Newsletter 2020

Comments from the Director

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:26:24 +0000

Comments from the Director Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:26

Greetings from our new home in the CASE Building on the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder campus! Our humble brick cottage has made way for a new campus hotel and conference center. We are happy to welcome several new Asianists who joined our community in the fall of 2019. Marjorie Burge (Assistant Professor of Japanese), Xiaojing Miao (Visiting Assistant Professor of Chinese), Rachel Schine (Postdoctoral Associate in Arabic) and Ivanna Yi (Visiting Assistant Professor of Korean) all joined Asian Languages and Civilizations this year. Elsewhere on campus, we welcome Nishant Upadhyay (Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies), Jennifer Ho (Director of the Center for Humanities and Arts, and Professor of Ethnic Studies), Azita Ranjbar (Assistant Professor of Geography), and Will Taylor (Assistant Professor of Anthropology). Here at CAS, we are also joined by Darren Byler (Postdoctoral Associate with the China Made project), Nancy Johnsen (Finance and Grant Administrator), and Brenna Faricy (Videography Intern).

After 5 years as Associate Director of CAS and Instructor in Asian Studies, Colleen Berry will be retiring this year. Under Colleen��s guidance, the Asian Studies program has not only grown in student numbers, but has also been enriched by her course offerings, and by her passion as a teacher. CAS has benefitted immeasurably from Colleen��s enthusiasm and her natural abilities as a community-builder. Her students have benefitted from the care she brought to the classroom and the rich experiences she brought to the study-abroad trips she led in China. We wish her luck. She will be missed by all!

As usual, 2019 was a very busy year for us at CAS. Some highlights include co-hosting the Second China Made workshop at the Hong Kong Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. I should note that we are fortunate to have such great partners at HKIHSS. They helped us hold a great workshop despite all the stress and uncertainty that has plagued Hong Kong this past year. Related to China Made, postdoctoral associate Darren Byler has joined our team. Darren is an internationally-recognized expert on China��s surveillance infrastructures and the internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. He comes to us from the University of Washington, where he recently completed a dissertation in cultural Anthropology.

This year CAS wrapped up its Southeast Asian Studies initiative by finalizing a new student exchange program with Indonesia��s premier liberal arts institution, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. We are excited about continuing to build student opportunities in Indonesia.

It also gives me great pleasure to announce that at the spring 2019 commencement ceremony, Mr. Kazunori Takato was awarded the University Medal, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ��s top honor for achievement and contribution to the university. His award is much deserved! Takato-san has been a long-term supporter of CAS and has done a great deal to further our mission of making the study of Asia as accessible as possible to our students and to our broader community. We are equally proud that our Tang Global Seminar continues to be the most diverse and accessible of all study abroad opportunities offered at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. This diversity and accessibility are made possible through our generous donors. If you would like to help us in our mission, please consider a donation to CAS.

Tim Oakes, ?CAS Director, Professor of Geography

CAS Directors and Staff

Tim Oakes, CAS Director; Professor of Geography

Danielle Rocheleau Salaz, CAS Executive Director

Colleen Berry, CAS Associate Director and Instructor

Lynn Parisi, Director, Program for Teaching East Asia

Susan Schmidt, AATJ Executive Director

Darren Byler, CAS Postdoctoral Fellow

Catherine Ishida, TEA Senior Staff Associate

Nancy Johnsen, CAS and TEA Finance & Grant Assistant

Lynn Kalinauskas, TEA Senior Staff Associate

Liza Williams, CAS Event Coordinator

Jon Zeljo, TEA Senior Staff Associate, China and NCTA

Lin Zhu, CAS Graduate Research Assistant

Brenna Faricy, CAS Videography Intern

Off

Traditional

White

Faculty Updates & Visiting Scholars

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:25:10 +0000

Faculty Updates & Visiting Scholars Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:25

Parting Thoughts from Colleen Berry

The last five years have been challenging, interesting, exciting, and gratifying. The opportunity to expand my field from Chinese literature to Asian studies has been daunting at times, but one that has thoroughly enriched my life. I��ve been delighted to have had the chance, through the Tang-funded Global Seminars, to continue taking students to China as well as teaching Asia-related classes on campus. I have truly enjoyed working at the Center for the past five years and have learned so much, thanks to my colleagues here and across campus, who work in Asia-related fields, and my students. The decision to move into a new phase of my life and career has been difficult but one I��m looking forward to. Thank you all for making my time at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ so valuable and enjoyable!

Colleen Berry

Faculty Updates

Brian A. Catlos (Professor of Religious Studies) was a featured author at the Jaipur Literary Festival in January at the Diggi Palace in Jaipur, India. In a session sponsored by the Agha Khan Foundation, he was interviewed by best-selling author William Dalrymple regarding Catlos��s recent book, Kingdoms of Faith. A New History of Islamic Spain (Basic: 2018). The book has been reviewed in the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, and even got a shout-out in the Wall Street Journal. The German, Spanish and Polish translations are also out with Korean and Complex and Simplified Chinese coming out in 2020.

A new global seminar, ANTH 3770: Primates of Vietnam: Conservation in a Rapidly Developing Country, was approved by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Education Abroad Committee in 2019 and is scheduled to be offered for the first time in summer 2020. Ten ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder undergraduates will travel to Vietnam with Drs. Bert Covert and Jonathan O��Brien for three weeks to see firsthand this Southeast Asian country��s attempts at balancing development and conservation.

Professors Bert Covert and Jonathan O��Brien at Can Gio Mangrove Biosphere Reserve.

The 2019 Society of Queer Asian Studies Best Paper prize was awarded to Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies Emmanuel David��s ��Transgender Archipelagos,�� published in the August 2018 issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly. The SQAS prize committee unanimously agreed that ��Transgender Archipelagos�� demonstrates what transgender studies and area studies can do for each other, or, to put it another way, what it means to see 'transgender studies' through the lens of 'area studies,�� and perhaps vice versa. The essay��s framing archipelagic perspective is particularly productive and promising in the many iterations of ��trans�� that the essay engages - transnational, transatlantic, transpacific, transindigenous, and transhemispheric. Conjoining queer and trans studies, area studies, and dance studies to analyze ethnographic research on Filipino beauty pageants, Dr. David convincingly demonstrates the expansive scope of ��transgender archipelagos,�� as an optic of queer and trans Asian studies.

Associate Professor of History Miriam Kingsberg Kadia's book, Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan, was published by Stanford University Press in 2019. Into the Field is a generational biography of the scholars who created knowledge of human diversity within the Japanese empire, and then revised that knowledge to suit the geopolitical realities of the Cold War world.

Dennis McGilvray (emeritus Professor of Anthropology) delivered a keynote presentation about Sri Lankan Muslim women��s domestic property at a conference held at Ashoka University, New Delhi, in August 2019, devoted to ��Matrilineal Muslims and Islamic Law in the Indian Ocean Littoral.�� On the same journey, he also interviewed experts in Colombo about Sri Lankan Muslim legal interpretations of women��s dowry and ��matrilocal�� residence patterns, which are quite widespread in the island.

Dennis McGilvray in New Delhi.

In 2019, Anthropology Professor Carole McGranahan continued her ongoing research on political asylum and citizenship in the Tibetan exile diaspora, and published several works including the articles "Chinese Settler Colonialism: Empire and Life in the Tibetan Borderlands" and "Love and War, Tibet and the CIA," and collaborated as editor with a Tibetan family on the book Resistance and Unity: The Chinese Invasion of Tibet, Makchi Shangri Lhagyal, and a People's History of Tibet, 1947-1959 (Chennai: Notion Press).

Beth Osnes (Associate Professor of Theatre) and Jay Keister (Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology) co-hosted the Fall Global Ancient and Classical Theatre workshop, with sessions on Malaysian shadow puppet theatre and Noh drama.

Students in Beth Osnes and Jay Keister��s Fall Global Ancient & Classical Theatre Workshop.

Stephanie Su (Assistant Professor of Asian Art) co-organized the International Conference on Xu Beihong (1895-1953) with the Xu Beihong Research Institute at the School of Arts, Renmin University of China. Xu Beihong was one of the most important artists in 20th century China, reflecting the tumultuous history of modern China. Prof. Su��s talk, ��Chinese Mythology in a Transnational context: Foolish Man Moving the Mountain and the Shifting Discourse of Pan-Asianism�� highlights the Sino-Indian relationship from the 1920s to the 1940s by uncovering the important role that the Indian Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, Rabindranath Tagore, played in Xu��s conceptualization of the painting. The conference has drawn media attention in China, and was reported on the Artron News, the biggest art news platform in China.

Stephanie Su at the International Conference on Xu Beihong.

Arriving at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ this fall, William Taylor (Assistant Prof/Curator of Archaeology, Anthropology/ŷ��ڱ��ƵMNH) is an archaeozoologist who studies human-environmental relations and animal domestication across East and Central Asia. His research explores the origins of horse riding and herding in Mongolia and China, and the prehistory of reindeer and large animal herding in mountain zones through glacial archaeology.

Assistant Professor William Taylor during field work.

Robert Wyrod, assistant professor in Women and Gender Studies and International Affairs, was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to continue his research on the impact of Chinese development assistance in sub-Saharan Africa. The grant will allow him to continue his research in Uganda where his fieldwork focuses on three large China-funded development projects.

A China-funded industrial park under construction in Uganda; photo by Robert Wyrod.

Report: Reconsidering Articulation Issues in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ and Surrounding States through New Pedagogical Perspectives

Yumiko Matsunaga and Hisako Schibli of the Japanese program in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations presented outcomes of a yearlong project at the conference of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in Washington D.C. in November 2019.

The project was supported through CAS with a Japan Foundation Japanese Language Education Project Grant from September 2018 to March 2019. With the help of CAS, Japanese instructors hosted three events: a workshop and two study group meetings. The two-day workshop, co-hosted by the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Japanese Language Education Association (CJLEA) in September 2018, offered local Japanese educators with varied backgrounds and experiences an opportunity to learn current pedagogical trends and concepts. Two guest speakers, Dr. Motoko Tabuse from Eastern Michigan University and Director Hideki Hara from the Japan Foundation Los Angeles, led the workshop.

Based on positive feedback after the workshop, Matsunaga and Schibli held study group meetings with local Japanese educators in October 2018 and February 2019. Through these study group meetings, participants learned how they each cater to new students with previous Japanese language experience and how they make efforts to bridge the transition between different levels. During the first meeting, it became clear how little each program knew about other programs in the area, leading participants to keenly feel the need to exchange information more frequently. It was especially evident that increased efforts from college instructors are needed in order to bridge gaps between high school and college curricula.

In the second meeting, participants shared materials and strategies for supporting smoother transitions among different levels of Japanese courses, and proposed the creation of an informational site that includes syllabi and placement test information for high school students, parents, teachers, and community college students who plan to transfer to universities. After these two study group meetings, there was a sense that all of the Japanese teachers had made great strides toward setting common goals among different programs in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ.

In October, CJLEA launched the informational site. Schibli and Matsunaga had an opportunity to share these outcomes at the ACTFL conference. The yearlong project was successfully completed with the conference presentation; however, Japanese instructors at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ-Boulder intend to continue their collaborations on the development of common goals for Japanese language programs in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ and surrounding states.

Participants in the "Reconsidering Articulation Issues in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ and Surrounding States through New Pedagogical Perspectives" workshop

Sabbatical Report: Pastoralists of the Upper Yangtze
Emily T. Yeh

I spent the last ten days of my sabbatical in China, in June 2018, on a trip to Drido and Chumarleb counties of Yushu Prefecture, Qinghai, on the Tibetan Plateau. The trip was organized by Drokpa Tsang, meaning ��Nomad House�� in Tibetan, a recently established social enterprise based in Drido, aimed at revitalizing Tibetan pastoral areas. Three young Tibetan staff members of Drokpa Tsang, along with Dorje Tashi, a well-known environmentalist who is working with them, accompanied our group, which consisted of three retired businesspeople from Hong Kong, myself, and a woman from Beijing who had worked with the Hong Kong organizer of the trip.
Over the past two decades, Tibetan pastoral mobility and pastoralism more generally have been eviscerated by a storm of environmental, developmental, and educational policies. Purportedly environmental policies have fenced and privatized use rights to grassland, increasing vulnerability to climate change, and exacerbating rangeland degradation. More drastic policies of ��ecological migration�� have led to the wholesale removal of many pastoral communities to the outskirts of distant towns. School consolidation policies that have closed village schools, concentrating them in distant county seats, have also incentivized households to move away from the land. State discourse that paints Tibetan nomads as backwards, ignorant, and ��low quality,�� has converged with a Buddhist modernist movement against the slaughter of livestock to further devalue Tibetan pastoralism. Low prices for pastoral products add insult to injury. Today, across the plateau, nomads aspire for their children to leave pastoralism behind and move to cities.
Concerned about the deep cultural loss abandonment of pastoral territories entails, Drokpa Tsang hopes to model a path for a new generation of young, educated Tibetans to return to their ancestral lands, by pioneering family ranches that combine pastoral production with tourist homestays. One of the staff members of Drokpa Tsang, Soba, runs a new homestay at his family home in Drido, where we stayed for two days experiencing and learning about everyday pastoral activities, such as herding, collecting and drying yak dung, milking, weaving with yak hair, and traditional games. Soba quit his salaried position at a university a year before to return home to make a life on the pastures, despite his parents and all of his friends thinking that he had gone completely insane. Our group��s visit was the first test of the homestay concept for his household, and of Drokpa Tsang��s plan to run ecologically and culturally informed study tours.
After acclimating for several days in Jyeku (3700 meters), the seat of Yushu Prefecture, we drove to Shari Monastery in Chumarleb County. From here we made our way to Drido County seat, with a population of 20,000 (4300 meters), where Drokpa Tsang is building a cultural-ecological center. We drove a few hours to Soba��s ranch along the Tongtian River, which flows southeast to become the Yangtze River, where we stayed for three days. From there we drove further up the Tongtian to Cuochi Village of Chumarleb, the last village before the Qinghai-Tibet highway, on the other side of which is the vast, now-unpopulated Kekexili Nature Reserve. Once a site of successful community environmental activism for the protection of wild yak, wild antelope, and other endangered species, the village has now been eviscerated by ecological migration. We stayed at a home of a former village head and environmental activist before driving back to Golmud along the Qinghai-Tibet highway.

Visiting Scholars

In 2019, CAS hosted twelve visiting scholars from around the US and Asia. During their time on campus, visiting scholars work with faculty members on common research interests, meet students, participate in events, and present their work at our Luncheon Series. Learning from them provides valuable opportunities for everyone in the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ community and beyond, and we feel fortunate to be able to serve as their home away from home.

Alton Byers was hosted by CAS Director Tim Oakes during the 2019-20 academic year. During his time here, he gave a talk, ��Glaciers and Garbage: Towards Sustainable Solid Waste Management in the Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park, Nepal (NGS-55262C-19)�� on September 26, 2019.

Reed Chervin was also hosted by Tim Oakes over the 2019-20 academic year. He shared his work in a talk, ��Struggle on the Roof of the World: The Sino-Indian Border Conflict from a Historical Perspective,�� in April 2020.

Wei Du also worked with Tim Oakes over 2019-20. Dr. Du was visiting from Guizhou Minzu University, and her work focuses on culture and environment in southwest China; in particular the traditional knowledge of local minority culture as a resource for economic development.

Kathleen Gallagher was at CAS over the spring semester of 2019. Dr. Gallagher came from the Graduate School for International Relations at St. Mary��s University to work with faculty host Carole McGranahan (Anthropology), and gave a talk, ��Liberation, Freedom and the Plight of Ex-slave Populations in Nepal,�� in April 2019.

Kwan-pyo Hong arrived from Chonnam National University in Gwangju, South Korea in February and was in Boulder through the remainder of the 2019 calendar year. Dr. Hong was hosted by faculty hosts Emmanuel David (Women and Gender Studies) and Sangbok Kim (Asian Languages and Civilizations), and was working on a comparative study on anti-discrimination legislation in the Republic of Korea and the US.

Jinhwan Oh visited CAS for the third time over the past few years in AY 2019-20. Dr. Oh came from Ewha Women��s University in Seoul, South Korea, and his faculty host was Jin-Hyuk Kim (Economics). His work focuses on South Korean development and aid projects in Southeast Asia and Africa.

Bisheng Peng arrived from Sichuan University in December of 2018 and was with us until November of 2019. He worked with faculty host Terry Kleeman (Asian Languages and Civilizations), and gave a talk, ��Homology of medicine and witchcraft: Shennong Bencao Jing and the fangxiandao in Han dynasty,�� in November 2019.

Caitlin M. Ryan came to CAS over the 2019-20 year to work with Tim Oakes. She gave a talk, ��Memory Work as Humanitarian Intervention: Peace-building in Osh, Kyrgyzstan,�� in October 2019.

Yanxia Tang visited ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ from April 2018 to March 2019 to work with Faye Kleeman (Asian Languages and Civilizations). Dr. Tang is from Aichi University in central Japan. She gave a talk, ��Discussion on The Community Autonomy in Urban Areas of China - ǳ̸�й��е��,�� on February 21, 2019.

Irma Zavitri was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant program awardee for the 2019-20 academic year. Zavitri taught the Beginning Indonesian DILS (Directed Independent Language Studies) courses in partnership with ALTEC during her time on campus and also enrolled in graduate-level courses in Anthropology, Education, English, and Religious Studies.

Off

Traditional

White

Student Voices

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:24:20 +0000

Student Voices Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:24

Asia Internship Program �C China

Having never taken an Asian Studies class and not having spoken a word of Mandarin since high school, to say I was nervous before my departure for the Asia Internship Program would have been an understatement. I was an economics major whose only experience with Asia had been a brief guided tour of Thailand. I am glad that I cast my doubts aside and embraced this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Spending the summer in China was an experience that cannot be replicated. Having such a long stay allowed for full immersion into Chinese society. The hustle and bustle of the internship in the city captured the modernity of Shanghai and kept my working days filled from sunrise until sunset and beyond. On weekends I traveled as much as possible outside the city. This allowed for experiences in a more classically themed and cultured China, such as the gardens at Suzhou and natural locales like Huangshan. The low cost of hostels coupled with China��s well-developed train network made these trips easy even with the time constraints of a two-day weekend.

My internship was in the publications department of the American Chamber of Commerce Shanghai. I researched, conducted, and transcribed interviews with people in the Shanghai business and academic community and updated the Chamber��s records to improve their annual survey results. The interviews I conducted were the best learning experiences of the summer. They allowed me access to expatriates living and working in Shanghai who had grown up in the Americas. This allowed for a look into the benefits and sacrifices they have experienced in career trajectories I have considered for myself.

I highly recommend this program to any student who is willing to step out of their comfort zone regardless of course of study at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. Since returning to the United States, the resume line mentioning my experiences in Shanghai has jumped to the forefront of recruiters�� lines of questioning. I hope to leverage these experiences to acquire a position with travel responsibilities or a posting abroad. In addition to the professional boon it has provided I am far more confident in my own abilities. This program excelled in promoting personal development and responsibility that very few college experiences can replicate.

Alex Hebner, an Economics major with an international concentration and minors in Political Science and Business, graduated in fall 2019. He participated in the inaugural year of AIP �C China.

Tang Global Seminar

In the summer of 2019, I was graced with the opportunity to travel to Xi��an and Beijing with a fully-funded scholarship from the Tang family. This study abroad opportunity would be the first time I ever left the country, and this led me to feel both apprehensive and excited. I am entirely thankful for the guidance offered by the program instructor, Anja Lange, as well as all of the student volunteers and assistants from Jiao Tong University. With all of these mentors, I was able to have hands-on experience in a culture much different than the American one.

The goal of the program was to be able to identify self and Other as well as depict what actually made a city. I came to Xi��an and Beijing identifying as an American, but I was surprised to find that no one I happened to meet really thought I was an American. I am of Asian descent, so I know my looks let me blend into the populace, but my ideals differed from my Chinese counterparts. It was very interesting to talk with my Chinese peers and discuss topics such as the different dress that the two countries had. My American classmates and I were very comfortable with wearing clothing that showed skin, and I remember one of our Chinese counterparts commenting that she wished she could wear clothes in the same way. I was also very interested in experiencing a culture under a different government from my own. I felt that growing up, I was taught to fear the type of government that the Chinese were under and that Communism was just not ideal in general. However, the dismal description I was taught about Communism was very absent in how it actually was when I visited. The people and the aura felt very familiar and not at all as bad as I was taught. I believe this was a huge eye-opening moment for me and really taught me the value in taking the time to visit other countries and learn their cultures first-hand.

Nagisa Her, a Chemical and Biological Engineering major with minors in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science, will graduate in spring 2020.

Off

Traditional

White

Xi��an/China: Self-Awareness and Images of the Other

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:23:30 +0000

Xi��an/China: Self-Awareness and Images of the Other Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:23

In Maymester 2019, Dr. Anja Lange from the Herbst Program returned to Xi��an, China with a new group of 12 ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ students. Dr. Lange��s course is designed for students with no Chinese language skills, or even experience abroad. The objective is to expose students to the unique cultural heritage of China, acknowledging, and indeed exploiting, the fact that they will be seeing it through Western eyes. This approach has proven to greatly enrich the students�� experience of both Chinese and their own Western culture. The course was developed with the generous support of the CAS Tang Family Endowment and has been conducted five times since 2008.

The trip begins with visits to rural villages, followed by two weeks on the campus of Xi��an Jiaotong University, where students study Chinese art, literature, and history. It concludes with a few days in the capital of Beijing. Xi��an is known for the Terra Cotta army, as the birthplace of Chinese Buddhism, and for being the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, ending at the famed Muslim market.

Dr. Lange writes,

��We want to thank our Chinese peers and professors from the English Department and the Undergraduate College at Jiaotong University, who become part of our daily discussions. Their participation engages everyone in lively and intriguing joint sessions. Not only do we have insightful exchanges about the classroom texts, but the discussions help break down cultural and political barriers. As always, long lasting friendships are created between the students. Traveling through time and space, students learn to appreciate ancient Chinese history and learn about the dynamics of the modern state. We learn that good conversations also inform us about who we are and how we can co-exist in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.��

Off

Traditional

White

Student Awards & Recognition

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:22:32 +0000

Student Awards & Recognition Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:22

Help us celebrate our students as they prepare for careers in the global marketplace.

2019 Asian Studies Graduates

The interdisciplinary major and minor in Asian Studies allow students to study the astonishing diversity of the Asian region. Information is available on the Academics tab of our website.

Asian Studies BA

Matthew Arellano
Jackson Barnett
Aleksander Joga
Clayton Konikson
Anna Price
Amelia Spann
Huaixuan Zhu

Asian Studies Minor

Jacob Clausen
Hayley Tomkiewicz
Samantha Walisundara

Asia Internship Program

In addition to continuing our Tokyo program, we sent our first group of students to Shanghai in summer 2019. We are excited to continue expanding both programs in coming years.

Japan

Yukine Colclasure, CIEE Japan
Kate Wexler, Tokyo Global Gateway

China

Alex Hebner, American Chamber of Commerce Shanghai (ACCJ)
Sean McDonough, dunhumby
Emily Rumsey, ACCJ
Bella Stephens, ACCJ

Japanese Studies Fellowships

This endowment allows us to provide graduate student support to recognize and encourage the study of Japanese history, literature, and language.

Alana Brack
Cameron Lea
Dean Leininger
Lulu Lu
Catherine Otachime
Ji Shouse
Mikhail Skovoronskikh
Tanya Topolian
Alyssa Williams
Cassidy Younggreen

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Journal of Asian Studies

As always, the summer 2019 issue of the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Journal of Asian Studies features excellent work on a wide variety of topics, with papers written by students for the Urban China class held in China in Summer 2018 (Renee Gagne, Sean Jones, and Sousheel Vunnam), a student in a Media and Popular Culture class (Brenna Faricy), and a student from ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ College (Ziyu Zhao). These papers cover a wide range of topics and cultures: K-Pop (Faricy), public art in China (Gagne), Chinese consumerism (Jones), Chinese music in communities (Vunnam), and Tibetan cultural preservation and state-sponsored tourism (Zhao).

CJAS is published annually. We publish original, quality undergraduate research on nearly any aspect of Asia or Asian culture and welcome submissions of original scholarly work from any undergraduate student at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder or another ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ university.

Off

Traditional

White

Alumni On the Move

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:21:32 +0000

Alumni On the Move Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:21

Colin Flahive (ASIA/ANTH 2001) has been living and traveling in China for more than 16 years. In 2019, Colin published Great Leaps: Finding Home in a Changing China, where he explores China��s rural-urban migration against the backdrop of his own move from ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ to southwestern China. In Kunming, he partnered with friends to open a caf�� that became much more than simply an outpost of Western cuisine in a far-flung corner of the world. Over the course of a decade, Salvador��s Coffee House became home to more than 50 young women from mountain villages in the surrounding countryside. They encounter unlikely successes, endure heartbreaks and nearly lose everything. But by taking the leap together, they all find their own places in the modern Chinese dream.

Ben Grafstr?m (MA JPNS 2009) is a Lecturer at Akita University in Akita, Japan, where he��s been for 7 years. When not in the classroom, he helps maintain the Akita International Haiku Network webpage and organizes an annual haiku contest. He has also begun publishing the contest results in an online journal called "Serow" (named for a type of antelope found in Tohoku). Additionally, Ben was nominated and selected as a board member of the Japan Society for Time Studies (JSTS), an interdisciplinary organization dedicated to researching the multifaceted notions of time. JSTS will be hosting the triennial international conference for the International Society for the Study of Time in 2022.

Tyler A. Lehrer (MA RLST 2016) is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Wisconsin�CMadison. His dissertation research builds on research he began at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ into the historical and political utility of Buddhist lineages in the eastern Indian Ocean region. His first peer-reviewed journal article��adapted from his ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ MA thesis��was published in Buddhist Studies Review (http://doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.35050). Tyler is headed back to Sri Lanka, Thailand, and to the Netherlands for twelve months of archival and temple based dissertation research starting in the summer of 2020.

After Chris McCabe (JPNS 2006) graduated from ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, he immediately moved to Japan and has been there ever since. For the last 6 years he has worked at one of the world's leading mobile crane manufacturers, Tadano Ltd., which is headquartered in Takamatsu, Japan. This year, he was involved in a $215 million project, where Tadano acquired a major competitor located in Germany.

Dylan Rothenberg (CHIN 2016) will be completing a Master's degree in Tea Science from South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, China in 2020. He is researching Chinese organic tea by interviewing Chinese tea farmers and collecting soil samples from organic tea farms for microbial analyses. Follow his progress at WuMountainTea.com. Dylan reports that Guangzhou is quite different than Boulder, but he has learned to love his new home.

Susan Sheng Wang (LING/CHIN 2011) taught Chinese at Fairview High School from 2012-2015, studied at Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center in 2015-2016, then moved on to Monterey, California to pursue a Master's degree in Translation Studies (Chinese & Localization). Susan is now working at Lilt, an AI translation startup in San Francisco, as a localization services manager.

Off

Traditional

White

China Made News

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:20:41 +0000

China Made News Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:20

New Post-Doc

CAS was pleased to welcome Darren Byler to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ in the fall as a new postdoctoral fellow, working with CAS Director Tim Oakes on the China Made project. Meet Darren:

My research focuses on the dispossession of ethno-racial Muslim minorities through forms of surveillance and digital capitalism in China and the global South. My first book project, Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculine Violence in a Chinese City, examines emerging forms of media, infrastructure, economics and politics in the Uyghur homeland in Chinese Central Asia. The book argues that Chinese authorities and technologists have made Uyghurs the object of what I name ��terror capitalism.�� It shows that this emergent form of state-directed capitalist production utilizes the discourse of terrorism to justify state investment in a wide array of policing and privately built social engineering systems. My second book project, tentatively titled Technologies of Reeducation: Contemporary Minority Surveillance and Global China, follows up on the argument of my first book to consider how biotechnical systems can be tied to new forms of coerced labor and control both in China and in sites across the world where these technologies are exported.

Prior to joining the Center, I completed my doctorate in Anthropology at the University of Washington.

Darren Byler

CAS Co-Hosts Second China Made Workshop in Hong Kong

In January, CAS co-hosted the second China Made workshop, on ��China��s Domestic Infrastructures," held at the Hong Kong Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. HKIHSS collaborates with CAS on the China Made project. The workshop brought together interdisciplinary scholars from Australia, Hong Kong, Sweden, and the United States to discuss infrastructure development in China, including its political, social, cultural and environmental dimensions. The workshop was based on the premise that in order to understand the "China Model" of infrastructure development, which is now increasingly under scrutiny due to the prominence of the Belt and Road Initiative, it is fundamental to first address its domestic dimensions. Participants focused on tracing how infrastructure development occurs within China and interrogated how that process shapes the outward project of export infrastructure that is now a key feature of China's political economy. A collection of papers from the workshop will be published next year. HKIHSS and CAS also planned to co-sponsor back-to-back panels at the 2020 AAS meetings in Boston.

Off

Traditional

White

News from the American Association of Teachers of Japanese

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:19:43 +0000

News from the American Association of Teachers of Japanese Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:19

The year 2019 ended with two major projects that showcased Japanese language teachers and learners in the United States.

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which is taken worldwide by tens of thousands of people who are learning Japanese, was administered to almost 8,000 test-takers in the US, at 18 test sites scattered around the country. The test is administered in the US by AATJ, and the big day was Sunday, December 1. Dozens of teachers and others at the test sites volunteer their time to make sure that this important worldwide test goes smoothly; thanks to all of them for their hard work!

One of the 18 JLPT test sites �C the only one between Chicago and California �C is at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ-Boulder, hosted by CAS! Many thanks to the hosts, proctors, and supporters of this opportunity for Japanese learners in the Rocky Mountain region to measure their language skills against learners around the country and the world!

On the more lighthearted side, students around the country were working on their New Year��s Cards (nengajo in Japanese). In Asia each year is represented by one of 12 animals, and 2020 is the Year of the Rat. While we wait for the results of the 2020 contest, please enjoy a couple of examples from 2019��s Year of the Boar contest.

AATJ also organizes two conferences annually for members and other Japanese professionals; manages an online National Japanese Exam taken by several thousand K-12 learners; and publishes four newsletters and two issues of the journal Japanese Language and Literature - which in 2019 became an Open Access journal published free online for all to read. To read the 2019 issues, please go to jll.pitt.edu.

Learn more about AATJ and its many projects supporting 1,500 teachers of Japanese at all levels and (through them) many thousands of students at www.aatj.org.

Susan Schmidt, Executive Director, AATJ

Off

Traditional

White

From the CAS Advisory Council Chair

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:18:45 +0000

From the CAS Advisory Council Chair Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:18

I��m delighted to report that two new members have joined our ranks: Michael and Betsy Zink. Michael and Betsy have spent three decades working internationally, most of it in China and Southeast Asia. Each member brings skills & ideas, new networks and new energy to the Council. Welcome!

Advisory Council members have been active this past year in a variety of ways. Examples include:
Supporting ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ��s increased engagement with Indonesia, including support for periodic gatherings of Indonesian students and the launch of an exciting new exchange program with Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.
Identifying and helping to arrange speakers for CAS-sponsored events.
Continuing to advocate for increased attention to Asia as well as broader ��comprehensive internationalization�� across the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ campus.
Hosting a presentation by Kunming China-based ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ graduate Colin Flahive of his book Great Leaps: Finding Home in a Changing China. This event was co-sponsored by Denver Kunming Sister Cities. We hope to do more events like this in 2020.
Collaborating with the Law School and SEEC/Sustainability, Energy & Environment Community on the visit of Mongolian human rights activist and author Oyungerel Tsedevdamba and her husband Jeffrey Falt, who made presentations on three very different topics: international human rights law; an innovative solid waste management program in Ulaanbaatar, and their historical novel The Green Eyed Lama, the first in a four-volume series covering little-known events in Mongolian history.
Testing a new category of event Mingle with the Expert designed to support CAS fundraising in conjunction with presentations on campus.
As noted in my message a year ago, the Academic Futures report, prepared with extensive campus-wide input in 2018, identified ��Internationalizing our Campus�� as one of its Top 4 priorities ��essential to our mission and to other goals and projects set forth in this report.�� Although the University community was promised a plan to implement this element of the report in 2019, no plan has yet materialized. We hope to see one soon and trust that CAS will have an important role to play. In the meantime, progress continues to be made from the bottom up. As Dean Bobby Braun noted in a message to the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Engineering Community: ��Global engagement is a cornerstone of the strategic vision for the College of Engineering and Applied Science. Our aim is to graduate engineers with global experience, to lead in international project-based learning, to attract scholars from all over the world through strategic international partnerships and to develop technical solutions that can be exported globally to impact the world��s economy, security and quality of life.�� Amen!

The members of the Advisory Council are enormously proud of the work CAS has been doing, some of which is outlined in this Newsletter. I encourage all who are interested in Asia to subscribe to the Center��s email list for news of upcoming events both at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ and along the Front Range. We hope to see you at as many of our events as your schedule will allow.

George Taylor, CAS Advisory Council Chair

Asia Internship Program alumna Kate Wexler discusses her experience at the CAS Advisory Council Meeting

You Can Help! Support Asian Studies at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ

The world has never been more interconnected. CAS aims to expand access to education and opportunities relating to Asia to all ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ students. We also provide community programming and support faculty working in Asian studies. If you share these values, please consider contributing to one of the following initiatives, and help support the study of Asia for all.

? Contributions to the Asian Studies Advancement Fund allow us to help faculty pursue interdisciplinary research, attend conferences, and develop Asia-themed courses introducing students to new issues and ideas; and support events at which faculty and students from around campus and the Front Range region have opportunities to network and collaborate.

? Contributions to the Friends of Asian Studies Flatirons Fund endowment help to further the CAS mission through research and instruction support and outreach about Asia. The fund is used at the discretion of the CAS Director, with a current priority of scholarships defraying the cost of student travel to Asia for study abroad and internships.

? Contributions to the Asia Internship Program will provide program development funds and scholarships to offset costs for our summer internship students working in China and Japan.

Donations can be made online. If you would like to discuss other giving options or ideas, please contact Danielle Rocheleau Salaz at salaz@colorado.edu or 303-735-5312. Thank you for your support!

Asian Studies Leadership Circle

Please join us in thanking our 2019 Leadership Circle members, who each gave at least $1000 in the calendar year. Their support allows us to have an impact on campus and in the community.

France Addington-Lee, CASAC Member

Larry Bell, CASAC Member

Koji Fukumura, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Alumnus

Paige Goodson Reberry, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Alumna and CASAC Member

Dennis McGilvray, CASAC Member and Professor Emeritus, Anthropology

Laurel Rasplica Rodd, CASAC Member and Professor Emerita, Japanese; and Greg Rodd

Kazunori Takato, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Alumnus

George and Beth Ann Taylor, CASAC Member

Nick Wang, CASAC Member

Michael and Betsy Zink, CASAC Members

Off

Traditional

White

2019 Event Highlights

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:16:46 +0000

2019 Event Highlights Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:16

In 2019, CAS hosted 24 speaker series events and 13 lunch talks, reaching a total audience of almost 1800 students, faculty, and community members. Many of our events were dominated by response and inquiry into political crises throughout Asia.

In March, the Center brought together a panel to discuss first-hand experiences of the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. The event, ��Roundtable on Xinjiang: Perspectives from the Field on China��s Mass Incarceration of Turkic Muslims,�� addressed several questions, including: What do we know about the situation in Xinjiang, and where is it headed? How is the build-up of the police state in Xinjiang intersecting with China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative? How is the situation in Xinjiang impacting Chinese society at large, and how is it perceived outside of the territorial boundaries of Xinjiang? It has been estimated that up to one million people have been detained without trial. In the camps, labelled by Chinese authorities as "re-education" facilities, the detainees are forced to abandon their native language and religious beliefs �C instead learning Mandarin Chinese and studying Chinese Communist Party doctrine. Outside of the camps, Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang are subjected to a dense network of surveillance and ethnic discrimination. The panel consisted of Dr. Darren Byler (University of Washington/CAS), Prof. Rian Thum (University of Nottingham), Prof. James Leibold (La Trobe University), Prof. James Millward (Georgetown University), Sarah Tynen (ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder), and was moderated by CAS Director Tim Oakes and China Made Postdoc Alessandro Rippa. This standing-room-only event was recorded and the video is available for streaming.

Roundtable on Xinjiang

On October 2, CAS enjoyed a talk given by Oyungerel Tsedevdamba and Jeffrey L. Falt: ��A History of the Communist Purge Against Buddhism in Mongolia.�� Oyungerel is well-known in Mongolia as a social change-maker; former Member of the Mongolian Parliament; ex-Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism; author of bestselling novels and multiple non-fiction books; a human rights and women��s empowerment activist; and democracy advocate. On October 2, 1999, she and her husband Jeff Falt gave an illustrated lecture about this fascinating country, its recent history under Communist rule, and the impact of the purge on daily life and the Buddhist religion in Mongolia.

Oyungerel Tsedevdamba

On October 10, Ambassador Joseph Yun gave a talk on the ever-shifting relationship between the US and North Korea entitled ��Trump and Kim Jong Un: What Next?�� As Special Envoy on North Korea from 2016 to 2018, Ambassador Yun led the State Department��s efforts to align regional powers behind a united policy to denuclearize North Korea. He was instrumental in reopening the ��New York channel,�� a direct communication line with officials from Pyongyang, through which he was able to secure the release of the American student, Otto Warmbier, who had been held in captivity for 15 months.

The next event CAS presented addressed the crisis in Hong Kong. On October 23, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author of Vigil, Hong Kong on the Brink, brought deep historical insight into the current protests in Hong Kong. Wasserstrom focused on patterns of protest and the tightening of political controls in Hong Kong. He paid close attention to the 2014 Umbrella Movement but honed in even further to the dramatic events of 2019, including the candlelight vigil held on the 30th anniversary of the June 4th Massacre. This event had over 120 attendees, and an intense discussion followed the talk. The video for this event is available for viewing.

On December 2, CAS hosted an ��Emergency Teach-in on Kashmir.�� At the time of the talk, Kashmir had been locked down for over 100 days and counting. Kashmiri feminist anthropologist and poet Ather Zia addressed the international significance of the Indian government��s suspension of Kashmir��s autonomy on August 5, why the international community must pay attention, why occupation is a feminist issue, and the role of art and resistance in Kashmir.

Not all of the CAS events were focused on political crises. On April 19, 2019, Michelle Cho presented ��The Cosmo-logics of K-pop: Media Intimacies and Populist Soft Power�� as part of our annual Theme ��Asian Connectivities.�� In a packed room, Michelle focused on fandom as a particular form of populism in two, somewhat opposed senses: first, in fandom��s assertions of a visual and affective commons and its gift economy and, second, in the resemblance between the affective excesses of fandom and those of the mass or the crowd. This event was also recorded.

Michelle Cho

We will continue to serve the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder community by continuing to present Asia-related content and research touching on a wide array of topics and interests in the coming year. If you wish to be added to our event listserve, please write to casevent@colorado.edu.

Off

Traditional

White

Newsletter 2020

Comments from the Director

CAS Directors and Staff

Off

Faculty Updates & Visiting Scholars

Parting Thoughts from Colleen Berry

Faculty Updates

Report: Reconsidering Articulation Issues in ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ and Surrounding States through New Pedagogical Perspectives

Sabbatical Report: Pastoralists of the Upper Yangtze Emily T. Yeh

Visiting Scholars

Off

Student Voices

Asia Internship Program �C China

Tang Global Seminar

Off

Xi��an/China: Self-Awareness and Images of the Other

Off

Student Awards & Recognition

Help us celebrate our students as they prepare for careers in the global marketplace.

2019 Asian Studies Graduates

Asian Studies BA

Asian Studies Minor

Asia Internship Program

Japan

China

Japanese Studies Fellowships

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Journal of Asian Studies

Off

Alumni On the Move

Off

China Made News

Off

News from the American Association of Teachers of Japanese

Off

From the CAS Advisory Council Chair

You Can Help! Support Asian Studies at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ

Asian Studies Leadership Circle

Off

2019 Event Highlights

Off

Report: Reconsidering Articulation Issues in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ and Surrounding States through New Pedagogical Perspectives

Sabbatical Report: Pastoralists of the Upper Yangtze
Emily T. Yeh

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Journal of Asian Studies

You Can Help! Support Asian Studies at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ