CU Boulder has a new Center for the Humanities and the Arts, and
EALC has been closely involved in all
aspects of its planning, staffing, and implementation. Madeline Spring was on the panel that
selected the
new Director of the Center, Jeffrey Cox, and she remains on its advisory board. Stephen Snyder
was a participant in the Center's first year-long seminar, on "Beauty and its Discontents," and he
chaired a panel at the
Colloquium (March 4-5) in which our grad student Cris Reyns-Chikuma gave a paper. Professor
Xiaobing
Tang, a former member of the department now teaching at the university of Chicago, was a
special invited
guest of the Colloquium and gave a paper on "Para-EAsthetics: Between Texts, Images, and
Flesh." We are pleased to acknowledge the support of Mr. Kei Izawa, who
recently moved to Boulder and has set up
a web page introducing Boulder to Japan. Recently Mr. Izawa selected four essays by advanced
students of
Japanese for inclusion on his website (www.bouldercousa.com). The students and their essays
are: Leah
Engelbart, "The race weekend (Bolder Boulder)"; Mandi Lewis, "Bolder Boulder"; Ben Matsuda,
"Boulder's
literary scene"; Leah Rothbaum, "Wild Oats Market." Mr. Izawa also kindly consented to serve
as judge for
the Japanese Speech Contest and arranged for a live report about the Japanese Majors Party on
March 5 to
be broadcast on Yamagata Radio by Miss Harumi Kato. He has also offered to accept one of our
students as
an intern if a suitable individual expresses interest. The departmental web pages are much improved thanks to the valiant
efforts of Brent Zionic and Ben
Tompkins. Check them out http://www.colorado.edu/ealld.
Under the astute direction of Dr. Zhijia Shen, the East Asian
Library in Norlin has grown into the best East
Asian collection in the region. The annual budget is still quite limited (especially considering the
high price
of Japanese and, increasingly, Chinese books), but we have had good luck with applications to
the Humanities Special Purchase Fund. A few years ago we were able to acquire the mammoth
Complete
Collection of the Four Repositories (Siku quanshu), a late 18th-century
compilation of 3,450 works in 1,500
volumes (and that is reduced to fit four pages on one!). This year we have won funding to
purchase an
electronic version of this collection and hardware to facilitate its implementation. This will
permit users to
search electronically through one of the largest collections of Chinese classics, history,
philosophy, and
literature in the world. Internship and Service
Learning A number of students participated in EALC's Service Learning program
during fall and spring semesters.
Students were placed this year with the Rocky Mountain Japan Project's outreach program to
Boulder Valley
schools. Participants received training from RMJP staff and were then sent to teach about Japan
in local
elementary school classrooms. The department hopes to expand this program to other service
learning
venues for the coming year and is negotiating with a number of area businesses to establish
ongoing internships as well. On April 10, CU was host to the Annual Japanese Speech Contest,
organized by Misae Nishikura of our
department. Twenty-one finalists competed, representing four colleges and universities: Colorado
State
University, Pike's Peak Community College, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the University of
Colorado at
Boulder. Contests were grouped into three levels: Beginning/Intermediate with five finalists,
Advanced I with
twelve, and Advanced II with four finalists. CU Boulder student Susan Loveland won second
place in the Beginning/Intermediate level; our Isaac Kawahara won second place and Mandi
Lewis won sixth place in the
Advanced I category. In addition, Leah Englebert won for Most Original Speech and Byung-In
Kim, Kate
Bueck, and Melanie King were each selected by one of the judges as his or her personal favorite.
Yamagata
Broadcasting taped the event and interviewed a number of the participants for a news segment to
be
broadcast in Yamagata. We are grateful to Professor Michiko Croft from the University of
Denver, Mr. Kei
Izawa of eGuide USA, Inc., and Ms. Noriko Nakazawa from J.D. Edwards for agreeing to
act as judges. Sponsors for the event included the Japan Foundation, the Department of East
Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the Colorado Japanese Language Association. The
Boulder Chamber of Commerce and
Ms. Kathy Ajisaka graciously donated a variety of items from Japan to be distributed to
the contestants. EALC majors were once again very successful in obtaining placements
in the Ministry of Education-sponsored JET (Japan Exchange Teaching) program. A sizable
group of graduating seniors will be departing in
July to work in all parts of Japan as both ALTs (assistant language teachers) and cultural liaisons
for local
governments. Congratulations to all these students for their success in this highly competitive
program. This year members of our second-year Japanese class won second place
in the Japan Bowl, sponsored by
the Japan America Society of Colorado and held at the UCD campus in February.
Congratulations to Mike
Barry, Mark Flanagan, and Kyle Seike. The students from our second-year Japanese class (JPNS 2120)
organized a series of Japanese Movie
Nights that were presented in the ALTEC center on Thursday nights in February, March, and
April. The
movies, which were open to the public, included Kurosawa Akira's Dream and other
contemporary films. Midwest Association for Japanese Literary
Studies We will host the annual meeting of the Midwest Association for
Japanese Literary Studies (MAJLS) on
campus November 12-14, 1999. MAJLS is the largest scholarly meeting devoted to Japanese
literature
outside Japan and has received external funding from the Japan Foundation and the Northeast
Asia Council
of the Association for Asian Studies. The theme for this year's conference will be "Canonicity
and Canon
Formation in Japanese Literary Studies." So far, the list of invited speakers from Japan includes:
Takahashi
Mutsuo (poet and novelist and author of a recent revisionist history of Japanese literature),
Kubota Jun
(Professor Emeritus of Tokyo University), and Suzuki Sadami (Professor of the International
Research Center
for Japanese Studies). Mark this on your calendars! The Department will also host the 1999
Rocky Mountain/Southwest Regional Japan Seminar, this year focusing on the topic "Institution
and Reform," concurrently
with the MAJLS. The EALC department has long been at the forefront in the struggle to
adapt the newest technology for use
in the classroom. This spring our efforts were again rewarded by a grant from the ATLAS
program. The proposal as funded includes two projects: Madeline Spring will head up a group
seeking to create electronic
materials to accompany the use of film in East Asian language courses, and Terry Kleeman will
lead an
effort to create a visual archive of images related to East Asia that can be used in class by
instructors and be
made available to students for research and class assignments. Kyoko Saegusa will continue to
direct a
related project, funded separately through ALTEC, to produce computer-based reading materials
for introductory and intermediate Japanese language classes. The Preparing Future Faculty Program is a national initiative funded by
the Pew Charitable Trusts. Its goal is
to prepare doctoral students for their future career in academia by familiarizing them with the
varying demands made by different institutions regarding the three primary aspects of a faculty
position: research,
teaching and service. Participants attend conferences on pedagogy and professional development,
visit
nearby colleges and universities, and participate in teaching internships at these institutions. Last
year
Michael Glazer and Tina Jenkins were Fellows in the program. Each year the department awards Lamont Scholarships to one
undergraduate major from Chinese and one
from Japanese. This year the winners were Joseph Flynn for Chinese and Eric Sherrill for
Japanese. In
addition, we have a new fellowship this year, the Stephen Berry Memorial Scholarship,
contributed by the
Berry family in memory of Stephen Berry (B.A. in Japanese and International Affairs, 1995),
which was
awarded to Malachi J. Carre-Smith. The Department joins the Berry family in mourning and
appreciates
their support for the studies of other students of Japanese. The Second Annual East Asian Graduate Association Conference
convened on the CU Boulder campus on
April 15 and 16 of this year. A variety of grad students from CU and other nearby institutions
presented
papers on Chinese and Japanese topics relating to the theme: "On the Edge: Subversion and
Reaction." The
keynote speaker was Professor David B. Honey of Brigham Young University, who spoke on
"Pernicious
Poets and the Subversion of Orthodoxy: Magic in the Literary Tradition of China." Student Activities Chinese Tim Wai-keung Chan received his Ph.D. in
Chinese literature in May of this vear, with a dissertation called
"In Search of Jade: Studies on Early Tang Poetry." Tim will be joining the faculty at Ohio State
University
this fall. During the past year he published "The Jing/zhuan Structure of the Chuci Anthology: A
New Approach to the Authorship of Some Chuci Poems," in T'oung Pao, and
"Literary Criticism and the Ethics of
Poetry: the 'Four Elites of the Early Tang' and Pei Xingjian" is forthcoming in T'ang
Studies. He also
published brief pieces in Chinese in Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies and
Shumu jikan and delivered
papers at the American Oriental Society's Western Branch meeting and at the national meeting of
the Association for Asian Studies. Tim Davis received his M.A. in Chinese
literature in May of this year, with a thesis entitled "Trading Sable for
Wine: The Eight Unimpeded Ones of the Jin Dynasty." Tim has accepted a four-year scholarship
to pursue
doctoral work in Chinese at Columbia University, beginning this fall. Tina Jenkins completed her M.A. thesis on
"Trends in Popular Ming Culture as Reflected in The New Yu
Chu Anecdotes." This summer she will TA the 1010-1020 Chinese classes, and then in the fall
begin Ph.D.
work with us. She will also be serving as the Lead Graduate Teacher (TA) this fall, responsible
for helping
with the training of new and experienced TAs. She participated in thePreparing Future Faculty
program,
visiting a variety of post-secondary institutions here in Colorado as well as taking part in a brief
internship in
the Chinese language program of the Air Force Academy. Brigitta Lee (M.A. Chinese, 1998) has spent
this past year studying and doing research at Tsinghua University, Beijing, with a scholarship
from the IUB Program. She is now planning to move into the field of
international education. Jia Jinhua, a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese
literature, plans to receive her doctorate in December of this year,
with a dissertation on the ninth-century Buddhist monk Mazu Daoyi and the influence of his
teaching on
poets of his time, especially Bai Juyi. Last year she published an article on "The 'Pearl Scholars'
and the
Final Establishment of Regulated Verse" in T'ang Studies. She also delivered a
paper at the American
Oriental Society's Western Branch meeting. Wang Wei, a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese
literature, has received an Emerson-Lowe Dissertation Fellowship
for the fall semester. His dissertation will deal with historical and anecdotal treatments of the
T'ang empress
Wu Tse-t'ien. Joseph Flynn, a junior undergraduate major
in Chinese, has received a scholarship from the JUB Program
to study next year at Tsinghua University, Beijing. Joe was inducted this year into Phi Beta
Kappa. He has
also been awarded the department''s Katherine J. Lamont Scholarship in Chinese for next
year. Ben Tompkins finished and successfully
defended his M.A. thesis in April. His topic was the Japanese
genre of folktale known as setsuwa and its influence on the Meiji writer Tanizaki
Jun'ichir. After graduation, he plans to work in consulting or translation while he gives some
thought to Ph.D. programs. Michael Glazer completed his M.A. in
Japanese literature this semester. His thesis was on the writings of
contemporary author Murakami Ry. Michael has been involved in the department's service
learning program. He authored the first module of this program, interned at the Air Force
Academy as a Fellow of the
Preparing Future Faculty program, and won an internship at the Colorado International Trade
Office. In
addition, he teaches Japanese part-time at the Mackintosh Academy in Littleton and is on the
Steering
Committee of the Japan-America Society Young Professionals Club. After graduation, he planas
to look for a
job in Japan. Teacher Training Institute on Modern
Japan Last summer, July 7-18, we hosted a seminar for middle and high
school teachers on "Postwar Japan:
Recreating a Modern Nation." The 10-day intensive seminar was sponsored by the Social Science
Education
Consortium. Participating faculty included our own Stephen Snyder as well as professors from
the University
of Denver, University of Arizona, and University of California at Santa Barbara. Visitors and Lectures Chinese Writer/Artist and Literary Critics Speaker Series.
This year Professor Zhou Minglang
secured funding from the President's Fund for the Humanities to invite a series of distinguished
figures in
Chinese literature to campus. This semester we have been host to: Prof. Huang JiFu of
Guangzhou Cultural
Institute ("The Influence of Religion on Literature in China"), Li Tuo, Chief Editor of
Beijing Literature
("Market, Ideology and Literary Criticism of the 1990s in China"), Chu Tien-wen,
Award-winning Taiwanese
woman writer ("The View from Afar"), and Prof. Wendy Larson of the University of Oregon
("Rewriting the
Red: The Cultural Revolution and Sexuality in Post-Mao China"). The speaker series will
continue in the Fall. On April 21, Professor David Knechtges of
the University of Washington gave a talk entitled "Have You Not
Seen the Beauty of the Large? Court Aesthetic in Early Imperial China." This topic dovetailed
with the Center
for the Humanities series Beauty and its Discontents and was jointly sponsored by the Center and
EALC.
The following day, Professor Knechtges also gave a reading seminar for our graduate students
that explored
the investiture documents created when Tsao Pi ascended the throne of the new Wei dynasty in
220 C.E.
Professor Knechtges is the foremost authority in the Western world on the Han fu
genre and is renowned for
his ongoing translation of the earliest Chinese literary anthology, the Miscellany of
Literature (Ch. Wenxuan,
J. Monzen). On October 1, Professor Victor Mair of the
University of Pennsylvania gave a talk entitled, "Did the
Chinese Ever Have a Vernacular Revolution?" Professor Mair has been acclaimed the foremost
expert on
Chinese vernacular fiction but in this talk he questioned whether the Chinese ever really wrote in
vernacular.
In recent years Professor Mair has also won fame, and was the subject of a Nova
special, for his work on
red-haired Tokharian mummies found in Chinese Central Asia. On September 7, Professor Watanabe Kenji,
Dean of Arts of Rikky University (Tokyo) gave a talk entitled
"No Courtesan Graves in Okinawa." This talk dealt with the differing social standing of
prostitutes in
Japanese and Okinawan society. Professor Watanabe received one of three summer grants to
work in the
Asakawa Collection of rare Meiji manuscripts on microfilm. Workshops on Japanese
Pedagogy The Department hosted workshops by Paul Sandrock, Yasuhiko
Tohsaku, David Burrous, and Barbara
Conroy on standards-bsed curriculum design and assessments as part of an ongoing project on
K-16
articulation of Japanese language instruction in Colorado. The project is funded by grants from
the Modern
Language Asosciation's High School to College Articulation Project and the U.S.-Japan
Foundation/Association of Teachers of Japanese. The EALC Department was one of the sponsors of the World
Shakuhachi Festival 1998. The shakuhachi is a
five-holed vertical bamboo flute famed for its haunting sound. The instrument has a long history
but was
made famous by wandering Zen monks during the Tokugawa period (17th-19th centuries) as a
form of
musical meditation. The Festival assembled many of the most adept shakuhachi musicians in the
world for
a variety of performances and workshops presented in Boulder and Denver over the week of July
5-11,
1998. We see this event as a model for the sort of cooperation we would like to foster between
the department and Asian specialists on campus on the one hand and interested members of the
community on
the other.
Yu Shiyi (Ph.D. Chinese, 1998) is now teaching
Chinese in the Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Oregon. A revised
version of his dissertation, on the seventh-century T'ang Taoist Ch'eng
Hsüan-ying's commentary on the Chuang-tzu, will be published by the
University Press of America later this
year.
Japanese
Tetsuya Kirishima completed his
M.A. in Japanese language and civilization, writing on Japanese language pedagogy. He has been
accepted into the Ph.D. program at the University of Oregon, where he will
begin his studies in the fall.