ATJ Seminar Report

The 2009 ATJ Seminar was held in Chicago on March 26, 2009. A total of 250 members and others attended the full day of presentations, panels, and workshops, including a lunch workshop sponsored by The Japan Times and Kinokuniya Bookstores. The keynote talk, by Beate Sirota Gordon, filled the Sheraton ballroom with an enthusiastic audience. Many members also attended an evening rakugo performance at the Japan Information Center of the Consulate-General of Japan in Chicago. The Association thanks the sponsors of these special events and welcomes suggestions from members for the future.

The next Seminar will be held in Philadelphia on Thursday, March 25, 2010. The Call for Proposals will be sent out electronically and in printed form in late August; please be thinking about presentations to propose, and be sure that your membership is current if you are planning to submit a proposal.

Journal News

ATJ's journal Japanese Language and Literature has won a high ranking among academic journals from the Australian Research Council. JLL received an "A" rank in the annual journal ranking, which is available at www.arc.gov.au/era/journal_list.htm. Other journals receiving the "A" rank are Asian Studies Review, Japan Forum, Journal of Popular Culture, Monumenta Nipponica, and Journal of Asian Studies.

Individual Access to Journal Archives for ATJ Members. Does your institution have a subscription to the JSTOR online archive that gives you access to back issues of Japanese Language and Literature? If not, you can still have access to the journal under a special program for members of ATJ. Just contact the ATJ office (atj@colorado.edu) and ask us to set up individual access for you. You can download any article or review from 39 years of back issues, going back to 1963, when the journal was founded. (Issues from the most recent three years are not available online, but as a member you should be receiving those issues.)

In Memoriam: Eleanor H. Jorden (1920–2009)

Eleanor Harz Jorden, teacher and mentor to many in the Japanese language education community, linguist, leader in language pedagogy and language teacher training, and President of ATJ from 1978 to 1983, died on February 18, 2009, at her daughter's home in Connecticut.

Professor Jorden earned her Ph.D. at Yale University in 1950 under the direction of Bernard Bloch. Her textbooks on the Japanese language, including Beginning Japanese and Reading Japanese (with Hamako Ito Chaplin) and Japanese: The Spoken Language (with Mari Noda), paved the way for others and are still widely used.

She taught Japanese at many educational institutions, including Cornell University (where she held the Mary Donlon Algers Chair of Linguistics), Bryn Mawr College, Williams College, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Hawaii, International Christian University, and The Ohio State University. For many years she served as Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages at the U.S. State Department's Foreign Service Institute and worked at the University of Maryland's National Foreign Language Center, where she wrote several influential policy papers that shaped government policy on foreign language instruction.

In 1972 she founded the Full-year Asian Language Concentration (FALCON) program at Cornell, which continues to offer a full year of intensive language instruction. Her philosophy of teaching Japanese deeply influenced generations of teachers in the profession on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.

In 1985 His Majesty the Emperor of Japan presented Professor Jorden with the Third Class Order of the Precious Crown on behalf of the Japanese Government for her contributions to Japanese language education in the United States. She also was the recipient of the Japan Foundation Award (1985), the ACTFL Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education (1993), and four honorary doctorates.

Eleanor Jorden will be remembered for her intellectual rigor, her sense of humor, and her leadership as a pioneer of Japanese language education. ATJ plans to publish a special memorial section in the Fall 2009 issue of the journal Japanese Language and Literature.

Please Support ATJ!

The Association is grateful to the many individual members who— even in difficult financial times—have supported ATJ through donations to its Endowment Fund. A list of the most recent contributors can be found below. The best way you can support your professional organization is to keep your membership current; please consider a 5-year or 10-year membership, which helps both us and you by taking membership renewal off of your annual "Things-to-Do" list.

ATJ also needs your assistance in supporting the projects that help not only you and other teachers, but also your students.

For more than 10 years, the Bridging Project Clearinghouse for Study Abroad in Japan has offered information on studying abroad in Japan, assistance and advocacy for exchange programs, and scholarship assistance for undergraduate students who study in Japan for a semester or a year. The Bridging Scholarship program has awarded one-time stipends of up to $4,000 to more than 900 students since 1999. These scholarships have enabled students who would not otherwise be able to afford study abroad the opportunity to improve their language and cultural skills by spending time studying in Japan.

The Bridging Scholarships have been funded by contributions to the US-Japan Bridging Foundation (a tax-exempt nonprofit based in Washington, DC) from a number of corporations and other institutions. Some of the leading contributors have been banks and other financial services firms like AIG, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and others who are no longer able to support us. The Bridging Foundation and the Clearinghouse are working to identify new sources of funding for scholarships, but it will take time to build a new base for the scholarship fund.

Won't you help to keep this important scholarship program alive? ATJ's website has a new donation page. Please visit and support the Bridging Scholarships, the ATJ Endowment, or professional development for teachers with your tax-deductible donation. Contributions of any size are welcome. Support ATJ and Japanese language education by visiting the donations website at www.aatj.org/donate.html.

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 Yukie Aida, Lorie Brau, Eric Gangloff, Akiko Hagiwara, Noriko Hirota, Shigehito Menjo, Kiyoko Morita, Mari Noda, and Masumi Reade. Please consider donating when you next renew your membership, or by mail at any time. For more information, contact the ATJ office.