The Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (SEC/AAS) is a non-political, non-profit scholarly organization dedicated to promoting the study of Asia in the southeastern region of the United States. To that end, SEC/AAS has held (since 1962) an annual three-day conference featuring scholarly panels, teacher workshops, and book exhibits. The year 2013 meeting of the SEC/AAS, sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, will be held in Wilmington, North Carolina, during the weekend of January 11-13, 2013. All those interested are encouraged to join the SEC/AAS and attend the meeting.

Information concerning the meeting can be found throughout this website:
http://www.uky.edu/Centers/Asia/SECAAS/letter-president.html

Lisa writes on her website that:

These pieces are made of Japanese mulberry paper and the gilded edges of old books. They are constructed by a technique of rolling and shaping narrow strips of paper called quilling or paper filigree. Quilling was first practiced by Renaissance nuns and monks who made artistic use of the gilded edges of worn out bibles, and later by 18th century ladies who made artistic use of lots of free time. I find quilling exquisitely satisfying for rendering the densely squished and lovely internal landscape of the human body in cross section.

Her work speaks volumes as it merges my education and my professional world into art. (I have a BA in Japanese and International Studies. After completing my MLIS, I now work as a medical librarian.) Be sure to check out Lisa’s work!

If possible, we’d love to see what fascinating things you can do with Japanese mulberry paper. (And yes, I’m fully aware of the wonderous things MIT’s OrigaMIT club have been up to. I still love the triceratops…)

Deadline: March 31, 2012
Summer Institute on Infusing Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum: China and Japan

Location: East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii
Dates: July 23-August 10, 2012

This multidisciplinary, three-week Institute fosters faculty and institutional development aimed at enhancing undergraduate teaching and learning about Asian cultures and societies. The focus of the 2012 program will be China and Japan in their regional and global contexts. The first two weeks of the program will feature lectures and discussions on the cultures, philosophical and religious traditions, histories, and arts of China and Japan, while the third week will turn to social, economic and political dynamics from the early 20th century to the present, with attention to their socio-cultural ramifications.

This content-focused program is designed to assist both individual faculty members and institutional teams to develop concrete strategies for furthering the development of Asian Studies on their home campuses. Through a generous grant from the Freeman Foundation, participants will receive lodging in the East-West Center guesthouse and a modest stipend.

For a detailed description of the program and application information, please follow the links on the ASDP website at: http://www.eastwestcenter.org/asdp-infusing

Photo by slash__

Exhibition at Library of Congress

In 1912 the city of Tokyo gave Washington, D.C., a gift of 3,000 flowering cherry trees (“sakura” in Japanese), as a symbol of enduring friendship between Japan and the United States. Despite a war, the friendship has prevailed, and the trees every spring have bestowed upon the U.S. capital a graceful beauty and a time-honored tradition of gathering and admiring the pink blossoms.

The Library of Congress will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the gift with an exhibition titled “Sakura: Cherry Blossoms as Living Symbols of Friendship,” opening on Tuesday, March 20, in the Graphic Arts Galleries on the ground floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C.

The exhibition, which runs through Saturday, Sept. 15, 2012, is free and open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

On display will be 54 items from the Library of Congress collections, illuminating the story of these landmark trees, the historical significance of cherry blossoms in Japan and their continuing resonance in American culture and for Washingtonians in particular.

Full text of the press release: http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2012/12-028.html

Related events:

a)   Exhibition tour by curators
Graphic Arts Galleries, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress
10 First Street, SE, Washington, DC
March 28, April 4, 11, 18, & 25, 2012, noon – 12:45 p.m.

b)   Exploring the Japanese Culture
Young Reader’s Center (LJ G29), Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of
Congress
10 First Street, SE, Washington, DC
March 31 & April 14, 2012, 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

c)   Lecture on cherry blossom tree gift by former Ambassador, Mr. John Malott
Asian Division Foyer (LJ-150), Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress
10 First Street, SE, Washington, DC
March 29, 2012, noon – 1:00 p.m.

d)   Cherry Blossom Princesses (1948, 1974, 1981, & 2012) talk with donation
ceremony of the National Cherry Blossom brochures since 1948
Asian Division Foyer (LJ-150), Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress
10 First Street, SE, Washington, DC
April 11, 2012, 1:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

e)   Manga Day
Asian Division Reading Room (LJ-150), Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress
10 First Street, SE, Washington, DC
June 9, 2012, 10:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. (date and time: tentative)

f)   Teacher’s Instituted (for teachers only)
Venue varies depending on the date
March 29 & 31, April 14, 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

The Weatherhead East Asian Institute invites applications for a postdoctoral fellowship through the International Network to Expand Regional and Collaborative Teaching (INTERACT) program at Columbia University. This fellowship is for the academic year 2012-2013 and is open to scholars conducting research on East Asia and Southeast Asia within a global context. The fellowship will cover a 10-month period beginning August 1, 2012, and comes with a stipend of $45,000 plus benefits.

About INTERACT

INTERACT is a pioneering program at Columbia University that focuses on developing global studies in the undergraduate curriculum through a network of postdoctoral scholars focused on cross-regional, trans-regional and interdisciplinary study. Columbia University will offer several INTERACT Postdoctoral Fellowships in the 2012-2013 academic year, with candidates selected by centers and institutes across the University. Candidates will function as liaisons between their home office and the INTERACT network of scholars with other regional and disciplinary specializations.

The Weatherhead East Asian Institute is pleased to offer one INTERACT Fellowship to an outstanding scholar of modern and contemporary East Asia with a demonstrated emphasis on global context and connections.

INTERACT’s primary goal is to improve global literacy among Columbia students and equip them to be leaders in a globalizing world. These objectives will be met through innovative courses, participating in Institute programs and events, and an annual outreach event organized collaboratively by INTERACT Fellows.

Requirements

The Weatherhead East Asian Institute’s INTERACT Fellow will devote half of their time to teaching and working with other Fellows on INTERACT programming, and half time to his or her own research and writing. The Fellow’s curricular responsibility would be to develop one course each semester (Fall 2012 and Spring 2013), in coordination with Columbia’s Global Core Curriculum <http://www.college.columbia.edu/core/classes/mc.php>, focused on East Asia in a global context. The Fellow is required to be in residence in the New York City area and participate in all activities of the INTERACT program collaborative.

Eligibility

Candidates from all East Asian disciplines and areas of study are welcome to apply. Geographically this includes China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Tibet, and Mongolia.

Recipients of the Fellowship must have received their Ph.D. degree within the past five years (Spring 2007 and after).

Recipients must complete all their Ph.D. requirements (completed and filed the dissertation) by June 30, 2012

Application Process

The following list of materials is required for all applicants. Application information and forms are available on the Weatherhead East Asian Institute website:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/weai/postdoctoral-fellowship-details.html#interact

Completed Application Cover Sheet
Curriculum vitae, including a list of  classes taught (if any)
Course evaluations for classes taught (if any)
A statement not exceeding 300 words that conveys your personal outlook on trans-regional and global approaches and their role in the undergraduate curriculum

2-3 page proposal for two undergraduate courses to be offered at Columbia University. These courses are to be offered without prerequisites, and must emphasize cross-border, trans-regional, and interdisciplinary approaches that connect back to the East Asia region. These course proposals are meant to convey a sense of your teaching interests beyond the specialized topic of your PhD research. Please see “Constructing a Course Syllabus” for guidelines here <http://www.college.columbia.edu/facultyadmin/coi-procedures> .

3 letters of reference (signed and sealed) that include an evaluation of your research, proposed courses and prior teaching experience.

APPLICATION DEADLINE EXTENDED:
All application materials (including letters of reference) must be received by the Institute on or before March 9, 2012. Faxed or emailed applications will not be accepted. Candidates may be invited for a phone interview or interview in person at AAS.  All evaluations made in connection with applications received are confidential.

Awards will be announced no later than April 4, 2012. Acceptance of award is due no later than April 6, 2012.

Please return completed applications to:

INTERACT Postdoctoral Fellowships
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10027

For more information on the INTERACT Postdoctoral Fellowship, please contact Kim Palumbarit, Student Affairs Officer, at (212) 854- 9206 or
kp2449@columbia.edu.

Call for applications from art history doctoral students studying in Africa, Asia, and Latin America

Art history is rapidly being reconceptualized to meet new social, political, and aesthetic demands. Essential contributions to these developments will come from junior scholars in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, whose research questions, methods, and objects of study may be informed by the intellectual, linguistic, and political contexts of their practice. This first Summer Research Academy seeks eight doctoral students from those regions to research and converse with eight doctoral students and eight senior scholars from the International Consortium on Art History. The theme for the 2012 Summer Research Academy is “Encounters in World Art History.” We seek submissions that address artistic and art historical encounters, such as how encounters are staged, works of art as products of encounters, and how such artworks are received. The topic will be explored using library resources and special collections at the Getty Research Institute as well as collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The deadline to receive applications is March 1, 2012.

For more information about the research academy and how to apply, please visit the following website
http://www.getty.edu/research/scholars/summer_research_academy/encounters/index.html or email SRA2012@histart.umontreal.ca. Please post to any list-servs or forward to any who may be interested.

Summer Research Academy
Organized by Todd Porterfield, Canada Research Chair in Art History at the Universite de Montreal, with the support of the Universite de Montreal, the collaboration of the International Consortium on Art History, and in consultation with the Getty Research Institute.
Email: sra2012@histart.umontreal.ca
Visit the website at http://www.getty.edu/research/scholars/summer_research_academy/encounters/index.html

http://www.cwaj.org/Scholarship/njg.htm

The 2012 Scholarship application is now closed. The posted applications are for reference only. Applications for 2013 Scholarships will be uploaded in May 2012.

1 scholarship, ¥2.0 Million

The NJG Program supports graduate study in Japan for non-Japanese women who are enrolled in graduate degree programs at Japanese universities.

Eligibility Requirements

Applicants must be enrolled in a degree program with a graduate school of a Japanese university from April 2012 to March 2013.

Applicants must be residing in Japan for study purposes at the time of application.Individuals currently studying or living abroad are ineligible. We therefore regret that we are unable to accept applications from outside Japan.

Applicants must have adequate ability to speak and write in both Japanese and English.

Holders of scholarships greater than ¥1.0 million from other scholarship programs (kigyo ryugaku) are ineligible. Financial aid and awards from the university where the applicant will study may not be subject to the same limitation.

Former recipients of CWAJ awards and members of CWAJ are ineligible.

Obtaining the Application

Application forms are available ONLY from the CWAJ website. The forms are in PDF format. You need Acrobat Reader 5 to read and print the downloaded forms. If you do not have the reader installed on your computer, you can download it free of charge by clicking here.

Note that if your Acrobat reader is an earlier version, for example Acrobat Reader 4, you may not be able to read the applications correctly.

Download the NJG Scholarship Application Form

Download the Japanese Language Instructions for Completing the NJG Scholarship Application Form

Submitting the Application  All applications must be written in English. Please note the following:

1. Include your application forms and the other required documents. Write “NJG Application” on the envelope and send it by post. Do not send by yubin kakitome (registered mail) or takuhaibin as these will not be accepted.
2. Incomplete applications or applications submitted without the required number of copies will not be considered.
3. Please do not send extra documents such as publications. The scholarship committee will consider only the documents we request.
4. We do not accept applications via e-mail.
5. No documents will be returned.

PERIOD OF ACCEPTANCE:   Applications must be postmarked during the following period:

Tuesday, October 11 through Tuesday, October 25, 2011.

Completed applications must be mailed to the address below.

CWAJ SCHOLARSHIP COMMITTEE NJG PROGRAM
CWAJ Center
2-24-13-703 Kami-Osaki
Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141-0021

Interviews and Selection

Interviews of the finalists will be held during February in Tokyo. They are usually conducted on weekends. You will be notified at least two weeks in advance if you have been selected for an interview. The interviews will be conducted in both English and Japanese. Applicants will be notified of the results in writing.

CWAJ reserves the right to make its own selections and does not discuss its decisions.

For more information about the scholarship program, please send your inquiry in English or Japanese only to scholarship@cwaj.org. No telephone inquiries will be accepted.

Applications due: March 15
Pre-departure orientation: June 28 – June 30
Tour dates: July 1-July 22

Middle and high school educators will be selected to participate in a three-week study tour to Japan in July of 2012. Study tour highlights include visits to local schools, homestays with Japanese families, and a wide range of site visits in Japan including Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Aichi and Wakayama, as well as a part of the Tohoku region. Open to educators nationwide.

For additional information, please email jseducation@japansociety.org or call (212) 715-1275.

WOMEN ADRIFT: The Literature of Japan’s Imperial Body
By Noriko J. Horiguchi
University of Minnesota Press | 272 pages | 2011
ISBN 978-0-8166-6978-3 | paperback | ISBN 978-0-8166-6977-6 | cloth |

Women Adrift demonstrates how women’s actions and representations of women’s bodies redrew the border and expanded, rather than transcended, the empire of Japan. Discussions of empire building in Japan routinely employ the idea of kokutai–the national body–to conceptualize Japan as a nation-state. Noriko J. Horiguchi shows how women impacted this notion, affecting perceptions of the national body.

PRAISE FOR WOMEN ADRIFT:
“Women Adrift is a rigorous, sophisticated, and nuanced investigation that refuses to reduce the complexity of the issues it raises to platitudes and fixed assumptions about the nature of colonialism in general, women’s writing under the gaze of empire in particular.” –Akira Mizuta Lippit, University of Southern California

“Noriko J. Horiguchi’s study, by focusing on the material and discursive bodies of these famous women writers, not only sheds new light on the complexity and uses of kokutai ideology, but also pushes us to rethink our assessment of their bodies of works.” –Jan Bardsley, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Noriko J. Horiguchi is associate professor of modern Japanese literature at the University of Tennessee.

For more information, including the table of contents, visit the book’s webpage:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/women-adrift

“The United States in East Asia”
The 47th International Conference Organized by The American Studies Association of Korea (ASAK)
Seoul, South Korea
September 21-22, 2012

The American Studies Association of Korea (ASAK) is pleased to announce a conference on The United States in East Asia to be held in Seoul, South Korea, September 21-22, 2012.

East Asia is a region of growing significance in the twenty-first century, where the US has been a marked presence and a persistent influence. The three biggest economies of the region–Japan despite its recent decline, South Korea, and China–currently account for 22.3% of the world population, 19.6% of global production, and 45.7% of international reserves. Each nation in the region has witnessed a complicated history of interactions with the US: political and economic cooperation as well as contention, circulation of ideas and cultural practices, and educational and social exchanges, to name a few. A truly interdisciplinary approach is called for to capture the sense of the United States as a geopolitical actor and a cultural imaginary in East Asia. A further challenge lies in attending to the local and transnational specificities that have produced diverse ways of accommodating the US influence.

Recognizing this intricacy, the 2012 ASAK conference aims to further the understanding of the US in East Asia by bringing together scholars in diverse disciplines from different parts of the world. In doing so, we hope to widen and deepen the local, national, and transnational perspectives on the US. We believe the East Asian vantage point of our conference will provide a forum for rethinking the practice and methods of American Studies in the current world order.

We welcome paper proposals in either English or Korean from various disciplines on topics such as:

-Economic ties and political interests of the US in East Asia, and vice versa
-Elections or power transitions in East Asia and the US and their foreign policy implications
-The influence of US economic policies and models, business corporations, and/or financial institutions
-Issues of immigration and migration, including reverse migration, labor migration, and brain drain
-Specific examples depicting the importance of the US presence in East Asia
-The circulation and exchange of popular culture between the US and East Asia
-Appropriations of US modes of fashion and cuisine
-Representations of the US in the media, literature, and popular culture of East Asia
-US influence on East Asian educational systems and orientations
-The English fever phenomenon in East Asia
-The teaching of American literature, culture, and history in East Asia
-Representations of East Asia in American literature and/or popular culture
-Asian American and/or diasporic literature
-Comparative American Studies in other nations or regions such as South Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, and Europe

These topics in no way comprise an exhaustive list. You are encouraged to submit proposals on other topics related to the overarching theme of the conference. Interdisciplinary perspectives and new research methodologies are especially welcome.

Proposals may be submitted as individual paper proposals or as session proposals. Individual proposals should include a brief abstract of no more than 250 words and a one-page abbreviated CV. Session proposals should include a one-page proposal with title and topics for a session of three to four presentation papers along with individual abstracts and bios. Each presentation, delivered in either Korean or English, will be limited to twenty minutes followed by discussions and Q&A. Graduate students are also welcome to submit their proposals and participate in the conference. All proposals should be sent to the Organizing Committee at asakorea@gmail.com by March 15, 2012. Participants will be notified of the acceptance of their proposals by April 15, 2012. The registration fee for overseas participants (waived for students) will cover accommodations for three nights and meals for two days during the conference. Participants will be responsible for travel expenses, including airfare and medical insurance, if applicable. For further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Organizing Committee.

Important dates:
Deadline for submitting abstracts: March 15, 2012
Notification of acceptance of papers: April 15, 2012
Submission of papers for the conference proceedings: July 31, 2012

Registration fees:
Early bird (before June 30, 2012) USD 75
Standard (after June 30, 2012) USD 100

Peggy Cho
Email: asakorea@gmail.com
Visit the website at http://www.asak.or.kr