IPRH Reading Groups
2007-2008

The following reading groups on East Asian and Asian American Studies have been awarded support by the IPRH for 2007-08. Please contact the Reading Group organizers directly for more information about the groups and their activities. General information about the Reading Groups can also be found on the IPRH website at: http://www.iprh.uiuc.edu.

Anthropology and Psychology of the Asian / American Self This reading group brings together an interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students from across the social sciences and humanities around the theme of “the Asian/Asian American Self.” The group will discuss texts from anthropology and psychology on contemporary scholarship in culture, identity, and selfhood in Asia and Asian America. Some of the meetings will feature guest scholars who will be invited to the campus to participate in our discussion.

Organizers: Sumie Okazaki (okazaki@uiuc.edu) and Nancy Abelmann (nabelman@uiuc.edu)

Asian American Cultural Studies This group will explore recent scholarship in Asian American Cultural Studies. As an emerging field of interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches, we will examine how various theories and methodologies are productive to the study of Asian American populations. We will examine how literary, historical, ethnographic, and sociological approaches inform the interdisciplinary methods of cultural studies. Our guiding questions will focus on how these works inform understandings of concepts such as race/racism, gender, religion, sexuality, class, ethnicity, diaspora, community, empire, militarism, etc.

Organizers: Junaid Rana (jrana@uiuc.edu) and Soo Ah Kwon (sakwon@uiuc.edu)

Asian / American Feminisms This reading group seeks to (a) engage with hi/stories and experiences of Asian American women that center women; (b) explore Asian American feminisms and ask questions such as, “What are Asian American feminisms?” and (c) practice Asian American feminist pedagogy, which has been defined as applying knowledge to serve the community through collective processes. The reading group is open to anyone interested in learning more about any or all of these topics; furthermore, the group will provide a space to discuss how we are affected by these issues in our lived realities in gendered, racialized, and classed spaces.

Organizers: Jennifer Chung (jychung@uiuc.edu) and Genevieve Clutario (gclutar2@uiuc.edu)

East Asian Language Pedagogy East Asian Language Pedagogy reading group is a bi-weekly meeting among those graduate students and faculty who are interested in second language acquisition and pedagogy. Our goals are to expand our knowledge of East Asian language learning/acquisition and pedagogy, and to become familiar with important professional resources so that we, as language teachers, learn to become an informed, purposeful decision maker in the second/foreign language classroom.

Organizers: Misumi Sadler (sadlerm@uiuc.edu) and Jeeyoung Ahn Ha (j-ahn3@uiuc.edu)

The Korea Workshop The Korea Workshop, into its seventh year, will focus this year on: Korea Gender/Sex/Race. We will meet approximately twelve times on Fridays from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Sessions will include discussion of: pre-modern sex/gender cultures, colonial period gender/sex/race system, and contemporary racial/sexuality transformations. The group is run as a workshop, discussing an already circulated paper. We welcome new organizers and discussants.

Organizer: Nancy Abelmann (nabelman@uiuc.edu)

Language Issues in the Asian Diaspora This group takes a transnational perspective on language issues in the Asian diaspora. Topics include bilingual literacy development, heritage language education, the language socialization of immigrants, language attitudes towards English in Asia and the private English language education market. We look at the different ways in which race, class, gender, and ethnicity intersect language issues in immigrants’ lives, and the different kinds of methodologies which scholars use to understand language issues

Organizers: Adrienne Lo (adrienlo@uiuc.edu) and Yeonsun Ellie Ro (yeonro@uiuc.edu)

Trans-East Asian Cinema Reading Group The Trans-East Asia Reading Group focuses on the interactions among cinemas of China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Hollywood. We will screen films and discuss recent scholarship. We seek answers to the following questions: To what extent has the imagination of a unitary East Asian market influenced the style, aesthetics, and visual concepts of filmmakers? How is trans-East Asian cinema related to trans-Pacific and transnational cinema? What is the relationship between regionalism and transnationalism?

Organizers: Eric Dalle (dalle@uiuc.edu) and Yanjie Wang (ywang40@uiuc.edu)