Series Events > Exploring East Asia through Storytelling

Exploring East Asia through Storytelling:
This series, sponsored by IU's East Asian Studies Center, feature popular folktales from China, Japan, or Korea told by a professional storyteller. The presentations also involved an IU student from the relevant country, who discussed modern-day issues addressed by the folktale.

This spring, three interactive presentations focused on the much-loved Japanese folktale, "The Crane Wife". Professional storyteller Mary Fraser performed the story of the marriage of a simple farmer and his crane-wife who could weave enchanted cloth. Following the story, Mary fielded student questions about the characters and meaning of the tale. The second part of the program, was presented by IU student Yasuko Murphy of Japan. She introduced the students to Japanese 'dancing' red-crowned, the importance of the crane in Japanese culture and art, and recent efforts to protect this now-endangered species.

The program was presented to Lebanon Middle School's 7th grade East Asian study group, and to two 3rd grade classes - the students of Longfellow Elementary School teacher JoAnn Beleslin and on the students of Grissom Elementary School teacher Lois Johnson. Both of the elementary schools are located in Gary, Indiana, and IU's ability to reach these two faraway sites via the Vision Athena network once again demonstrated the values of this distance learning technology as an outreach tool. In all presentations, the 3rd and 7th graders asked many questions and seemed quite at ease interacting with guest speakers who were, in fact, quite far away.