Newsletter 2021

Letter from the Faculty Director

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 17:00:00 +0000

Letter from the Faculty Director Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/21/2021 - 11:00 Tim Oakes

Last year in this newsletter, I wrote with some excitement about our new home in the CASE building. Little did I know that we would spend the next year working from home, with our desks and chairs gathering dust. But while we miss our beautiful view of the Flatirons, we have been busier than ever guiding CAS and the Asian Studies program through the pandemic. We were joined last Fall by Dr. Lauren Yapp, our new Asian Studies Program Director. An Anthropologist, Lauren is an expert on urban heritage and the politics of memory in Indonesia. Starting a new job, especially one with as many moving parts as this one, is never easy. Starting a new job in the middle of a pandemic, with all interaction with students and colleagues carried out remotely, is especially challenging, but Lauren grabbed the reins as if she��d already been here for years. We��re fortunate to have her on the team!

Other highlights of 2020 include a new Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Languages (UISFL) grant from the US Department of Education to establish a new certificate program in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies. This program will make the incredible depth of Tibetan and Himalayan research expertise at CU �鶹ӰԺ more available to our undergraduate students. The China Made project was fortunate to host an international workshop at the University of Hong Kong in January, just before the pandemic shut down international travel. As we got accustomed to our new lives on Zoom, we hosted the Asia Symposium in the Fall, which explored the theme of Sound and Noise in Asia. A speaker series on this theme continues through the remainder of the 2020-21 academic year. While we are hosting a somewhat pared-down schedule of events this year, we continue to bring to our community insightful, timely, and transformative work on Asia.

The year 2020 marked the 10^th Anniversary of the Tang Global Seminar (TGS), an endowed China study-travel experience for undergraduate students that has come to be recognized as not only the most competitive global seminar at CU, but also the most diverse. A recent survey of TGS alumni confirmed that the experience was a life-changing one for many of them. It also confirmed the TGS as a centerpiece of our mission here at CAS. One survey respondent told us, ��TGS��s goal to expose students to China who would not ordinarily have exposure is what I have come to appreciate most about the program.�� It is unfortunate, if not ironic, that we were unable to run the TGS in 2020 due to COVID-19 related travel restrictions. But we look forward to providing many more opportunities for life-changing study travel in the years to come.

The TGS is a great example of what can happen when the vision of our Center and that of our donors come together. Another example that I am pleased to announce is the new Li Seung and Wong Shee Li Endowed Support Fund, which will provide crucial student scholarship support for our Asia Internship Program, which allows CU students to experience working in companies in Asia each summer. We are so grateful to Frank (Political Science 1968) and Ellen Lee for helping us bring our vision of transformative pedagogy in Asian cultural literacy to a large and diverse population of students and future professionals.

If you would like to join the Lees in supporting what we do, please consider a donation to CAS. It��s an easy click from our homepage, or visit /cas/support-cas.

Tim Oakes
CAS Director
Professor of Geography

CAS Directors & Staff

Tim Oakes, CAS Director; Professor of Geography

Danielle Rocheleau Salaz, CAS Executive Director

Lauren Yapp, Asian Studies Program Director

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

Top Row: Reed Chervin (Visiting Scholar), Liza Williams, Danielle Salaz, Michiyo Colclasure (AATJ Assistant). Middle Row: Lynn Kalinauskas, Lynn Parisi, Tim Oakes, Catherine Ishida. Bottom Row: Lauren Yapp, Jon Zeljo, Nancy Johnsen, Susan Schmidt

Off

Traditional

White

Faculty and Visiting Scholar Updates

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:27:15 +0000

Faculty and Visiting Scholar Updates Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/18/2021 - 11:27

Introducing Asian Studies Program Director, Dr. Lauren Yapp

CAS is very pleased to welcome our new Asian Studies Program Director, Dr. Lauren Yapp. Lauren is an anthropologist and archaeologist fascinated by how present-day communities remember, preserve, and contest their pasts. Her research explores cultural heritage, memory politics, and postcolonial urbanism in Indonesia, where she has spent many years doing ethnographic fieldwork with local activists, architects, curators, artists, government officials, and city residents in Semarang and Jakarta. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on this research �C ��Colonial Pasts, Future Cities: Urban Heritage Advocacy in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia" �C which reveals how a growing number of initiatives aimed at preserving the country��s colonial-era sites as ��urban heritage�� are not only shaping the material fabric of historic neighborhoods, but also producing new forms of citizenship and governance, renegotiating the relationship between civil society and state authority, and profoundly impacting the lives of marginalized city residents.

Given the difficulty of international travel for the time being, Lauren is also developing a new digital ethnography project that will explore how young heritage activists and history enthusiasts in Indonesia build their movements through creative engagement with both the virtual space of social media and the physical environment of their cities. Prior to joining CAS, Lauren was a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University, where she taught courses on urban history, museum studies, community-engaged scholarship, and the political (mis)uses of archaeology in colonial and postcolonial Southeast Asia.

At CU, Lauren oversees the curricular aspects of the Asian Studies major and minor, teaching lecture courses that introduce students to this incredibly diverse region and in-depth seminars that explore topics such as urban life and memory politics in Asia. Since joining CAS in the fall, she has developed and taught two new courses for the Asian Studies program: ASIA 1000 Origins of Contemporary Southeast Asia and ASIA 4200 Politics of Memory and Heritage in Asia. Lauren also advises students interested in conducting their own Asia-related research and assists students in finding meaningful study abroad programs and internships. Having lived in the Bay Area, Rhode Island, and coastal Java before moving to �鶹ӰԺ, Lauren misses the ocean but is quickly falling in love with Colorado��s mountains.

Faculty Updates

Loriliai Biernacki, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, published a chapter, ��The Body and Wonder in Tantra,�� in Prayer, Worship, Ritual and Contemplation in Hindu Traditions. New York: Routledge, 2020, and was invited to join the steering committee for a new group on Hindu Philosophy as part of the American Academy of Religion.

Albert Chong, Professor of Art and Photography, participated in a recent exhibition that examined the Asian Diaspora through the lens of artists of Asian descent from those regions. This follows another exhibition along a similar thematic thread called "Circles & Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art" at the Chinese American Museum and the California African American Museum in Los Angeles a couple years ago.

Kudos on the inauguration of the International Journal for Bhutan & Himalayan Research to CU alumnus Sonam Nyenda (MA Religious Studies 2015), now serving on the faculty at the College for Language and Cultural Studies in Takse, Bhutan. Associate Professor of Religious Studies Holly Gayley served as the guest editor for the inaugural issue on ��Contemporary Bhutanese Literature,�� based on a 2019 panel at the Association for Asian Studies conference.

In Spring 2020, Professor Emeritus of Economics Frank Hsiao and Mei-Chu Wang Hsiao (Professor Emerita of Economics at CU-Denver) published their third coauthored book, Development Strategies of Open Economies: Cases from Emerging East and Southeast Asia. Vol. 11 of Advanced Research on Asian Economy and Economies of Other Continents, Hian Teck Hoon, Series Editor. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 2020.

Carole McGranahan, Professor of Anthropology, published several articles about her ongoing ethnographic and historic research on Tibet: "Activism as Care: Kathmandu, Paris, Toronto, New York City" (in Kritisk Ethnografi), "Ethnographic Witnessing, or Hope is the First Anthropological Emotion" (in Journal of Legal Anthropology), and "The Intimacy of Details: A Tibetan Diary of Dissent" (in The Intimacy of Dissent). She also served as a judge for the 2020 Bayly Prize in Asian Studies, awarded annually by the Royal Asiatic Society.

Dr. Mutsumi Moteki, Pianist and Professor of Vocal Coaching and Berton Coffin Faculty Fellow at the College of Music, gave a performance presentation titled ��Songs of East Asia�� at the College Music Society National Conference in October 2020, with Dr. JungWoo Kim, baritone and CU alumnus (DMA, 2014). This program consisted of Western-style art songs from Japan, China, and Korea with brief historical backgrounds.

The Kimono in Print is the first art exhibition and publication devoted to examining the kimono as a major source of inspiration and experimentation in Japanese print culture from the Edo period (1603-1868) to the Meiji period (1868-1912). Assistant Professor of Asian Art Stephanie Su��s article, ��Weaving Art, Science and Modern Design,�� investigates the mechanisms which led to new trends in Japanese prints through the 1890s, including the new model of collaboration between nihonga artists and textile companies, the new curriculum at art schools, the translation of color theories from France, and the invention of new chemical dyes and printing technology.

Assistant Professor and Curator of Archeology William Taylor's research explores the early history of domestic horses in East and Central Asia through the study of animal skeletal remains. In 2020, a publication in PNAS with partners from Northwest University, Xi'An, revealed clues to some of the region's earliest direct evidence of mounted horseback riding, while another manuscript in the journal Scientific Reports explored changes in the distribution and management of domestic horses across Mongolia and Central Asia during the earliest centuries of horse domestication.

Professor of Geography Emily T. Yeh coauthored the article ��Pests, keystone species, and hungry ghosts: The Gesar Epic and Human-pika relations on the Tibetan Plateau�� with CU alumnus Gaerrang in cultural geographies. doi: 10.1177/1474474020963144. The article investigates Tibetan analytics of pikas, in relation to worlding practices of pikas as pests and pikas as keystone species, based on interviews, observations, and readings of the Epic of King Gesar.

Photo credit: Gaerrang [CU �鶹ӰԺ alumnus]

CAS Visiting Scholars in 2020

Mason Brown joined CU as a Visiting Scholar in January. Mason is the Reviews & Reports Editor for Himalaya: Journal of Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies and a remote instructor at the Kathmandu University Department of Music. Mason hopes to move to Nepal and become a full-time teacher at KU in the future. He is currently working on a book manuscript to be finished by year end 2021.

Alton Byers began his journey as a Visiting Scholar in January 2019. Alton shared his work in a 2019 talk for CAS and continues to research climate change in high mountain environments. His most recent book is Khumbu Since 1950, a unique collection of historic photographs of the Mount Everest region that he has replicated over the years.

Reed Chervin joined CAS in September 2019. Reed presented his research at CAS�� first virtual event in April while working on his book manuscript exploring the history of Sino-Indian border conflict from 1950-1970.

Munsuk Lee joined CAS in September 2020. Munsuk worked with Sangbok Kim, Senior Instructor of Korean Language, to study the accents of Korean learners and research teaching methods to improve pronunciation.

Angus Lockyear started as a CU Visiting Scholar in January 2020. Angus is a historian working to complete a manuscript that examines Japan's abiding enthusiasm for expos from the late 19th to early 20th Centuries.

Dian Sawitri joined CAS remotely in Fall 2020, teaching Beginning and Intermediate Indonesian as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant. She was able to get to �鶹ӰԺ in January 2021 to continue teaching Indonesian and taking courses. Dian has also conducted regular Indonesian Nongkrong, a series of Indonesian conversation table talks in partnership with ALTEC.

Off

Traditional

White

From the CAS Advisory Council Co-Chair: Creating Degrees of Impact

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 17:40:27 +0000

From the CAS Advisory Council Co-Chair: Creating Degrees of Impact Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/17/2021 - 11:40

The Center for Asian Studies Advisory Council (CASAC) is moving forward with renewed enthusiasm and engagement to help the Center achieve its financial and academic goals and to help provide a forum for robust discussion on Asia.

Call to Action. We have successfully recruited several new Advisory Council members from the broader community over the last few years and would like to recruit at least two more members who can bring time, talent, and treasury to deepen the engagement of the Center with the community. Each new member would bring specific skills and ideas, global and Asian perspectives, and deep networks. If you��re interested in applying to be a member of the Advisory Council, please contact CAS Executive Director Danielle Rocheleau Salaz (salaz@colorado.edu).

Structure: The Advisory Council members serve on specific committees:

Fundraising: including attracting new donors and creating new fundraising approaches
Advocacy, Community Outreach, and Public Relations: finding new ways to deepen community reach, engaging interesting speakers from Asia through the Speaker Series, and one-on-one interaction with the speakers at soirees hosted in elegant homes �C post COVID-19.
Partnerships and Alliances: building relationships with other universities �C both in Colorado and across the US, partnering with Asian consulates and embassies, working with Sister City programs that interact with specific Asian countries.

Why Asia Matters: Given the complexities and global isolation of 2020, there has never been a more pressing time to understand the Asian region and each country��s strategic and economic relevance to the US. CU students, who can become national and global leaders and decision makers, benefit from a deeper understanding of Asia. Some examples:

China just took over as the #1 trading partner of the European Union from the US. What��s the impact for longer-term US global economic dominance?
China��s military dominance and deep in-roads into the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka are of concern for neighbors. And the US?
Myanmar: democracy, civil rights and human rights are at risk. Cross-border implications?
India: Will and should India play a more significant role in US foreign policy, given the Chinese dynamic with the US and its encroachment into Indian territory?

The members of the Advisory Council are very impressed with how the Center has grown in the last few years. If you��re interested in Asia, get involved and play a role in the Center��s continued and international success. Impact Matters.

Boli Medappa
CASAC Co-Chair

We Need You!

The global pandemic has laid bare the ways that the future depends on worldwide collaboration to address common challenges. CAS works every day to expand access to information and understanding about Asia and its diversity for students, faculty members, and the broader community. We can interrupt the cycle of fear and distrust through education and engagement. Help us expand our impact with support to one of the following funds.

Contributions to the Asian Studies Advancement Fund allow us to provide student scholarship support, support curricular innovations such as the CLAC program, build capacity among CU �鶹ӰԺ faculty through research and professional development offerings, and host programming such as the annual Asia Symposium.
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.
The endowed Friends of Asian Studies Flatirons Fund provides annual disbursements to the Asian Studies Advancement Fund. Contributors wishing to support the CAS mission in a more sustaining way can donate to help build this fund.

Donations can be made by clicking the links above. If you would like to discuss other giving options or ideas, please contact Danielle Rocheleau Salaz at salaz@colorado.edu. Thank you for your support!

Asian Studies Leadership Circle

The Asian Studies Leadership Circle is comprised of community supporters who donated $1000 or more to CAS over calendar year 2020. We are so grateful to these donors for helping us carry out Asia-related activities that benefit our students, faculty, and members of the broader community.

France Addington-Lee, Chair, Global Committee for the Denver Metro Board of Realtors, and CASAC Member
Lawrence Bell, Senior Advisor to StudyColorado and CASAC Member
Dennis McGilvray, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at CU �鶹ӰԺ and CASAC Member
Laurel Rasplica Rodd, Professor Emerita of Japanese at CU �鶹ӰԺ and CASAC Member, and Greg Rodd
George Taylor, CASAC Member, and Beth Ann Taylor
Tang Family Foundation
Christopher Yager, Founder of Where There Be Dragons and CASAC Member

Off

Traditional

White

Program Affiliate News

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 17:46:43 +0000

Program Affiliate News Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/16/2021 - 11:46

Updates from the American Association of Teachers of Japanese

2020 - The Year of Zoom

For the American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ) �C whose administrative office is part of the Center for Asian Studies �C 2020 was a milestone year in many ways.

AATJ��s annual spring conference, scheduled for March, was quickly cancelled due to the pandemic and replaced by an online portal where research presentations were posted. The organization also immediately moved to offer support to its 1200 members �C many of whom were blindsided by the need to move to online instruction overnight. Some had experience with online or virtual classes, but many did not. The community came together in amazing fashion to offer mentoring, share resources, and support each other. A newly-formed Facebook group �C Covid-19 ��ձ��Z��(COVID-19 and Japanese Language Education) �C gained several hundred members within hours. One of AATJ��s affiliate chapters took the Zoom plunge on March 20 with a webinar called ��Teaching Japanese Online 101�� C attended by more than 500 teachers.

On March 28, AATJ offered the first of what became a 12-part series of professional development webinars focusing on skills that teachers at all levels of instruction needed for online and hybrid instruction. Over seven months, the professional community moved from panic to proficiency in all kinds of virtual platforms. Each webinar was attended by several hundred participants, often maxing out at the 300-viewer capacity of Zoom accounts at that time. Topics ranged from online assessment to young learners�� social-emotional challenges in the classroom, and from teaching writing online to promoting social justice and anti-racism in Japanese language education.

Having survived and thrived in the midst of the challenges that 2020 presented, AATJ��s leadership and members are moving into the Year of the Ox (in the Asian zodiac calendar) with a focus on diversity, representation, and inclusion in the profession. Another online conference is being planned for March, and a new series of webinars is beginning in January.

Online events are limited in some ways, but they have also brought new opportunities for networking and collaboration in different ways, and for participation by a wider group of people for whom in-person events are not accessible. We hope that 2021 will bring early opportunities to gather in person and see one another again, but in the meantime a new world of online collaboration has widened our horizons and created new possibilities.

2020 �C Focus on Diversity

In 2020, AATJ took a hard look at issues of diversity and inclusion, not only across the nation and in the communities around us, but in our classrooms and in the Japanese language education profession. We published a special issue of our journal, Japanese Language and Literature, on the topic of representation and diversity, with contributions from scholars, administrators, and teachers at all levels of instruction. [Electronic and paper copies are available on request from AATJ �C write aatj@aatj.org.]

A Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion has been named, with members representing all sectors of the profession; they have begun working on recommendations to ensure that AATJ��s leadership, programs, and policies reflect the diversity of the teaching profession and of the large community of learners of the Japanese language and fans of Japanese culture. Recommendations are expected in the late summer of 2021.

2020 �C Year of the Rat

Enjoy this award-winning student artwork from the 2020 Year of the Rat New Year��s Card contest.

2020 at the Program for Teaching East Asia

When CU moved to a virtual campus in March 2020, the Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA) had just completed our winter offering of six online national courses on Asia for K-12 teachers. We were fortunate that much of our National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) professional development programming for teachers was already virtual. However, much of TEA��s programming since March has been redesigned to serve classroom teachers who have had to learn new strategies for remote classroom instruction and using online platforms such as Zoom and Google Classroom.

With two annual summer residential programs cancelled, TEA director Lynn Parisi and staff spent spring 2020 refocusing to offer short online courses throughout the spring and summer and to move to from asynchronous to live formats. TEA created a new ��Maymester�� that included several online book groups and seminars, as well as webinars and live Zoom classrooms, which were new directions for us. In both our Maymester and our newly developed ��Summer School,�� TEA brought in speakers from the CU campus and around the country. One of our most successful offerings was ��NCTA Summer Movie Nights,�� featuring live discussions of feature films on China, Japan, and Korea for classroom use. TEA served over 500 teachers in specially developed programs during spring and summer 2020.

At the same time, TEA has sought through the year to address the issues of racial bias and stereotyping arising out of the coronavirus pandemic. TEA offered a live webinar on the topic with CU Professor of Ethnic Studies Jennifer Ho and distributed a resource guide to teachers nationally. In September, TEA research faculty member Dr. Lynn Kalinauskas was awarded an Outreach Grant from CU��s Office of Outreach and Engagement to develop and offer an interactive project to promote classroom discussion of COVID-19 impact and pandemic-related social bias. Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 in China and the U.S. through Literature and Writing will be offered in early 2021 and will work with 10 Colorado secondary teachers to introduce their students to the book Wuhan Diaries: Dispatches from a Quarantined City, by the Chinese author Fang Fang. An online Contemporary Issues course centered on this book will also be offered to teachers nationally through TEA��s NCTA program.

In addition to the CU Office of Outreach and Engagement mini-grant, this year TEA received a small grant from the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in San Francisco. With these funds, TEA��s Korea Projects Coordinator Catherine Ishida conducted a virtual professional development course, Teaching Korea through Children��s Literature, for twenty K-8 teachers from around the United States. The workshop featured live lectures with a Korean children��s specialist, discussion of several Korean picture books in translation, and discussion about past and present Korean culture and society as well as cross-curricular pedagogical strategies to broaden students�� worldview.

Off

Traditional

White

Student Recognition and Alumni Updates

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 18:07:50 +0000

Student Recognition and Alumni Updates Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/15/2021 - 12:07

Colorado Journal of Asian Studies

We are pleased to announce the upcoming 2020 issue of the Colorado Journal of Asian Studies, which will be published at the end of the Spring 2021 semester. This issue contains papers written by students in last year��s ASIA 4830 Senior Seminar class and excerpts from an honors thesis in International Affairs, as well as a special section featuring two policy-oriented papers from the IAFS 4500 Culture and Conflict in South Asia course. These papers cover a wide range of topics and cultures, including ��Sexuality and Gender Expression in Male K-Pop Groups: Queering Hwarang Culture, Contemporary Korean Masculinity, and Fandom Desires�� (Reilly Gabel); ��Painting Identity on the Peninsula: A Century-Long Search for ��Korean�� Art�� (Anne Feller); ��Rural-to-Urban Migration in Shanghai: Institutional Barriers and Temporary Migrants�� (Renee Gagne); ��Investing in Equitable Development in Post-Conflict Sri Lanka�� (Thomas Raney); and ��Emissions Trading in India: A Policy for Combatting Toxic Air and Global Warming�� (Colton Zadkovic).

2020 Asian Studies Graduates

The interdisciplinary major and minor in Asian Studies allow students to study the astonishing diversity of the Asian region.

Spring 2020

Joseph Archer
Reilly Gabel
Kyle Gorges
Dean Kaplan
Jonathan Rockford

Summer 2020

Ga Eun Choi
Lan Li
Matthew Palmeri

Asian Studies Minors

Spring 2020

Zhiyuan He
Sean Jones
Samantha Lauckner
Anthony Striner
Wuyinan Yuan

Japanese Studies Fellowships

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

Alana Brack
Cameron Lea
Dean Leininger
Sixuan Lu
Catherine Otachime
Ji Y. Shouse
Mikhail Skovoronskikh
Tetiana Topolian
Alyssa Williams
Cassidy Younggreen

Alumni Updates

Since graduating from CU, Leslie Dong (Asian Studies and International Affairs 2015) has become a successful entrepreneur, an international radio host, and a recipient of a Fulbright-Hayes Public Diplomacy Grant. Leslie has had the chance to host and interview some of the world��s most influential people, including the legendary primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall; the world��s first armless pilot, Jessica Cox; iHeartRadio host Marissa Pei; and the President and Chairman of BP China, Xiaoping Yang. Her team also became the first recipient of the WeWork China Creator��s Award in 2018 along with a $72,000 award. During Leslie��s time at CU-�鶹ӰԺ, she won over 30 scholarships, so amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Leslie has created a new initiative (writingwiththestars.com) to teach students how to secure scholarships and graduate debt-free.

Shae Frydenlund graduated with a PhD in Geography in May 2020. Her dissertation was titled ��Support from the south: How refugee labor reproduces cities�� and concerned Rohingya and other Burmese Muslim refugees, based on fieldwork in Yangon, Myanmar; Cox��s Bazaar, Bangladesh; Kuala Lumpur Malaysia; and Aurora, Colorado.

Renee Gagne graduated magna cum laude in May 2020 with a B.A. in International Affairs and minors in Business and Chinese. She completed an honors thesis about the housing and education of migrants in Shanghai, China. She is currently working toward an M.S. in Business Analytics and Security at CU��s Leeds School of Business, and will graduate in May of 2021, after which she aspires to lead a career that allows her to combine her studies of Mandarin, Analytics, and International Affairs.

In late 2020 David Gotsill (Japanese 2001) moved back to Japan, this time to Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture. He has taken a position as deputy general counsel for Tadano, a Japanese mobile crane manufacturer with major operations in the US, Europe, and elsewhere. David is excited to be back for his third time working in Japan, after studying there through CU study abroad programs. He says he is always happy to connect with anyone heading his way or otherwise interested in Japan.

Dorje Tashi (Duojie Zhaxi) graduated in May 2020 with a PhD in Geography. His dissertation was titled ��Tibetan farmers in transitional Urbanization, development and labor migration in Amdo.�� He is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Tourism at Qinghai Minzu University.

Patricia Yarrow (MA Japanese 2005) started "Informasia,�� a new group of academics and colleagues who hold monthly Zoom sessions featuring academic presentations about Japan or the Asian region. This simple idea has brought scholars and friends together from around Japan and beyond, including the U.K., Singapore, Australia, Tasmania, and the USA. It has brought a bit of joy into the lives of sequestered scholars. Informasia meets at 7:00 p.m. JST on the third Monday of every month. The Zoom session opens at 6:30 before formally starting at 7:00. A website is under development.

Off

Traditional

White

CAS Events Continue in 2020, with Adjustments for the Pandemic

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 17:33:19 +0000

CAS Events Continue in 2020, with Adjustments for the Pandemic Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/14/2021 - 11:33

In 2020, the Center for Asian Studies held 22 events. After twelve in-person events before COVID-19, we moved to a virtual platform in April, allowing us to welcome a particularly large audience of nearly 1000 attendees over the year. Here is a summary of some of our bigger events.

In mid-February, CAS held an early event dealing with COVID-19: ��The Coronavirus Crisis: an Emergency Teach-In.�� This event sought to provide social, political, epidemiological, and cultural perspectives on the Coronavirus crisis (which was not yet a pandemic) to assist audience members with understanding and assessing the situation. It was moderated by CAS Director Tim Oakes, with panelists Molly Lamb, an Assistant Professor at the Colorado School of Public Health; Xiaoling Chen, a PhD Student in Health Geographies at CU-�鶹ӰԺ; and Travis Klingberg, a CU-�鶹ӰԺ alumnus and Postdoctoral Fellow in Geography at NYU Shanghai.

To address another crisis, CAS sponsored ��Uyghur Voices: ��Never Again�� Is Now�� on March 4, featuring a heartfelt presentation by Uyghurs whose family members have disappeared. Speakers included Mustafa Aksu, a representative from the Uyghur Human Rights Project, and Sarah Tynen and Darren Byler, both from CU-�鶹ӰԺ.

Our second event addressing the Coronavirus occurred on June 18. ��Asia After COVID-19�� looked at shifts taking place in Asia as a result of the global pandemic. The panel featured Michael Vatikiotis, a Singapore-based writer and journalist; Yang Yang, a CU alumna and postdoctoral researcher at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore; Ben Dooley, who reports on Japan��s business and economy for The New York Times; and Jinhwan Oh, Associate Professor of International Studies at Ewha Womans University and a recent CAS visiting scholar.

Our fall event lineup started with ��Hong Kong: Global China��s Restive Frontier,�� a talk by Ching Kwan Lee, Dr. Chung Sze-yuen Professor of Social Science at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Professor of Sociology at UCLA. This event had 91 attendees logging in from locations around the world including Australia, Canada, China, Estonia, Hong Kong, Korea, Russia, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Our annual theme, Sound and Noise in Asia, coordinated by CAS affiliate Evelyn Shih, Assistant Professor of Chinese, started with a symposium that included a keynote address by Judith Zeitlin, ��Instrument of Flesh��: The Operatic Voice in Late Ming Musical Culture.�� The keynote was followed by panel discussions by David Humphrey (Michigan State University), Jina Kim (University of Oregon), Julie Keblinksa (University of California, Berkeley), and Evelyn Shih over two days. Our final event of 2020 was also on the Sound and Noise in Asia theme: ��Listening for India: Reading and the Multilingual Nation,�� was presented by Madhumita Lahiri from the University of Michigan.

Videos from select events are available at www.colorado.edu/cas/event-videos. Overall, although we were used to holding in-person events aimed primarily toward the CU-�鶹ӰԺ campus community, the need to adapt to virtual events allowed CAS to pivot toward a wider audience around the globe, which we will continue into 2021 and beyond. Upcoming event information is always available at www.colorado.edu/cas/event-list.

Off

Traditional

White