Asia Notes 2010
Sarah Clayton, ed.
Contents:
- William Boltz named as Chairman of Asian L&L
- Washington State’s new Confucius Institute opens
- Past-Chair Reflects on Changes in Climate for the Study of Asian Languages
- China summer programs modified to increase cultural contact
- Dr. Heekyoung Cho to assume position in Korean program
- Visiting Scholars bring classical Japanese to life
- Faculty publication explores the pronunciation of ancient Chinese and beyond
- Faculty publication examines links between publishing and literature
- AL&L hosts unprecedented number of lectures
- Cap and Gown
- Awards
- Donor News
- Faculty News
- Student News
William Boltz named as Chairman of Asian L&L
Professor William G. Boltz has been named as Chairman of the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. This is the second term of service for Professor Boltz, who served as Chairman from 2000 to 2005. Professor Boltz is a renowned scholar of Classical Chinese, with research interests in such areas as philology, textual criticism, mythology, and the origins of Chinese writing.
Washington State’s new Confucius Institute opens
AL&L is pleased to play a role in the new Confucius Institute of the State of Washington (CI-WA), which was formally established in April. The State of Washington’s Institute joins the ranks of more than 250 Confucius Institutes around the world and is the product of four years of planning and collaboration among the State of Washington, public school systems and colleges across the state, and Hanban, a non-profit organization affiliated with China’s Ministry of Education. Planning for the Institute’s creation was initiated following Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington in 2006. The goals of the Confucius Institute include promoting and supporting Chinese language learning throughout the state, improving articulation of Chinese language instruction across all levels from kindergarten through university, sponsoring China-related cultural events, and facilitating faculty, student, and research exchanges. Members of the AL&L faculty have been involved in the planning process from the beginning.
Department Chair Michael Shapiro observes that “in the coming years, the need for greater articulation between what happens in K-12 classrooms and what happens in four-year colleges will certainly increase. AL&L has an important role in areas such as teacher training and certification, as well as curriculum development. The establishment of the new Confucius Institute will make it easier for AL&L and other units both on and off campus to work collaboratively to increase articulation for Chinese language instruction throughout the state.”
The collaborative nature of the Institute is reflected in its structure. The Institute’s administrative office is located at the University of Washington under the supervision of the Institute’s Chair of the Board of Directors and the University’s Vice Provost of Global Affairs, Stephen Hanson. The Institute’s Education Center is housed within the Seattle Public Schools system. The University is primarily responsible for program and web resource support, while the Education Center will focus on classes for teachers and students, administrative functions, and outreach programs.
Already the Institute has sponsored a talk at the University by Prof. Jeffrey Wasserstrom from the University of California at Irvine and a workshop on the AP Chinese language and culture exam for Chinese teachers throughout the state of Washington. AL&L, for its part, is contributing time and expertise to the endeavor. Currently, Prof. Zev Handel and Senior Lecturer Nyan-Ping Bi serve on the Institute’s Educational Advisory Board. Ms. Bi helped coordinate the AP workshop in April. She states, “It is natural that the University should get involved to understand what secondary school teachers need and what challenges they face because eventually their students will become our students.”
Upcoming events include a summer book club for educators and a workshop on U.S.-China relations. See the Confucius Institute's homepage for more information on the Confucius Institute, updated lists of upcoming events, or to sign up for the electronic newsletter.
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Past-Chair Reflects on Changes in Climate for the Study of Asian Languages
At the end of Spring Quarter, Michael Shapiro completes his five-year term as Chair of Asian L&L and returns to the faculty, where he will be teaching courses in South Asian languages and literature. In the following article, which was printed earlier this year in the East Asia Center’s newsletter, he reflects upon changes that have taken place during the forty years he has been at the UW concerning the teaching of Asian languages and literature.
The past year has been an exciting one for all of us here at the University of Washington’s Department of Asian Languages and Literature. The year has marked the centennial of its establishment in 1908 by the University’s Board of Regents of a Department of Oriental History, Literature, and Institutions, headed by the Rev. Herbert H. Gowen. That department is the forebear not only of our own Department, but also of the Jackson School of International Studies and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. The year has also marked the 40th anniversary of the existence of our Department in its current form, namely as an autonomous department in the Humanities division of the College of Arts and Sciences. In its present form, the Department has been the unit on campus most centrally involved with teaching and service with regard to representative languages and literatures of East, South, and Southeast Asia. It has been a fundamental aspect of the Department’s mission that it not only teach a broad range of courses to enable students to develop practical skills in particular languages, but also to treat Asian languages and literatures in a broad humanistic context, taking care to examine them with reference to the cultures and traditions within which they exist and have developed. During this past year there has been a wide-spread celebration on campus of the significance of the University’s accomplishments in Asian studies during the past century. The organization of a well-attended series of Centennial Lectures, sponsored by the UW’s Alumni Association, and the awarding to the UW’s Japan Studies Program of the Japanese Foreign Minister’s Award, in recognition of the UW’s long-standing contribution to Japanese studies, both bear witness to the important place that the study of Asian languages, cultures, and civilizations has had on the UW campus over the past century.
It should be no surprise that virtually everything about the study of Asian languages and cultures has changed since Rev. Gowen’s time. In the first year for which we have catalog records (1909-10) after the founding of the new Department, Rev. Gowen was listed as teaching two courses in each of the two semesters of the academic year. The four courses were (1) China, Japan and Korea, their history, literature and religious systems; (2) European conquests in Asia; (3) the literature of Persia; and (4) the primitive civilization of the Euphrates and Nile valleys, their history, religions, literatures, and monuments. By the next year, 1910-11, a totally different roster of courses was offered. Expanded now to three courses per semester, Rev. Gowen’s teaching load now comprised the classical literature of Japan, Buddhism as a philosophy and a religion; the classical literature of India, a history of Semitic archaeology, elementary Sanskrit, and elementary Hebrew. Clearly, Rev. Gowen’s purview was broad and extraordinary. But within a few decades after the establishment of the Department, such a one-man operation charged with providing instruction with regard to the languages, history, and institutions of all of Asia had become an impossibility. The range of languages expanded, the degree of specialization increased, and the level of linguistic proficiency expected of students was raised to ever higher levels. From relatively modest beginnings a century ago, the full infrastructure of a world-class operation in Asian studies (with the study of Asian languages and literature playing a leading role) emerged. The world of Language and Area Centers, FLAS Fellowships, “critical language” overseas summer language courses, multi-track degree programs in various Asian languages, and study-abroad programs could scarcely have been imagined by Rev. Gowen and the UW Board of Regents a century ago.
That things change greatly in a century is no big surprise. What may not be so apparent, however, is just how much has changed during the 40 years that our Department has existed as an independent academic year. I find it somewhat bracing to realize that I have now been a faculty member at the UW for 39 years, which covers the entire history of the “modern” Department except for its first two years of existence. When I conclude my term as chair at the end of June, I will have served (off and on) as department chair for eleven years. Things have changed markedly during my years as chair; and they have changed even more markedly since I received my graduate training in the late 1960s and began my teaching career in 1970. And although it is a cliché to say it, some of these changes have been for the better and some for the worse.
First the good news. The desire for instruction with regard to all aspects of the languages, literatures and cultures of Asia (and particularly East Asia) has increased spectacularly since the Department was established. This increase is a national, and not just a local UW phenomenon. Between 1960 and 2006, language enrollments for Japanese have increased nationally from 1,746 to over 66,000; those for Chinese have increased from 1,844 to over 51,000. Korean enrollments have gone from virtually zero to over 7,000. In the same period, enrollment for French has decreased from 228,000 to 206,000, for German from 146,000 to 94,000, and for Russian from 30,000 to just under 25,000. By way of comparison, it’s interesting to note that Spanish enrollments have surged from approximately 177,000 to almost an astounding 833,000. On the figures for the Asian languages, it’s noteworthy that a really sharp increase in Japanese enrollments took place between 1980 and 1990, a period coinciding with the boom years in the Japanese economy, years in which there was widespread apprehension in the US that the Japanese economy was engulfing the American economy. Based upon the experience of what happened with Japanese enrollments, it is not unreasonable to project that Chinese enrollments will witness a similar sharp increase in the coming decades. This is supported by the fact that of the twelve languages most widely taught at US post-secondary institutions, the two showing the largest percentage increases between 2002 and 2006 are Arabic (126.5 percent) and Chinese (51 percent).
The upswing in interest in instruction in Asian languages is by no means only a phenomenon of post-secondary education. Interest has increased in Asian languages in the K-12 schools, where language immersion programs, international baccalaureate degrees, and AP courses in Japanese and Chinese are increasingly popular. When I went to high school in the early 1960s, the readily available language class options were Spanish, French, German, and in some schools, Latin. Today, Japanese is taught at approximately 25 percent of Washington’s high schools, which have responded to an ongoing statewide survey of high school language offerings. Schools are gearing up for an anticipated surge of interest in Chinese. It is not inconceivable that the old trio of French, Spanish, and German may, at least locally, be giving way to a new trio of Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish. And this is only part of the picture. Interest in pre-school language programs is on the increase. I might mention, by way of illustration, that my one year old granddaughter, whose parents live in Austin, Texas, was enrolled prenatally at a day-care center featuring a Chinese- language immersion program. The majority of the students in this program is not of Chinese ethnicity. This would have been unimaginable 40 years ago, not to mention in Rev. Gowen’s era.
There is more good news. As compared with a generation or so ago, our Department is offering a wider spectrum of courses, targeted to a broader constituency of students, in a larger number of languages. Total student enrollments in our courses now add up to approximately 4,000 per year. They include not only own undergraduate majors and minors, our graduate students, but a broad swatch of undergraduate and graduate students from across campus. Fully 95 percent of the student credit hours generated by our undergraduate course offerings come from students not majoring in Asian Language and Literature. Double and triple majors are on the rise and it has become a commonplace for students to combine a major in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Hindi with one in bioengineering, computer science, mathematics, or business. Our faculty members have training and research specializations in a wide variety of areas that would not have been the case earlier. Today our Department has faculty who are active researchers in linguistics, literature and literary theory, language pedagogy, religious studies, epigraphy and paleography, film studies, and cultural studies. Our majors, both undergraduate and graduate, find employment, not just as teachers and scholars of Asian languages, but in a wide range of professions, include the health sciences, law, IT, government services, the military, and business. And, I think it’s fair to say, they enter these professions with a higher degree of spoken language proficiency than would have been possible earlier.
Now for some negatives (or, in the newsletter speak of our time, “challenges’). It should be no surprise that some of them have to do with money, or the lack thereof. The explosive rise in interest in the languages and cultures of Asia simply has not been matched with a commensurate rise in funding for departments such as our own. There are historical reasons why this might be the case. The organizational structure of academic units at the UW is in many ways a relic of the 1960s. We have separate departments for Slavic, Scandinavian, German, Classics, and Romance languages (divided into divisions for Spanish/Portuguese and French Italian), but only one for all the languages of Asia, whose speakers comprise approximately 40 percent of the world’s population. Our Department actually has fewer tenure-track faculty members than it did in the early 1980s. Then there were 20 tenure-track faculty members. That number is down to 14. Of course we have many more lecturers and TAs, who do exceptionally good work under less than optimal conditions. Teaching loads are high, salaries low, and (at least for lecturers) terms of employment short. The budget cuts of the past year have only made this situation worse. TA positions have been cut, section size increased, and some course tracks (for example, the heritage track of first-year Korean) eliminated for the time being. This makes little sense at a time when students are clamoring for instruction in Asian languages, when a Confucius Institute is being established in our state, and when Chinese and Japanese are making substantial inroads into curricula of the K-12 school systems. We should be increasing capacity, building stronger connections to the K-12 system, improving our curriculum, expanding opportunities for overseas study, rebuilding faculty strength in our traditional areas of excellence, and laying the groundwork for an institutional framework for the study of Asian languages, literatures and cultures that will meet the long-term needs of our constituency in the years to come.
I believe it is very important to place some emphasis on the phrase “long-term.” I do so out of the belief that the very best language and literature programs plan for the long-haul. They build curricula in which the teaching of languages at the elementary level is linked organically to what happens at the advanced levels, where language work goes on in conjunction with work in literature, history, and culture, and in which a community of teachers and scholars possess different research interests and teaching skills. This requires a kind of expertise that is built up over decades and in which there is continuity in course content, faculty, and funding. For decades we have had this kind of continuity at the University. But this community is put at risk when too many courses are taught by faculty on short-term contracts, languages are added or subtracted from the curriculum based upon the exigencies of annual budgets, or when programs get stretched to do too many things with too few resources.
I don’t wish to end this article on a negative note. That financial exigencies are upon us is something we have to deal with, to be sure. But it is also important to bear in mind that in the century since the appointment of Rev. Gowen to the UW faculty, the University has grown into one of the elite institutions in the world for the study of the languages, peoples, cultures and civilizations of Asia. The various units in which the centennial is currently being celebrated, including our Department of Asian Languages and Literature, have a justifiably good reason to be proud. The accomplishments of our unit during the past decades have been substantial. But the continued success of Asian studies at the University of Washington depends upon the continued strength of the institution’s offerings in Asian languages and literatures. I don’t hide the fact that I am an unabashed proponent of the centrality of language and literature to area studies in general. We have at the UW a world-class operation in Asian languages and literatures. And with the resources to do our job properly, I am fully confident that we will remain a premier institution in the decades to come.
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China summer programs modified to increase cultural contact
Refinements in the Sichuan Language Exchange Program, inaugurated last year, and the ongoing Exploration Seminars to China promise increased fluency and greater potential for deeper cultural exchange. Thanks to the commitment of Prof. Zev Handel and Instructor Yu Liping, in addition to increased language fluency, students will be afforded greater opportunities to deepen their understanding of and connections with China.
The Exploration Seminar and the Sichuan Exchange are complementary programs intended to answer the varying needs of the University’s students. The Seminar provides a structured three-week excursion to Beijing for Chinese-language students to learn more about the culture, while the Exchange provides an eight–week intensive program of language study that is equivalent to a year of study at the University.
This summer, the 17 students traveling to Sichuan University in Chengdu are being housed on the main campus and have the support of a permanent on-site manager. Returning participant Vivian Ta, an undergraduate majoring in Chinese and minoring in international studies, is encouraged by the changes to the program. She notes that last year program participants were housed in a facility for foreign students on a branch campus. She anticipates that the improvements will make the program even more productive than last year. Other improvements include greater free time for students to study and explore on their own, and the expansion of the program to include students from the University at Albany-SUNY. Last year, students from the University of Washington and the University of Arizona were the first participants in the program.
The 22 undergraduate Exploration Seminar students traveling to Beijing spend about three weeks at Tsinghua University. Mornings are devoted to language study tailored to help students appreciate their immediate environment, while the afternoons are dedicated to excursions to various locations around Beijing. For example, this year, students will meet and talk with the architect of Olympic Forest Park. Instructor Yu, who has organized and led the Exploration Seminar for the past three years, notes that the program is invaluable because “it provides an opportunity for students to learn a lot of things about China outside the classroom.” She notes the surprise students sometimes express at the differences between their expectations of China and their actual experiences.
Undergraduate Steven Kwan, who is majoring in computer engineering and minoring in Chinese, participated last year in both programs. He notes that the experiences built his confidence in his spoken Mandarin. “It helped me step out of my shell and interact more. It helped me understand more about my culture.”
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Dr. Heekyoung Cho to assume position in Korean program
This Autumn, the Department will be welcoming to its faculty Dr. Heekyoung Cho in the capacity of Assistant Professor of Korean. Dr. Cho has spent this past academic year at Yale on a postdoctoral fellowship. She recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, writing a dissertation on the translation and adaptation of Russian literature in early twentieth-century Korea. Before coming to the University of Chicago, Dr. Cho did an undergraduate degree and an M.A. (in Russian literature) at Yonsei University. In her dissertation, Dr. Cho explores how Korean intellectuals read, interpreted, and appropriated Russian prose literature. The translation and adaptation of Russian literary texts and methods demonstrates the response of a colonized people to modify authorial production to meet historical demands. Dr. Cho's other areas of interest include translation and the formation of national literature, modern Korean literature and its historiography, and Korean-Japanese-Russian cultural relations. At the UW, Dr. Cho will be teaching courses in Korean literature, culture, film, and language.
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Visiting Scholars bring classical Japanese to life
This Spring, two scholars from Tokyo provided students with firsthand experience of the performance of classical literary forms. Professors Nobuyuki Kanechiku of the Faculty of Letters at Waseda University and Kiyoe Sakamoto of the Department of Japanese at Japan Women’s University, who were sponsored through the Visiting Japanese Scholar program, lent their expertise to help both graduate and undergraduate students develop a greater understanding of waka poetry and jōruri recitation styles. Prof. Kanechiku, along with Paul Atkins, Associate Professor of Japanese, led a graduate seminar entitled Medievality and Materiality in Classical Japanese Peotry that explored waka poetry written ca. 1300, while Prof. Sakamoto cotaught Readings in Classical Japanese Literature. Both visiting professors taught completely in Japanese.
The Visiting Japanese Scholar program enables the Japanese literature faculty to provide students with the experience of studying at a Japanese university without ever having to leave Seattle. It brings renowned scholars to UW for short periods of intense intellectual exchange. Prof. Atkins notes, “Very few universities in North America do this on a regular basis, so the program is attracting attention from other leading programs seeking to duplicate our success. My colleagues and I were particularly pleased by the opportunity to expand the program this year to the undergraduate level.”
Prof. Sakamoto helped graduate and undergraduate students read through the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, a classical poetry anthology of 100 poems compiled by Fujiwara no Teika. Prof. Kanechiku cotaught a seminar that focused on poetry from the Shin Kokin Wakashū (c 1205 CE), Futamigaura hyakushū (1186), and Roppyakuban utaawase (The Poetry Match in Six Hundred Rounds) (1193). Amy Elder, a graduate student in classical Japanese literature, notes, “They were always able to answer our questions and elaborate on what we were studying.”
In addition to teaching, in May Prof. Sakamoto gave a talk titled “Variations of Regional Accent in the Japanese Puppet Theater” that explored the function of dialect in jōruri recitations, traditionally associated with Japanese puppet theater. Later in the month, together they led a two-part workshop on waka; Prof. Kanechiku led the first part, which focused on recitation, while Prof. Sakamoto conducted the part on calligraphy and waka. Maki Morita, a graduate student who helped to organize the workshop, states that working with Profs. Kanechiku and Sakamoto brought to life classical forms she has studied most of her academic life. “Waka is the art the enables the realization of the beauty and an awakening of the meaning of Yamato poetic language, while the jōruri style of recitation is the art that transmits living language. They provided an opportunity for us to raise our antennae to sense the allure of Japanese literature and culture that was the source for waka and jōruri.”
Both scholars were particularly impressed with the lively interaction between students and instructors on the UW campus. While Japanese college students engage in close readings just as their counterparts do here, lectures are more common than class discussion. They add that the idea of student-centered learning is not prevalent in Japan. Furthermore, they note that the intellectual exchange promoted by an active schedule of visiting lecturers and the library’s extensive resources also contributes to the campus’ vibrancy.
Profs. Kanechiku and Sakamoto's visit is part of an ongoing program that brings Japanese scholars to teach at the University in the Spring quarter each year. Previous visiting scholars have included Profs. Yoshitaka Hibi of Nagoya University, Minato Kawamura and Haruo Nishino of Hosei University, Kensuke Kôno of Nihon University, Keiko Kanai of Waseda University, and Sumio Rimbara of Kobe University.
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Faculty publication explores the pronunciation of ancient Chinese and beyond
Prof. Zev Handel’s new book, Old Chinese Medials and their Sino-Tibetan Origins (Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, 2010) traces the development of pronunciation from Old Chinese and other even earlier languages into their modern Chinese counterparts. Old Chinese is the name given by linguists to the spoken language underlying the Confucian classics and prevalent in the first millennium BCE. This language is ancestral to the Chinese languages (such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, and Shanghainese) spoken today, much as Latin is ancestral to the modern Romance languages (such as French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese).
Over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st, scholars have made great progress in uncovering the pronunciation of Old Chinese. Techniques include the analysis of ancient rhyming texts (principally the Confucian classic Shijing, known in English as the Book of Odes or Book of Songs), the analysis of phonetic components of early Chinese characters, and comparative analysis of modern Chinese languages and documented intermediate stages. Handel’s work focuses on one part of the Old Chinese syllable, the so-called “medial element.” These are l, r, w, and y-like sounds that occur between the beginning consonant sound and the main vowel sound of the syllable. An example is the r sound in the Old Chinese word “krong” (river) (which has developed into the word jiang in Modern Mandarin). Chinese languages today entirely lack l and r sounds in this position within a syllable.
In addition to the techniques mentioned above, Handel’s research makes extensive use of comparative data from other languages. Just as Latin is itself related to Greek, Sanskrit, Slavic, Germanic, and many other languages constituting the Indo-European family of languages, Chinese is related to Tibetan, Burmese, and dozens of other languages that together form the great Sino-Tibetan family of languages, which is spoken over a great swath of Asia, from northeast India, across the Himalayas, and into Southeast Asia. Comparison of Chinese with these other languages can yield insights into ancient pronunciations, not only of Chinese itself, but also of the hypothesized ancestor tongue of all the Sino-Tibetan languages, termed Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
Work like Prof. Handel’s, technically abstruse as it may be at times, is part of a broader humanistic enterprise aimed at understanding the history and interactions of the peoples of Asia. Because of the complexity of the migrations that have taken place over the last 5000 years, the cultural, demographic, and linguistic histories of Asia present us with an incomplete picture full of unsolved mysteries and fascinating puzzles. How did different civilizations develop, and by what pathways did cultural and agricultural innovations spread? What kinds of interactions, whether peaceful trade or warlike conflict, have shaped the peopling of Asia? Linguistic reconstruction, along with archeological investigation, genetic analysis, and ethnographic studies, is helping us to slowly fill in some of the missing pieces. By uncovering ancient pronunciations, we can sometimes trace the paths of borrowed words across languages, in turn revealing the pathways by which cultural artifacts and concepts traversed the continent, and the locations and interactions of ancient peoples.
For his second book, Prof. Handel plans to investigate the spread and development of the Chinese writing system as it was adapted to the representation of non-Chinese languages like Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.
Faculty publication examines links between publishing and literature
Prof. Ted Mack's monograph, Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature, is scheduled to be released in August by Duke University Press. From the Duke University Press website:
Emphasizing that literary value is shaped not just by intrinsic artistic merit but also by modes of book production, promotion, and consumption, Edward Mack examines the role of Japan’s publishing industry in defining modern Japanese literature. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, as cultural and economic power consolidated in Tokyo, the city’s literary and publishing elites came to dominate the dissemination and preservation of Japanese literature. As Mack explains, they conferred cultural value on particular works by creating prizes, series, and anthologies that signaled literary merit and helped to cultivate the idea of a distinctly Japanese modern literature. One such series, the Complete Works of Contemporary Japanese Literature (published between 1926 and 1931) provided many readers with their first experience of selected texts designated as modern Japanese literature. Its low price of one yen per volume allowed the subscription-based series to reach a wide audience; at its peak, nearly 350,000 people subscribed. The first major prize for modern Japanese literature, the annual Akutagawa Prize, was announced in 1934; it remains the country’s highest-profile literary award. Mack chronicles the history of book production and consumption in Japan, tracing the advancements in technology, the expansion of a market for literary commodities, and the development of an extensive reading community that enabled phenomena such as the Complete Works of Contemporary Japanese Literature and the Akutagawa Prize to manufacture the very concept of modern Japanese literature.
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AL&L hosts unprecedented number of lectures
This past year, the Department sponsored more talks, symposia, and the like than it has done in any past year. The following is a partial list of the many presentations that took place in Spring Quarter alone:
April 9. Seiji Lippit (UCLA) discussed the representation of the black market in Japanese literature of the immediate postwar era, focusing in particular on the conceptualization of the black market as temporal and spatial borderline, mediating between the nation and its outside and between the implosion of the Japanese empire and the construction of the postwar state.
April 16. Alan Tansman (UC, Berkeley) talked about the pedagogy of teaching about catastrophic violence to university students. His methodology encourages students to consider the psychic, cultural, historical, and political dimensions of responses to violence.
May 4. Zev Handel (UW) talked about his investigation of Old Chinese medial elements and ideas surrounding the reconstruction of Old Chinese phonology. Handel explored all the major medial elements and worked to trace back developments from Old Chinese to its ancestral language, Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
May 11, Nobuyuki Kanechiku (Waseda University) and Kiyoe Sakamoto (Japan Women’s University) held a workshop on waka recitation and writing.
May 12. Stephanie Jamison (UCLA) delivered the annual Andrew L. Markus Lecture on her work, conducted jointly with Joel Brereton, on translating the Rig Veda, a poetic corpus of over one thousand verses composed in an early form of the Sanskrit language. The Rig Veda is the oldest text of Indian civilizations and one of the most influential works of world literature.
May 13. Kiyoe Sakamoto (Japan Women’s University) talked about the function of regional dialect to differentiate roles in Japanese puppet theater. Vocal scores for the early modern Japanese puppet theater (also known as bunraku or ningyō jōruri) provide valuable information regarding accent and pronunciation of Osaka-dialect Japanese during the 17th century.
May 17. Doug Slaymaker (University of Kentucky) spoke about the role that the city of Paris has occupied in the Japanese imagination. Through a comparison of the imagery produced by painter Fujita Tsuguharu (1886-1968) and that of poet and painter Kaneko Mitsuharu (1895-1975), Prof. Slaymaker explored variations in the Japanese expatriate experience in the early twentieth century.
May 19. Steven D. Carter (Stanford University) argued that the latent social realities of mainstream linked verse (renga) as a performative and literary genre in medieval Japan may be usefully examined under a rubric of deference. This “attitude” or “posture” is apparent among the works and practices of the master poet Sōgi (1421‐1502).
May 27. Zev Handel (UW) spoke about his recent work with publishers of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language to revise the etymologies of 173 English words of Chinese origin, such as “chopstick” and “typhoon.” The etymologies of these words touch on many questions related to word history and the interaction of Chinese with other languages.
May 28. James Fujii (UC, Irvine) discussed Tokyo’s rise as a modern, urban capital and metropole of imperial Japan. Using two novels from the 1920s, Tokunaga Sunao’s proletarian novel Sunless Streets and Sasaki Kuni’s satire of suburban developments “Life in Culture Village: A Comedy,” Prof. Fujii reconceives Tokyo as ringed and riddled with newly marginalized space.
June 3. Michael Shapiro (UW) discussed the metrical structure of 20th century Hindi poetry. He argued that paying close attention to the intricacies of metrical structure, and more particularly to its manipulation, produces a deeper reading of Hindi poetry.
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CAP AND GOWN
The Departments annual Graduation and Awards Convocation was held on Friday, June 11th. This year four students received or expected to receive the Ph.D., five recipients of the MA, three admitted into candidacy for the Ph.D, and 53 received their B.A. degrees. In addition, several awards were made to undergraduate and graduate students for excellence in the study of Asian languages and literature.
Doctor of Philosophy
Jon Patrick Holt, Japanese, “The Fractured Voice: The Works of Miyazawa Kenji” (Advisor: Paul Atkins)
Timothy Michael O’Neill, Chinese, “Harbinger of Sequestered Intent: Language Theory and the Author in Traditional Chinese Discourse” (Advisor: David Knechtges)
Koji Tanno, Japanese, “Development of Narrative Skills in Second Language Speakers: Representation of Mental States and Reported Speech in Japanese Oral and Written Personal Stories” (Advisor: Amy Ohta)
Nicholas M Williams, Chinese, “The Brocade of Words: Imitation Poetry and Poetics in the Six Dynasties” (Advisor: David Knechtges)
Master of Arts
- Christine H. Marrewa Karwoski, Hindi
- Seaver J. Milnor, Chinese
- Maki Morita, Japanese
- Jacob Rawson, Chinese
- Sterling Swallow, Chinese
Doctoral Candidates
- Jung-Im Chang, Chinese
- Li Yang, Chinese
- Jeongsoo Shin, Chinese
Bachelor of Arts
- Matthew June An, Korean
- Rob Corey Lauler, Korean
- Merri F. Andersen, Japanese
- Kandice Jihae Leib, Korean
- Anthony Joshua Andrus, Chinese
- Leslie Edsel Loo, Japanese
- Carlos D. Badion, Japanese
- Natalie Suzanne Luukkonen, Chinese
- Christopher Paul Campion, Japanese
- Marissa L. Martin, Japanese
- Caryl S. Cavner, Korean
- Chris Michael Marusich, Japanese
- Nathan Laimun Chan, Japanese
- Anna Elissa Miketinas, Japanese
- David Chen, Japanese
- Matthew Emmett Nelson, Sanskrit
- Yueh-chang Chen, Japanese
- Marinna E. Owa, Japanese
- Yu-Hsuan (Joanne) Cheng, Japanese
- Jina Park, Chinese
- Chan Yang Choe, Japanese
- Edward Hampdon Phillips, Japanese
- William Nicholas Conrardy II, Japanese
- Rachelle Yvette Rappleye, Japanese
- Ryan Douglas Dixon, Japanese
- David Aaron Runolfson, Chinese
- Kelly Leland Dunn, Japanese
- Stephanie Anne Scheidel, Japanese
- Javier Hing Evans, Japanese & Korean
- Krista Kathleen Smiley, Chinese
- Loretta Lynn Fisher, Chinese
- Casey William Snyder, Japanese
- Wesley Drew Gray, Chinese
- Darren Michael Stults, Chinese
- Hanna Mae Hilsenberg, Chinese
- Subhadra Terhanian, Sanskrit
- Hei-man (Elvis) Ip, Japanese
- Devin Todd, Japanese
- Yuki Ito, Korean
- Maishia Toguchi, Japanese
- Joshua David Jaross, Korean
- Trevor Karl George Torgramsen, Japanese
- John R Kennedy III, Chinese & Japanese
- Ting-wei Tseng, Japanese
- Craig Thomas Kovatch, Japanese
- Israel Aaron Vance, Sanskrit
- Maisha Mariko Kuniyuki, Japanese
- A. Mark Vanderveen, Japanese (Post bac)
- Soon Hyung (Dan) Kwon, Japanese
- Louisa Lorraine Warden, Japanese
- Aaron Lee Lambert, Japanese
- Sabine Yuetngan Wisnioski, Chinese
- Andre Delacruz Langevin, Japanese
Awards
Henry S. Tatsumi Award: For excellence in the study of Japanese.
Sin Yi (Cindy) Tsang
and Clara Nadja Lawryniuk
Turrell V. Wylie Memorial Scholarship Award: For outstanding achievement in the study of Asian languages and literature.
Jon Patrick Holt
Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award: For excellence in teaching.
Hyunjung Ahn
Scott Swaner Memorial Book Award: Awarded to a graduating undergraduate for overall excellence in the study of Asian languages and literature.
Maisha Mariko Kuniyuki
Li Fang-Kuei Award: For excellence in the study of Chinese linguistics.
Amy C. McNamara
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DONOR NEWS
The Department of Asian Languages and Literature is deeply appreciative of the support it has received from alumni, faculty members, and friends over the past two years. People and organizations who have donated to the Department during this period are the following:
Jarmila Abdulla-Wilkinson
Stephen D. Allee
Beth Altman
Anonymous
Loren and Elsie Argabright
Mark Asselin and Son Bao Vuong
Kirsten Louise Atik
Elizabeth Becker and Bill Nash
Kurt Beidler
Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Bensky
Nyan-Ping Bi and Tse-Tsang Chang
The Boeing Corporation
Cornelius H. Borman
Pamela Bruton
Dr. and Mrs. Michael F. Carson
Thomas and Linda Chan
Cris and Melissa Upton Cyders
Malik N. Davis
Lisa Chin and Nigel Green
Ko Eun Choi
Collett Cox and William Arraj
Cris and Melissa Upton Cyders
Deloitte & Touche Foundation
Jonathan A. Eddy
Kirsten K. Edstam
Kai Fujita
Micaela R. Fujita
Thomas Gething
Mr. and Mrs. Mahesh Giri
Nigel Green and Lisa Chin
Zev Handel and Ju Namkung
Miyo Tatsumi Harvey
Harold A. Hayward
Jeffrey R. Hemming
Mr. and Mrs. David Hesch
Jeffrey and Vivian Hiroo
Takashi and Lily Hori
Daniel Hsieh
Melvin Kang and Mia Hannula
Edward and Teruko Kiyohara
Nicole Christine Klein
David Knechtges and Taiping Chang
Lora Elizabeth LaVerdiere
Walker and Fumiko Mannes
George and Irene Mano
Prapin Manomaivibool
Rebecca Manring
K. Marsh
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas P. Merchant
Mr. and Mrs. John W. Ming
Nanci Modolo
Shawn Kennedy Morse
Cheryl Sipe Nations
Dr. and Ms. Arthur Nichols
Pacific Translations
Mr. and Mrs. Patrick D. Rodgers
Carol Ryan
Richard Salomon
Harold and Marilyn Schiffman
Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Schuler
Julia S. Sensenbrenner
Sharrie Wylie Shade
Michael and Joana Shapiro
Fred A. Slimp II
Nancy Sprick and Michael Mirra
Jenny Teng
Dr. and Mrs. Pang-Hsin Ting
Dr. and Mrs. Ching-I Tu
Marcia Usui
Maliah Alma Washington
Dr. and Mrs. Gary S. Williams
Colin G. Wilson
Ted Yasuda
George Zeno
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FACULTY NEWS
Nyan-Ping Bi is one of the co-authors of the widely used Integrated Chinese set of textbooks published by Cheng & Tsui. Revised editions of several of the textbooks and workbooks for this series have been published this year.
William G. Boltz, Professor of Classical Chinese, continues to make Fall and Spring visits to Germany to collaborate with scholars at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, pursuing text-based research into the historical epistemology of early Chinese science, in particular the extent of practical and theoretical knowledge of mechanics, optics, and geometry as reflected in the so-called “Later Mohist texts,” viz., the Mozi “jing” and “jing shuo” chapters.
Collett Cox was invited to give a series of four lectures at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris from June 6-June 23, 2010. The lectures addressed the topic, “Early Gāndhārī Manuscripts and the Development of the Buddhist Scholastic Genre.”
Davinder Bhowmik presented a paper titled “Internationalizing Japanese-Language Literature: Shirin Nezammafi's ‘White Paper'” at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, March 26,
2010. She was also invited to participate in the Japanese Arts and Globalizations Theories of Violence conference held at UC Riverside between May 14-16.
A Chinese translation of Chris Hamm's monograph on modern Chinese martial arts fiction, Paper Swordsmen (University of Hawai'i Press, 2005), is being prepared for publication by the Baihua Literature & Art Publishing House in Tianjin, China.
Zev Handel has been named Associate Editor for Brill's new Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. His book Old Chinese medials and their Sino-Tibetan origins was published by Academia Sinica in Taiwan in November.
Akiko Iwata is developing a new fourth-year Japanese-language course and, with grant support from the UW Global Business Center, improving online video learning materials for advanced-level Japanese students.
Wiworn Kesavatana-Dohrs received a Freeman Foundation grant to travel to Thailand this summer to compile audio and video clips to be incorporated into the Thai textbook Thai for Beginners she has authored.
David Knechtges was an invited participant at the conference “Cultural Interactions: Chinese Literture in English Translations,” held in memory of David Hawkes, which took place at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on April 15-16.
Timothy Lenz's book, Gandhāran Avadānas, has been published as Volume VI in the Gandhāran Buddhist Texts series, published by the University of Washington Press.
Chi Nguyen completed her Ph.D. in linguistics at the Institute of Linguistics of the Viet Nam Academy of Social Sciences in Hanoi.
Amy Snyder Ohta is one of approximately 190 prominent linguists whose biographies are profiled in the forthcoming Encylopedia of Applied Linguistics, which is being published by Wiley/Blackwell. The inclusion of her biography is in recognition of her research in an area known as interlanguage pragramatics.
Heidi Pauwels was invited to Columbia University in April, where she delivered two talks based upon her recent research and publications. One of the talks was on “Imagining Community and Caste in Medieval India” and the other on “Who is Afraid of Mirabai?”
Richard Salomon presented a keynote lecture entitled “Reading between the lines of Gupta genealogies: A test case in collateral suppression” at the conference on genealogy in South Asia at Cardiff University (Wales, UK) on May 28.
Michael Shapiro presented a paper on April 20 on “Why Meter Matters: Reading 20th Century Hindi Poetry from the Perspective of Metrical Structure.” The presentation was part of special symposium to honor Professor Herman van Olphen on the occasion of his retirement from the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin.
This summer, Liping Yu will be leading a UW undergraduate Exploration Seminar in Beijing. This is the third year in a row that she has conducted such seminars in China, each of which has had waiting lists of students wishing to participate.
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STUDENT NEWS
Marco Carboara presented a paper, “The particle ye 也 in the Guodian and Shanghai Museum manuscripts” at the 2009 Annual Research Forum of the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Institute of Education in December 2009 and again at the 4th Conference on Language, Discourse and Cognition in Taipei in May.
Amy Elder received a FLAS to study Korean at UW in the coming academic year.
Jon Holt has obtained a tenure-track position teaching Japanese literature and language at Portland State University. Jon received his doctoral degree in modern Japanese literature this June. His dissertation research is entitled “The Fractured Voice: The Works of Miyazawa Kenji.”
Chris Lowy received a Monbukagakusho Scholarship as a research student beginning this year.
Seaver Milnor received a FLAS fellowship for Summer 2009 to study Korean at Korea University in Seoul. He received his MA this Spring in Chinese linguistics. His thesis
reconstructs the phonology of a S. Min Chinese dialect spoken on Hainan Island (ca. 1900) and preserved in two Bible translations.
Sachi Schmidt-Hori published an article, “The New Lady-in-Waiting Is a Chigo: Sexual Fluidity and Dual Transvestism in a Medieval Buddhist Acolyte Tale,” in the Fall 2009 issue of Japanese Language and Literature. The latter half of the article is an annotated translation of the medieval tale "Chigo imamairi."
Hsiang-Lin Shih presented a paper, “‘The Han River in the Clouds’: A King’s Lament,” at the 2009 meeting of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch. She discussed Mao shi 258 “Yun Han” (The Han River in the Clouds) and its relation to other songs in the Shi jing.
Jeongsoo Shin presented his paper “Daoist Gardens in Ancient Korea” at the Seventh Internation Conference of Korean Language and Literature at Peking University in July 2009. His article “The Reception of Sanguozhi tonsu yanyi in Neo-Confucian Chosŏn Society” is scheduled for publication in Journal of Korean Culture.
Sterling Swallow will earn his MA in the Summer with the completion of a partial translation of Wu Jianren’s New Story of the Stone. He presented a paper, “The Politics of Early Twentieth Century China as Reflected in New Story of the Stone” at the UW’s Asian Languages and Literature Annual Graduate Student Colloquium in April.
Koji Tanno obtained a tenure-track position teaching Japanese at Eastern Michigan University. This summer, he is teaching at Middlebury Language School. His dissertation is titled “Development of narrative skills in second-language speakers: mental and speech representations in Japanese oral and written personal narratives.”
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