Electronic Publication of the ATJ Newsletter Begins With This Issue

Beginning with this issue (Volume 30, Number 1), the ATJ Newsletter will be published primarily in electronic form. Members of ATJ for whom we have an email address have received a message stating that the issue has been published, with a link to the website URL for the issue. The message also contained the issue as an attachment, which we hope will reach most members. Those members who asked to continue to receive mailed copies of the newsletter will receive both the email notice and a printed copy. If you do not receive a printed copy but would like to have copies mailed to you in the future, please advise the ATJ office by email at atj@colorado.edu. Current and back issues of the newsletter are already available on the ATJ website for downloading in PDF format, and individual news and commentary items are also available individually in HTML format. Paper copies of the Newsletter will continue to be mailed to libraries and institutional members. Our journal, Japanese Language and Literature, the Directory of Members, Occasional Papers, and other special publications will continue to be published in paper form.

If you have opinions or ideas about electronic publication and distribution of the Newsletter, please write to the ATJ office: atj@colorado.edu.

The full schedule for this year's ATJ Seminar on Thursday, March 22, 2007, including times and room assignments, can be found in the centerfold of this issue of the Newsletter (PDF is here), as well as on the ATJ web site. The Seminar will feature a full day of concurrent sessions with presentations by more than 70 ATJ members on linguistics, pedagogy, second language acquisition, and literature. This year's keynote speaker will be Professor Hosea Hirata, of Tufts University, who will speak on a topic of broad interest to teachers and specialists in Japanese language and culture. His talk is entitled "Nostalgia for the mother tongue: How Tora-san, Murakami Haruki, Kobayashi Hideo, and other assorted characters are perpetually trying to go home."

The venue for the Seminar will be the Boston Marriott Copley Place in Boston, Massachusetts. Sessions will be held concurrently beginning at 9:45 a.m. in Salons E, F, G, I, and J on the hotel's fourth floor. Registration will be required in order to attend the Seminar. The registration fee for members of ATJ and our sister organization the National Council of Japanese Language Teachers (NCJLT) is $15 ($10 for student members of ATJ). For non-members, the registration fee will be $50. If you wish to register in advance, you can do so online at www.aatj.org/sem2007.html. Please be sure your membership is up to date! (If you would like confirmation of your membership status, please email the office at atj@colorado.edu; we will check our records and let you know whether you need to renew at this time.)

ATJ's annual General Membership Meeting will be held Saturday, March 24 from 1:00–2:30 p.m. in Salon E. A special feature will be reports from representatives of ATJ's Special Interest Groups on their activities. The meeting will also feature news about professional development opportunities and other projects of the Association; remarks from ATJ's incoming President, Joan Ericson; announcement of the results of the annual election of new Board members and a new President-elect; and an assortment of fabulous door prizes.

Several of ATJ's Special Interest Groups (SIGs) have scheduled meetings and activities in conjunction with the ATJ Seminar and the AAS Conference. The Classical Japanese (Bungo) SIG will meet Friday evening, March 23, from 7:00– 9:00 p.m., in Salon C. The topic will be the interface between modern language and classical language classes. The Language and Culture SIG will also meet on Friday evening, March 23, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., in Salon D: three papers will be presented at this SIG meeting (see details on page 2). The Professional Development SIG will sponsor two panel sessions during the Thursday Seminar, one focusing on getting a job and the other on getting published. The Japanese as a Heritage Language SIG also will sponsor a panel session at the Seminar, on challenges in heritage language education. The Community College SIG will meet in Salon J during the lunch break, from 11:30–12:55, and the Study Abroad for Advanced Skills (SAFAS) SIG will meet in Salon F at the same time. Details on special presentations at the SAFAS SIG meeting can be found below.

ATJ will have a booth in the Exhibit Hall again this year at the AAS conference. The booth number is 117. We will have membership information, copies of the newsletter and 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!

Language and Culture SIG Session at AAS Conference, March 2007

ATJ's Language and Culture SIG (Special Interest Group) will meet during the annual Association for Asian Studies (AAS) conference in Boston on Friday evening, March 23, from 7:00–9:00 p.m. The session (like the conference) will take place at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, in Salon D. The meeting will feature three presentations: Ichiro Noguchi (University of Wisconsin at Madison), "Nihongo kyookasho ni arawareta bunka no setsumei no mondaiten ni tsuite"; Masako Dorrill (Dillard University), "A re-examination of culture at the discourse level"; Akiko Murata (University of Pennsylvania), "Bunka-jinruigaku teki shiten kara mita anime fan no jiko-kyooiku to nihongo-kyōiku no setten: 'Bunka nooto' to fan club no kenshuukai no bunseki kara". The SIG hopes to see many ATJ members in Boston!

SAFAS SIG meeting at AAS, March 2007

The Study Abroad for Advanced Skills SIG will hold a session during the ATJ Seminar on Thursday, March 22, 11:30 a.m.–12:55 p.m., in Salon F of the Boston Marriott Copley Place. The session will feature two special presentations: Xiaobin Jian (College of William and Mary), "Casual Observer vs. Legitimate Participant: Engaging Students in Study Abroad Programs in Local Social Life through Community Service Internship," and Eric Shepherd (The Ohio State University), "Moving to the Sidelines: Coaching American Learners to Play Chinese Culture Games." Both of these speakers have extensive experience in preparing American learners of Chinese to participate in internships in China. The SIG hopes many ATJ members will attend.

Special Film Showing at ATJ Seminar

Please join us in Salon G at 11:30 a.m. during the ATJ Seminar for a special showing of the documentary film The Mushroom Club. To make this film, Academy-Award-winning documentary filmmaker Steven Okazaki (Days of Waiting, 1998) took a handheld camera and visited Hiroshima 60 years after the atomic bombing there. He tells the stories of a number of people who survived the blast and those who care for them: a 90-year-old woman who was a 25-year-old newlywed in 1945 and who now collects scraps of melted glass and metal that still turn up in the city; a comic-book artist who survived because he bent down as the to pick up a stone as the bomb exploded; and several members of "The Mushroom Club," a support group for children born with defects caused by nuclear contamination. The film also explores the politics of pacifism and militarization, which Japan still struggles with today. Professor Hosea Hirata of Tufts University will lead a discussion after the showing of the one-hour documentary. For more information on the film, see www.hbo.com/docs/programs/mushroomclub/index.html.

Panels of Interest at AAS 2007

ATJ encourages members who are attending the ATJ Seminar in Boston on March 22 to also attend the Association for Asian Studies conference, which begins on the evening of March 22 and continues until March 25. AAS supports ATJ by offering space for the Seminar and for our annual general membership meeting; your registration for and attendance at the AAS conference supports our "sponsor" organization in turn.

The full program for the conference is available online at www.aasianst.org. Here are some highlights that should be of interest to ATJ members: "Emerging Perspectives in Analyzing 'Shift' in Language Use: Cognitive, Linguistic, and Cultural" (Fumiko Nazikian, Columbia University [Sat., 2:45 p.m.]); Roundtable—"The Translation and Publication of Contemporary Japanese Literature" (Stephen Snyder, Middlebury College [Sat., 10:45 a.m.]); Roundtable—"Experiential Learning in Asia: New Directions in Study Abroad" (Joan Ericson, Colorado College [Sun., 8:30 a.m.—this is ATJ's sponsored panel session]); "Understanding Japanese Material/Information Culture through Television Commercials" (Shoji Yamada, International Research Center for Japanese Studies [Fri., 1:00 p.m.]); "Creative Nostalgia: Imagining the Heian Past in Medieval Japanese Literary and Visual Culture" (Keller Kimbrough, University of Colorado [Fri., 3:15 p.m.]); "Poetry from the Edge: Rethinking Political Outsiders and Poetic Action in Japan" (Matthew Fraleigh, Harvard University [Sat., 8:30 a.m.]); "From Text to Machine in Modern Japanese Culture" (Ann Sherif, Oberlin College [Sat., 8:30 a.m.]); "Rethinking the Avant-Garde in Postwar Japanese Literature" (Lianying Shan, Princeton University [Sat., 2:45 p.m.]); Roundtable—"New Women, Modern Girls, and Postwar Feminists: New Directions in Research on Women in Japan" [Sat., 5:00 p.m.]; "Turning the Page on Meiji: Contexts of Literary Production in Late Nineteenth-Century Japan" (Sari Kawana, University of Massachusetts–Boston [Sun., 10:45 a.m.]).

ATJ Membership Renewal

You should by now have received a membership renewal letter and form. Remember that you can now renew online: www.aatj.org/membership.html. Please consider taking out a 5- or 10-year membership this time: it saves money and means that you will not have to remember to renew next year. It also sends the message that you support your profession!

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 Marilyn Bolles Guggenheim, Motoko Ezaki, Masako Hamada, Sabine Horn, Akemi Katayama, Shigemitsu Matsui, Pauline Oasay, Shigeko Okamoto, Misumi Sadler, and Susan Schmidt. Please consider donating when you next renew your membership, or by mail at any time. For more information, contact the ATJ office.