OATJ to hold annual fall meeting on November 13, feat. Suwako Watanabe

The Ohio Association of Teachers of Japanese (OATJ), with support from the East Asian Studies Center, will present its annual Fall Meeting 2021 featuring Suwako Watanabe, Portland State University, on Saturday, November 13 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. EST online (registration required). Dr. Watanabe will present "DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Workshop for Japanese Language Professionals of Ohio."

Abstract: The topic of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) challenges us to re-examine our long-held assumptions and what we take for granted. It is truly a life-long endeavor. Where can we start? During this workshop, we propose two areas to start the process for Japanese language professionals in Ohio. First, what can we do in our classrooms? How can we create a just and inclusive environment in a classroom? Second, how can we make OATJ a truly inclusive organization? What steps can we take to move our organization toward inclusivity?

During this workshop, Dr. Suwako Watanabe (professor at Portland State University, former AATJ president, the chair of 2020 AATJ DEI task force) will facilitate our discussion. Based on the definition of some key concepts, the participants will be encouraged to reflect on themselves and start thinking on DEI together through a breakout session. This is the first occasion of our DEI work, and Dr. Hiroaki Kawamura (University of Findlay, 2021 AATJ DEI taskforce member) will continue the dialogue in Ohio.

Korean eSchool course to be offered in Spring 2022

As part of an effort to build a system of shared courses with Korean content among Big Ten schools, the Big Ten Academic Alliance, with funding from the Korea Foundation and coordination from the University of Michigan, offers a series of area studies courses on a variety of Korean topics. These course offerings have small enrollments and are simulcast among multiple universities. The East Asian Studies Center and Institute for Korean Studies coordinate and support the offering of these courses at The Ohio State University. In Spring 2022, OSU will participate in the following course: Korean 5256: "Dating, Sex, and Marriage in Korea."

Course Description: This course examines the ever-changing social phenomena of dating, sex, and marriage in contemporary South Korean society. The turbulent recent history of Korea has produced a society that is engaged with a variety of local and global social forces in complex and contradictory ways. The sweeping social changes in South Korean society have redefined and forced its people to re-examine itself, and its relation to such basic ideas as gender, sexuality, class, family and tradition. This course pays special attention to the process of compressed modernization that South Korea experienced in recent decades and to its resultant social changes that came into being during this process. The behavior of Koreans’ dating, sex, and marriage have been the focal site where these changes have been reflected most saliently. The two main questions that are explored throughout the course are: What kind of modern society is South Korea becoming as a consequence of all these rapid economic and social changes? How do Koreans adjust and negotiate these changes in the realm of dating, sex, and marriage?

Four EASC-supported courses to be offered in Spring 2022

The East Asian Studies Center will support four courses offered in Spring 2022 through collaborations with the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, the Department of History's Center for Historical Research, the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the Undergraduate International Studies Program.

Chinese 5194: "The Golden Age of Dead Media: Modern China, Nostalgia, and the Futures of Media's Pasts" with Julia Keblinska will explore the strong pull of the past throughout China's encounter with new media technologies.

EALL 4200: "The History of Race in East Asia" with Melvin Barnes, Jr., will present a broad overview of race's impact on social, political, and cultural developments in the history of East Asia from the 18th to the 21st century.

INTSTDS 4195: "Modern Pandemics" with Amy Welling Gregg will explore epidemics in the 19th-century, 20th-century, and the 21st-century in East Asia, Africa, and the United States.

Japanese 5105: "Introduction to Professional Japanese Interpretation" with Allyson Sigman will teach students how to interpret intelligibly on a given topic while developing fluency in business-level Japanese through hands-on training in consecutive and simultaneous interpretation, bidirectionally between Japanese and English.

These courses are supported in part by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.