From the Chair (2002)

Dear alumni and friends,

The Department of East Asian Languages has continued to grow and develop again this year, thanks to the support of its alumnae, current students, and their families. This has been an especially eventful year due to new resources provided by several large grants from the Freeman Foundation and the Department of Education. These have allowed us to establish a new program in Korean language and civilization, staffed this year by Professor Pori Park, who joined us from UCLA. We look forward to the growth of this program in years to come. We have also established a scholarship program to assist our students and a new internship program that allows students to pursue real-world work experiences that apply their educational background in Asian studies. Other new opportunities include an annual, grant-subsidized CU course to be offered in East Asia during the summer. The first of these will be taught by Professor Laurel Rodd in Northeast Japan in June, as students follow the path of seventeenth-century haiku poet Matsuo Basho, reading his poetic travel diary and recording their own reactions to their journey. These and other exciting new programs have greatly enriched the educational experience for students in the Department.

We are also particularly proud of the continued growth of the Program in Teaching East Asia, directed by Lynn Parisi, which allows our students and faculty to interact with the community and the state education system in increasingly productive ways. TEA provides one of the nation's finest programs in teacher education and curricular development in East Asian studies, serving both a national clientele and, now, the Colorado educational community through a new grant from the Freeman Foundation. EALC undergraduate and graduate students work with TEA to develop teaching materials and take them into local schools, enriching the curriculum of Front Range students and providing our own students with valuable teaching experience. We look forward to the continued development of this vital branch of the department.

During the year, EALC and its faculty hosted a variety of stimulating speakers and conferences, described in this issue of the newsletter. In June, the University will be hosting a reunion of the graduates of the Navy's Japanese Language School which trained language specialists during WWII. The school represents the beginnings of the programs that eventually became EALC, and the department will be hosting a symposium on the accomplishments of the graduates and teachers of the school in conjunction with this event. In addition, department students and faculty have recorded an impressive list of professional accomplishments, as seen below. We are particularly proud that a faculty member, Professor Faye Kleeman, and a graduate student, Charlotte Eubanks, a Ph.D. candidate in the EALC track of Comparative Literature, have been chosen to participate in the Center for Humanities and the Arts University Seminar for the coming year.

Finally, the Department as a whole and I personally would like to mark the retirement of two of our most distinguished and valued colleagues. Professor Kumiko Takahara and Professor Howard Goldblatt will be leaving the faculty at the end of the current academic year, and they will be missed. Professor Takahara has taught in EALC for longer than anyone on the current faculty and has played a central role in the establishment and development in the Japanese program. She is responsible for founding a successful certification program in Japanese language teaching and has made enormous contributions to faculty governance on the Boulder campus. We look forward to the publication of her new book on the treatment of Japanese-Americans in the Denver press during WWII. Professor Goldblatt, who has provided international prominence for our Chinese program in the area of modern literature for more than a decade, is retiring in name only and will no doubt continue his activities as the foremost English translator of contemporary Chinese fiction. It is difficult to imagine EALC without these colleagues; we wish them both the best in this next phase of their careers.

Stephen B. Snyder