Call for Proposals
The past decade has produced a great corpus of literature which defends and reimagines the value of the humanities—its potential to cultivate critical reasoning and cultural literacy necessary for a healthy civil society (Helen Small, 2013), ethically meaningful reading practices (Peter Brooks, 2014), and the character and judgement required to become “more human” (James Hankins, 2017). For teachers of the humanities, maintaining the sort of engaged pedagogy necessary to deliver on these promises means frequent trial and error. This conference is designed to serve as a forum to discuss both our challenges and successes in achieving our goals as humanities teachers in East Asian fields.
We invite proposals that reflect on your own stories of challenging and rewarding moments in your teaching, as well as common pedagogical strategies within your fields. How do we grapple with tensions between global and local perspectives? How do we account for particularities (philosophical concepts, literary forms, and social institutions) in East Asia while avoiding essentialisms, or introduce students to Western theory without perpetuating discursive hegemony? How should we navigate or challenge the boundaries imposed by the premodern/modern divide, or disciplines such as history, literature, philosophy, and religion? What pedagogical hurdles and advantages accompany teaching translated sources? Ultimately, how should we tailor our pedagogy to foster humanistic thinking?
We invite proposals that reflect on your own stories of challenging and rewarding moments in your teaching, as well as common pedagogical strategies within your fields. How do we grapple with tensions between global and local perspectives? How do we account for particularities (philosophical concepts, literary forms, and social institutions) in East Asia while avoiding essentialisms, or introduce students to Western theory without perpetuating discursive hegemony? How should we navigate or challenge the boundaries imposed by the premodern/modern divide, or disciplines such as history, literature, philosophy, and religion? What pedagogical hurdles and advantages accompany teaching translated sources? Ultimately, how should we tailor our pedagogy to foster humanistic thinking?
PresentationsStephen C. Angle (Wesleyan University) “Learning by Living: Confucian and Daoist Philosophical Exercises” Gwendolyn Gillson (Illinois College) “Gods, Monsters, and Reserved Intimacy in East Asian Pedagogy” Benjamin Daniels (University of California, Berkeley) “Manuscript Culture Assignment” Alan Baumler (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) “Disciplines and Narratives: Introducing Asian Studies in the Undergraduate Curriculum” Marjorie Burge (University of Colorado-Boulder) “Okay, Maybe Genji is a Rapist? Reflections on Teaching The Tale of Genji” Laurence Coderre (New York University) “Preaching to the Choir: Reorienting the China Survey for Today’s Student Body” Tommy Tran (University of California, Merced) “Upaya and Teaching East Asian Studies” Shelby Oxenford (University of Texas at Austin) “Teaching Disaster through Popular Culture” Thomas Newhall and Jonathan Feuer (University of California, Los Angeles) “Teaching Writing through Buddhism” Rafal K. Stepien (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) “Rethinking ‘Religion’, ‘Philosophy’, and ‘Literature’ in the Study of Buddhism” |
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Organizers:
Xiaoyu Xia, PhD Candidate in East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley (xiaoyu_xia@berkeley.edu)
Nicholas Constantino, PhD Candidate in History, UC Berkeley (nconstantino@berkeley.edu)
Nicholas Constantino, PhD Candidate in History, UC Berkeley (nconstantino@berkeley.edu)