EASC: Teaching About Asia

Charles Andrews is a Ph.D. candidate in Indiana University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Charles’s interest in Japan and East Asia began when he lived as a high school exchange student at Matsuyama Nishi High School in the city of Matsuyama (Ehime Prefecture) in 1983-1984. Finding Japan’s educational system so different, yet the concerns of its teenagers so recognizable, Charles decided then that he would return someday to study the culture more deeply. He graduated from Emory University with a BA (summa cum laude) in anthropology, writing his honor’s thesis on moral education in Japan. After graduating, Charles taught English for two years at a middle school in rural northeastern Japan and then returned to Indiana to teach Japanese in Tippecanoe County high schools for three years. He then enrolled at Indiana University and received an MA in Japanese with a research focus on education during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). At Indiana he has been an assistant instructor in language and culture courses and has taught the Introduction to East Asia course. He is currently finishing his dissertation on communications and community during the Tokugawa period while teaching language and culture courses at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN.