three students this trip was the first time they had been on a plane and the first time they had traveled outside of the United States. Without the support of the Freeman Foundation and the collaboration of faculty and staff across academic units and disciplines, this trip would not have been such a success.

New Korean Studies Award
The EALC department recently established an undergraduate award in Korean studies thanks to a $2,500 donation from the IU Korean Visiting Scholars Association. According to association president and Associate Professor Youngman LEE (Education), the goal of this new award is to “support the personal adjustments for living and studying at IU and to exchange information about IU and promote mutual friendship among the members.”
from the Indiana Daily Student. For more information, read the complete article at http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=41639.

2007 Indiana Roundtable on Post-Communism: Public Health
On Thursday, March 29 th EASC co-sponsored a public roundtable run by the Russian and East European Institute, along with the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center, the Center for the Study of Global Change, the Department of EALC, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Sociology, the European Union Center of Excellence, and the Office of International Programs. This year EASC sponsored speaker Sandra Teresa Hyde (McGill University), who focused on the current state of access to health care in China and HIV/AIDS in China. You can read more about the roundtable and Hyde's presentation at http://www.indiana.edu/~reeiweb/events/roundtable07.shtml.

IL/IN East Asia Fair: The Art of Calligraphy and Seal Making
The first annual IL/IN East Asia Fair for high school students, sponsored by EASC and University of Illinois’s Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, was held at Ivy Tech Community College in Terre Haute on April 23 rd. The topic was “The Art of Calligraphy and Seal Making,” and over twenty teachers and students from Terre Haute and Champaign-Urbana attended. In the morning students learned about the history of calligraphy and seal making from James Yang, Professor Emeritus at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. In the afternoon there were hands-on sessions, with participants creating their own calligraphy pieces as well as personalized seals. Special thanks goes to event volunteers Michiko OWAKI and Aiying WANG (visiting scholar from Hebei University, China).