Fall 2011 Newsletter

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES & CULTURAL STUDIES Chair’s Letter Departmental Newsletter Volume 4 Dear Friends, Fall 2011 This past year, EALCS underwent an external program review designed to assess our work of Chair’s Letter 1 the past decade and our direction for the im- Mission Statement 2 mediate future. I am delighted to note that the laudatory Report highlighted the tremendous Recent Activities and Publications 4 – EALCS Faculty success of developing a cultural studies frame- Recent Activities and Publications 14 work, hiring a number of new faculty while at – Lecturers the same time building on earlier strengths, Recent Activities and Publications 15 and establishing a successful Ph.D. program. – Affiliates The report states further that ours is clearly a top Asian studies program with a distinctive Faculty Profile: 18 Ronald Egan and exciting vision. The external reviewers Graduate Student Profile: 19 from Berkeley, Harvard and the University of Michigan found the Depart- Qian Yang ment to be in excellent shape, emphasized that EALCS plays an extremely Visiting Professor Profile: 21 important role within the larger university, and has an exciting vision for Yeonghae Jung moving forward. Faculty Fellow Profile: 22 Nathaniel Smith In this spirit, we continue to be extremely grateful to our generous donors, including The Drew Family for their generous support of our Center for Taiwan Studies (CTS) 17 Chinese language program, Bruce Wilcox for two endowments in honor of News and Events, 2010-11 Professor Pai Hsien-yung, supporting graduate fellowships and Chinese lit- East Asian Center (EAC) 26 erature studies generally, the Mochizuki Family for supporting the Japanese News and Events, 2010-2011 language program, and several of our undergraduate and graduate student East Asian Library (EAL) 28 News and Events, 2010-2011 alumni for their significant gifts. This past year the Drew Award was given to Erica Melanie Sommerman and Ly-Ann EE for being the best students in Graduate Updates 27 first-year Chinese language. The Mochizuki Student Award went to Nicole Kim and Nicha Cygnel for being the best students in Japanese language. Japan Corner 8 Japanese language lecturer and current language program coordinator Hi- roko Sugawara was awarded the Mochizuki Lecturer of the Year Award. The China Corner 14 Residence Halls Association and the Office of Residential Life honored each East Asian Grad Student 17 Colloquium Lecture Series, Spring 2011 continued on page 2 Campus Earthquake Relief Efforts 3 one of our energetic Japanese language lecturers - Akiyo Cantrell, Chikako Shi- nagawa, Hiroko Sugawara, and Yoko Yamauchi – with Outstanding Lecturer EALCS Recognition Award Nominations and Ph.D. student Silke Werth with an Out- standing TA Recognition Award Nomination. Chinese language lecturer and ISSON program coordinator Daoxiong Guan was honored with a summer resident M TATEMENT researcher award by Shanghai University of Finance & Economics through S The Department of East its Foreign Experts Exchange Program while Shu-Chuan (Bella) Chen was Asian Languages and Cultural awarded a Non-Senate Faculty Professional Development Grant. Congratula- Studies is committed to provid- tions to all awardees whose enormous commitment and drive constitute such ing students with the opportunity an important component of the EALCS language programs’ excellence. to understand the many facets of I am also pleased to recognize the prompt and creative efforts of Jap- anese language lecturer Yoko Yamauchi and students Phillip Wong, Adam East Asian culture, including (but Gross, and Alexander Hsu in promptly coordinating disaster relief efforts in not limited to) languages, history, the wake of the tripple disaster in Northeastern Japan – Japan’s 3/11. society, politics, economics, religi- The EALCS community wouldn’t be as vibrant without our visiting osities, media and art. In a world scholars. As every year, EALCS welcomed a number of scholars who came to of increasing international coop- EALCS in pursuit of various research projects, including Professor Shuen-Shing eration and globalization, students Lee (National Chung Hsing University), Ms. Yue Wang (Shandong Univer- will be prepared to face a society sity), Ms. Xingzi Hau (Peking University), Ms. Valentina Mejia (El Colegio de Mexico), and Professor Harald Meyer (Bonn University). I am also delighted in which Asia is now a significant to welcome David Novak, a new EALCS affiliate, and Nathaniel Smith, the factor in the foreign relations of UCSB Japan Foundation Faculty Fellow. Novak is a new faculty member in the United States, and the rest of the Ethnomusicology Program of UCSB’s Music Department. His novel and the world. interdisciplinary expertise in the globalization of popular music, experimental culture, environmental sound, social practices of listening and intermedia con- stitutes an excellent addition to our modern East Asian cultural studies em- UR phasis (http://www.eastasian.ucsb.edu/PhD.htm). UCSB Japan Foundation O TAFF Faculty Fellow Nathaniel Smith has joined us from Yale. Smith’s dissertation is S an ethnography of the world of rightwing politics in contemporary Japan, an Director Bob Ortega issue of considerable societal, comparative, and theoretical importance. While (805) 893-2993 at UCSB, he will be offering 4 exciting new courses in winters and springs Financial Services Shubra Agrawal 2011/12 and 2012/13, on popular culture and consumption, directions in so- Manager (805) 893-4613 cial activism, life in the Japanese empire, and a graduate seminar on criminal- Student Services Lisa Blanco ity and contrition in East Asia (For an interview with Smith, see p. 22 of this Manager (805) 893-3316 Newsletter). The UCSB Japan Foundation Faculty Fellow is one component Financial Assistant Vera Reyes of the three-year Japan Foundation Institutional Project Support Program (805) 893-5463 Grant in Japanese Studies that has been generously matched by the Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts. As many of you know, Luke Roberts (History) is Grad. Student Sally Lombrozo Advisor (805) 893-2744 the PI of the grant and has organized this past year’s program on “National- isms of Japan” (http://www.j-culturalstudies.ucsb.edu/year1.htm). Next year’s Undergrad. Student Deborah McCleister Advisor (805) 893-4381 program will be arranged and administered by ann-elise lewallen (EALCS) on “The Return of the Political in Cultural Studies.” Please also watch out for Webmaster Stephen Wilcox (805) 893-2731 the third and final year’s program in 2012/13 that will be organized by Mi- chael Emmerich and Katherine Saltzman-Li (EALCS) on “The History of the Book, Printing, and Publications in Japan and Its Relationship to Modernity.” continued on page 3 2 Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies More detailed information will become available at: http://www.j-cultural- AMPUS studies.ucsb.edu/year2.htm. EARTHQUAKE Despite increasingly fierce competition in grant selections, our faculty C ELIEF have continued to apply with great success: No fewer than three of our junior REFFORTS faculty members - Michael Emmerich, ann-elise lewallen and Xiaowei Zheng By Adam Gross, Alexander Hsu, Phillip Wong - have received Hellman Family Faculty Fellowships; lewallen won a grant On Friday, the 11th of March 2011, one of from the University of California Center for New Racial Studies; Emmerich the most powerful earthquakes in recorded was awarded a Junior Faculty Fellowship; Mayfair Yang is the recipient of a history formed off of the coast of Japan, UC President’s Faculty Fellowship from UCHRI; Sabine Frühstück was hon- causing a massively destructive tsunami. ored with a senior fellowship of the International Research Center for Cultural The devastation to the northern regions of Studies (Internationales Forschungsinstitut Kulturwissenschaften), Vienna; Japan was, and still is, tremendous. Many and Hyung-Il Pai was the recipient of a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship precious lives were lost, and entire cities awarded by the Council on the Inter-exchange of Scholars in Washington. were consumed by the massive waves. As D.C., among other awards and fellowships. we sat and watched this chaos unfold on the other side of the ocean, we leaders of A series of East Asia events lie ahead of us and will be announced on the Japanese Language Café knew we had the EALCS website. I would like to bring two of them to your attention: Our to take quick and helpful action. During the most wonderful intellectual spirit and leader in Song-era literature and cultural days and weeks that followed this terrible studies, Ron Egan, will be hosting the 2011 meeting of the American Oriental tragedy, we worked hard devising a way for Society’s Western Branch in mid-October. On January 24, 2012, we will host us to help the people of Japan. After care- film director Mark Hall. The screening of his latest documentary, Sushi: The ful deciding, we began to sell T-shirts of our Global Catch to UCSB. Sushi: The Global Catch, will be introduced, screened own design to the many students of the and discussed as an Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Public Goods lecture EALCS. Our sales became so successful that series event (http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/series/publicgoods/). ann-elise lewallen, we decided to create more shirts, and went our own specialist in environmental change and indigenous political move- on to sell them in front of the UCEN. With ments, will be moderating a Q & A session. Sushi: The Global Catch is a pow- the wonderful support that we received from the EALCS faculty, and with the all-important erful feature-length documentary that explores how sushi became a worldwide guiding hand of our sensei Yamauchi Yoko, phenomenon. The film poses the question, “Can the growth continue?” to we were able to manage a very successful over two dozen sushi chefs, marine biologists, fish vendors, Greenpeace ac- fundraiser. In addition to selling shirts, we tivists, and other experts (check out the trailer at http://www.sushitheglobal- set up a special origami fundraising event catch.com/).

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