Election of New Board Members, President
Three new members of the Board and a new President of the Association will be elected this spring. Ballots and election information were mailed to each member of ATJ in early January; you should have received this mailing by the middle of January.
You are asked to return your ballot by March 1 to the ATJ office, using the postpaid envelope included with the ballot. (Please note that you MUST vote by mail; you will not be able to bring ballots to the ATJ Annual General Membership meeting in April.)
The results of the election will be announced at the General Membership meeting in Chicago on April 2, at which time the new Board members will assume their duties. As stipulated in the Bylaws, the newly elected President will serve for an initial year as President-elect, working with President Naomi McGloin and Past President Seiichi Makino as an Executive Committee to govern the Association.
Invitation to the 2005 ATJ Seminar and General Membership Meeting and the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference
ATJ’s annual Thursday Seminar provides a chance for all ATJ members to gather, meet and talk with colleagues, participate in the business of the Association, and hear the latest research on language, linguistics, pedagogy, and literature. This year’s Seminar will be held Thursday, March 31, 2005, in Chicago, in conjunction with the annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. The Seminar features a full day of concurrent panel sessions— twelve in all—on literature, language pedagogy, linguistics, and second language acquisition.
The Seminar’s keynote speaker, from 4:50-5:50 p.m., will be Takie Sugiyama Lebra of the University of Hawai’i. Professor Lebra will speak on “A Japanese Scheme for Talking and Thinking: From Social to Cosmological.”
The Seminar schedule is printed in full in the centerfold to this newsletter. The Seminar is open to all ATJ members and their guests: advance registration is not required. However, a fee of $35 will be payable on-site by non-members of ATJ or NCJLT. (Non-members will of course have the option of joining ATJ at the Seminar.)
The Consulate General of Japan in Chicago and JP Trading Company are hosting, for the first time this year, a reception for ATJ members after the Seminar. Please join them from 6:30-8:00 p.m. at the Japan Information Center, located in the Olympia Centre, at 737 N. Michigan Avenue, for refreshments and a look at the latest textbooks and other publications from Japan.
If you wish to also attend sessions of the AAS conference, which will be held at the Hyatt Regency March 31- April 3, it is necessary to register either in advance or on-site. On-line early registration can be conducted at the AAS web site: www.aasianst.org.
We cordially invite all ATJ members to attend the annual General Membership Meeting, which will be held Saturday, April 2, 2005, from 1:00-2:30 p.m. The membership meeting is your chance to meet ATJ’s officers and Board members and to participate in making decisions that affect the Association. Our special presentation will be an update on the Japanese AP (Advanced Placement) program from several members of the Task Force that is working with the College Board to develop guidelines for the AP program’s curriculum and test. The meeting will also feature news about professional development opportunities and other projects of the Association; remarks from ATJ’s incoming President, Naomi McGloin; announcement of the results of the annual election of new Board members and a new President-elect; and an assortment of fabulous door prizes donated by publishers who specialize in books on Japanese language pedagogy and Japanese studies.
Four of ATJ’s Special Interest Groups (SIGs) have scheduled meetings in conjunction with the ATJ Seminar and the AAS Conference. The Classical Japanese (Bungo) SIG will meet Friday evening, April 1, from 7:00-9:00 p.m., in Columbus A-B. The other SIGs will meet on Thursday, March 31, during the ATJ Seminar’s lunch break, from 11:30 a.m.-12:55 p.m. The Professional Development SIG will meet in Grand Ballroom F; the Community College SIG will meet in Columbus C-D; and the Japanese as a Heritage Language (JHL) Heritage SIG will meet in Columbus I-J. For further information on any of the SIG meetings, contact the ATJ office.
The larger AAS conference is an opportunity to attend panel sessions on a variety of subjects, find out what is happening in the fields of Japan and Asian Studies, see the latest books and instructional materials in the exhibit hall, and meet colleagues and friends. Of particular interest to ATJ members at this year’s conference will be a roundtable session sponsored by ATJ: “Global Japanese: Japanese Language Education Around the World,” which will take place Friday, April 1, from 3:15- 5:15 p.m., in Grand Ballroom A. Also endorsed by ATJ is a panel session on “Cultural Proficiency for Japanese Language Learners: What Is Cultural Proficiency and How Can It Be Measured?,” which will take place Friday, April 1, at 1:00 p.m.
Other sessions at the AAS conference will focus on a variety of aspects of Japanese language, literature, history, and culture. Sessions of potential interest to ATJ members include “Omniphony in Japan: Tawada, Ito, and Yi and Writing across Language Borders” (Thursday, 7:00 p.m.); “Spectacular Excess: Gender and Melodrama in Modern Japanese Literary and Visual Culture” (Friday, 8:30 a.m.); poster presentations on “Developing a Multimedia Application to Prepare for the Grammar Section in the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 2” and “Restrictive Factors on the Use of ‘wa’ in Spoken Japanese Narrative Discourse” (Friday, 10:45 a.m.); “Perspectives on Genbun Itchi: From Vernacular to National Language in Prewar Japan” (Saturday, 8:30 a.m.); Individual Papers on Premodern Japanese Literature (Saturday, 2:45 p.m.); a roundtable on “Getting Published: From Submission to Print at Six Refereed Journals” (Saturday, 5:00 p.m.); “What Do You Expect from a Woman?: Building and Bending Genre Conventions in Heian and Kamakura Literature” (Sunday, 10:45 a.m.); and others. The complete program is available online at the AAS website (www.aasianst.org). As always, the exhibit hall will feature the latest publications in Asian studies from a large number of university presses and other publishers. ATJ will be in the exhibit hall: please visit us at Booth #113.
Information on registering and attending the AAS conference is available from the AAS office (1021 East Huron St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104); by email at annmtg@aasianst.org; or on the Web at www.aasianst.org. The ATJ office can also supply information on conference registration.
All of the conference events will take place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, 151 East Wacker Drive, Chicago IL 60601. If you wish to stay at the Hyatt Regency in order to attend the ATJ Seminar and/or the AAS conference, please phone the hotel at 312-565-1234 or fax 312-565-2966; when registering, mention the Asian Studies conference to receive a special discounted room rate. To register on-line, please go to http://chicagoregency.hyatt.com/groupbooking/caas.
Joint Session at AAS on Teaching Asian Languages
Please join officers and members of the national associations of teachers of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Southeast Asian Languages for a special discussion on “Teaching Asian Languages: What Do We Have in Common?” to be held on Saturday, April 2, from 7:15-9:00 p.m. in the Soldier Field Room (Bronze Level, West Tower) of the Hyatt Regency Chicago. The session was organized by the Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) with the cooperation of the other language associations.
ATJ Exhibit at AAS—Booth 113
ATJ will have a booth in the Exhibit Hall again this year at the AAS conference. The booth number is 113. We will have membership information, copies of the journal Japanese Language and Literature, information on professional development projects and the Bridging Project for Study Abroad in Japan, and small gifts for visitors. Please stop by!
ATJ Endowment Is Growing
ATJ has joined the ranks of other non-profit organizations in establishing an endowment fund. Contributions of any amount to this fund, which are tax-deductible, will help to ensure that the Association can continue to provide services to members in the future. Contributions have recently been made to the Endowment by Sabine Horn, Ryuko Kubota, Shigemitsu Matsui, Satomi Matsumura, and Yasuko Ito Watt. Please consider donating when you next renew your membership, or by mail at any time. For more information, contact the ATJ office.
Journal Errata
Typographical errors are inevitable in publishing, and with advances in technology come new and sometimes mysterious sources for them. The past two issues of the ATJ’s journal, Japanese Language and Literature, have contained several such errors. A special section of the website has been set up to provide corrected versions of the pages involved, which include the Contributors Information pages of the most recent issue, Vol. 38 No. 2. To download new, corrected pages in PDF format, sized for insertion in your copy of the journal, please go to: www.colorado.edu/ealld/atj/Journal/errata.html.