Author: Education About Asia

October 2022 Education About Asia News

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Deadline for Submissions for 2023 Franklin R. Buchanan Prize: November 1, 2022

Established in 1995 by the AAS Committee on Educational Issues and Policy and the Committee on Teaching about Asia, the Franklin R. Buchanan Prize is awarded annually to recognize an outstanding pedagogical, instructional, or curriculum publication on Asia designed for K-12 and college undergraduate instructors and learners. To that end, the winning submission will reflect current scholarship as well as innovative pedagogical methodologies that emphasize student-centered learning and skill development. Submissions should enhance teaching beyond conventional textbooks, primary source readers, or collected or academic essays. The winning submission will contribute qualitatively to the available materials for teaching the specific content and make a significant impact on the intended audience. Submissions must have been published after January 1, 2021 and include well-articulated and detailed teaching strategies in order to be competitive. Any format is acceptable, including print, CD, video, and online formats. Submissions that address underrepresented regions of Asia, as defined by the Association for Asian Studies, are encouraged.

The 2023 Buchanan Prize will be awarded to the author(s) of the work at the AAS Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts on March 16-19, 2023. The prize includes a $1,000 monetary award and a one-year membership to AAS.

Submissions are due November 1, 2022.For more information and a submission form, please contact the Chair of the Committee, Kristi Roundtree at barnesk@u.washington.edu

How Education About Asia Gave Me a Wonderful Opportunity, by Matthew A. Kosuta

In April 2022, while I was living and working in Thailand, I was contacted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Asia-Pacific to present a talk at their “Asia and the Pacific Regional Leadership Meeting 2022” (RLM) held May 9-13, 2022 in Bangkok (a regional headquarters for the UNFPA Asia-Pacific). I was invited because the Deputy Regional Director for UNFPA Asia-Pacific had read an article I published in Education About Asia titled “Postcolonial Religious Conflict in Southeast Asia”. The article laid the historical background and then surveyed the religious tensions and intermittent religious conflict in Southeast Asia during decolonization up to the present.

This topic is obviously not within the mandate of the UNFPA Asia-Pacific which deals with women’s rights, reproductive rights, children, and such. However, the Deputy Regional Director thought that because the mandate of the UNFPA Asia-Pacific brings the representatives into contact and even contestation with the religions of Asia that it would be beneficial to give UNFPA Asia-Pacific representatives an opportunity to think outside the box by having a talk on religion in relation to conflict and war.

Being invited was quite an honor because participating in this Asian regional meeting were UNFPA Asia-Pacific senior management, selected HQ staff, heads of offices, deputy and assistant representatives, operations managers, and finally regional staff, totaling approximately 100 people from 20 countries in Asia.

After two Zoom preparatory interviews, first with a Thailand-based regional representative, and then with this same representative and the Deputy Regional Director, both my suitability to give the talk and the subject of the talk were settled. The talk would be on “Religion, Conflict and Violence – What can be learned from Asia?” And so, on May 12, 2022, I spoke for forty-five minutes on contemporary international human rights law in relation to conflict, ethics of war of the major world religions, as well as conquests in the name of religions. I ended on an optimistic note outlining the necessary requisites for the culture of peace that has existed between the liberal democracies of the world. A full 45-minute Q&A session followed in which the audience was quite engaged. For me, the entire session was a joy.

I owe that wonderful opportunity to showcase my academic specialization to a highly reputable international organization to that one article I published in Education About Asia several years ago; proof to me that Education About Asia is widely read and has a real-world impact.

Now Available: Winter 2018 Issue of Education About Asia

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Editor’s Message by Lucien Ellington

I hope everyone enjoyed a peaceful and joyous holiday season. “What Should We Know About Asia?” is particularly meaningful for two reasons. The special section topic, while always an appropriate question, has never been the specific focus of an EAA special section, and, even though unplanned when the decision was made to address this particular theme, the winter 2018 special section title was the perfect place to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA). For those not familiar with NCTA it is the most effective, long-term US collaborative effort to improve elementary and secondary school teacher and student knowledge of East Asia ever created. Anyone who teaches Asia should immensely benefit from reading the contributions of outstanding professors and teachers who’ve been involved in NCTA programs. All NCTA-related contributors deserve accolades.

However, without the efforts of Lynn Parisi, Director of the Program for Teaching East Asia (University of Colorado Boulder), this issue’s special focus on NCTA would not have occurred. Lynn, who is also a National Co-Director of NCTA, conceptualized the idea of a substantive anniversary tribute appearing in this issue, and worked extensively with our office in planning the NCTA segment at every stage, including reviewing many manuscripts. The TEA provided support for AAS to help to defray the costs of this expanded issue. One could not ask for a better collaborator than Lynn. At least seven features and seven teaching resources in this issue are the work of authors who’ve been involved in NCTA.

The first four features in the special section focus upon more general but critical topics. The Freeman Foundation has been a major force in education about East Asia and the interview with President Graeme Freeman provides readers with both a retrospective look at the foundation’s activities and gives a sense of current and future high priorities. Kristin Stapleton’s “Fiction: A Passport to the Asian Past” is an engaging, compelling, and practical case for always integrating literature into history courses. Jeffrey Richey in “My Students and Asia: Then and Now” reflects upon how at his institution, Berea College, the demographics, interests, and outlooks of students interested in Asia have changed in his approximately two-decade career. Jeffrey welcomes comments and responses. Kyle Greenwalt, Jenifer Pippin, and Ethan Segal in “Collaboration and Plenty: Supporting Teachers’ Learning (and Unlearning) about East Asia” describe their high-quality approach to Asian professional development that builds and celebrates teacher virtues.

The focus of the next four features is more country- and globally-specific. Maura Cunningham and Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s “China and a New Era: The Latest Twist in an Enduring Pattern?” uses China as an illustrative case study that teaching history is messy but more genuine if instructors focus not just upon beginnings and ends of historical periods, but upon their continuities as well. Paul Dunscomb in “The Reign of Emperor Akihito, 1989-2019: A History in Five Key Words” gives readers a vivid sense of the considerable turmoil and disasters, also the resiliency that marked the Heisei era. Shelton Woods’s “Việt Nam in the Twenty-First Century: The Unbreakable Bamboo” is an ideal general introduction to Việt Nam with an emphasis upon economic, educational, social, and international events since the end of the American war. Andrew McGreevy’s feature article “Will China Lead the World by Land and Sea?” is a basic introductory primer on China’s potentially highly significant Belt and Road Initiative. Survey world history and literature instructors should not miss Yue Zhang’s “Bringing Traditional Chinese Culture to Life” that appears in the online supplements for this issue.

Seven outstanding NCTA master teachers contribute a wide variety of teaching resource essays (TREs); examples of topics include critical thinking and Japanese history, China in Africa, contemporary controversies in maritime East Asia, and teaching East Asia with GIS. This issue and online supplement also include an outstanding “Digital Asia” column, an interview with the 2018 Franklin R. Buchanan prizewinner with an accompanying review of the prizewinning book, a TRE on teaching the 1947 Partition of British India, and a film review of Above the Drowning Sea.

The spring 2019 special section is “Schools in Asia.” The fall 2019 special section is “Entrepreneurship in Asia” and the deadline for initial receipt of manuscripts is April 20, 2019. The winter 2019 special section is “Asian Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences,” and the deadline for initial receipt of manuscripts is August 20, 2010. Nonthematic manuscripts are also considered for each issue. Please visit the EAA website for author guidelines before submitting a manuscript.

Check out the EAA online archive for free access to over 1,500 articles from the journal, visit the EAA page at our website to purchase a print subscription (discount available to AAS members), and follow the journal on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates.

Introducing the Spring 2018 Issue of Education About Asia, “Asian Politics”

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Below is the Editor’s Message from the newest issue of Education About Asia, the open-access teaching journal of the Association for Asian Studies. For complete online access to this issue, as well as over 1,500 articles from 22 years of Education About Asia, please visit the EAA website.

By Lucien Ellington, Education About Asia Editor

I hope readers are enjoying the spring. The intent to make a more effective special section through utilizing a “political economy” approach should be evident in the topical breadth of the issue and, hopefully, a “real world” approach to understanding the influences of demography, geopolitics, national security, technology, economic development, religion, and ethnicity upon governments and politics.

The special section, “Asian Politics,” begins with Tony Tai-Ting Liu’s “The Rise of China and its Geopolitical Implications” that should serve as a basic introduction for educators and students to a number of issues regarding China’s expanding influence that have regional and global implications. Two features assist teachers and students to better understand twentieth-century China: Kelly Ann Long’s “Helen Foster Snow in Revolutionary China, the Cold War, and Contemporary America” and Steven F. Jackson’s “Constructing Communism: Teaching about Revolutionary Societies through Chinese Poster Art,” respectively, examine Chinese communism through the eyes of a sympathetic and controversial American, and provide students with graphic evidence of the utilization of propaganda by a totalitarian government during the Mao years. Robert D. Eldridge’s “Japanese Millennials and Politics: An Introduction” should be of interest to older high school and undergraduate students, especially since, regarding political involvement and perceptions of public policy issues, millennials in North America and Japan have some similarities, but also strikingly different attitudes and behavior.

As of this issue’s publication, for obvious reasons, the issue of nuclear weapons and the Korean peninsula has garnered recent world attention. Three scholars who also have Korea and East Asia experience that transcend the academy were audacious enough, given rapidly unfolding events, to contribute to the special segment: “Symposium: Nuclear Weapons and the Korean Peninsula.” Please note that the three contributors included further commentaries that are published in our online supplement in light of additional developments since the print issue went to press.

Abhijit Roy’s “The Middle Class in India: From 1947 to the Present and Beyond” is a comprehensive introduction to the economic, political, and social ramifications of the ascent of the middle class in the world’s second-largest country. Andrea Malji’s “The Rise of Hindu Nationalism and its Regional and Global Ramifications” is an introduction to another kind of ascent that has growing domestic and geopolitical effects. Religion, ethnicity, and possible challenges to democratic government are important factors highlighted in Stefani Nugroho’s “Jakarta’s 2017 Gubernatorial Election and the Future of Indonesian Politics.” Mousumi Roy’s “Asia’s Role in the Four Industrial Revolutions” offers students and instructors rich comparative economic history with a vivid contemporary introduction to Asia’s current technological global lead in a number of fields that are certain to influence world politics.

The special section continues in the resources section with five teaching resource and book review essays focusing upon political and geopolitical topics; the variety of China-related perspectives and topics is particularly evident in the Resources section, although pedagogically useful review essays appear on India, the Koreas, and on the life and influence of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew. (#AsiaNow note: Please see the EAA open-access online archive for articles and reviews not linked to in the text above.)

The fall 2018 EAA special section is “Demographics, Social Policy, and Asia (Part II),” and the winter 2018 special section is “What Should We Know About Asia?”; the deadline for initial receipt of manuscripts for the latter issue is August 1, 2018. November 30, 2018, is the deadline for initial receipt of manuscripts for the spring 2019 special section, “Schools in Asia.” Please visit the EAA website for author guidelines and for information about all upcoming special sections scheduled for 2019; nonthematic manuscripts are also considered for each issue.

Some EAA readers might recall that in the fall 2017 online supplements, we published Scott Harrison and Erin Williams’s “Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada: Digital Teaching Resources.” Both authors are Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APF Canada) staff members, and I am delighted to announce that Scott Harrison is now an EAA editorial board member.

Please encourage friends and colleagues who prefer EAA print copies to subscribe at our low rates. This can be done online at the EAA website. Readers interested in accessing PDFs of all EAA articles and essays through the current issue can visit the EAA website for no charge and no required password. In the meantime, please like us on Facebook, follow EAA on Twitter, and tell your friends to do the same. Readers especially interested in EAA developments should go to our website and register for the EAA email digest; there is no charge, the newsletter is distributed every five to six weeks, and digest subscribers will also learn about other Asia-related teaching resources in addition to EAA.

Best of the EAA Archives: Articles from the Winter 2017 Issue

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The “Best of EAA Articles” are a series of posts that include outstanding articles, essays, interviews, and reviews that are among the over 1,500 archived open access materials available on the Education About Asia website.

The winter 2017 issue with the special section “Demographics, Social Policy, and Asia (Part I)” has been sent to subscribers and is now available online. Three examples of articles and essays from the special section appear below.

• Chris Hudson’s “Singapore: Immigration and Changing Public Policies” is an overview of how one of the world’s most successful nations is coping with a low birth rate and recent social tensions that involve longtime residents and newcomers.

• Lisa Jane de Gara in the essay “Asia’s Missing Millions: How Policy and Social Pressure Made Millions of Women Disappear” provides a useful introductory overview of government policies, cultural attitudes, and the highly problematic gender gap that is present in some Asian nations.

• Paige Tan’s “Indonesia Doesn’t Want to Be Number Three” gives readers a general understanding of Indonesia’s demographic complexion and the policies, opportunities, and problems that relate to the size and heterogeneity of the archipelago’s population.

• The issue also features an interview with the 2017 Franklin R. Buchanan prizewinner on her exemplary East Asia introductory text that a variety of different educators, students, and laypeople are enjoying, along with a review of the text by a high school teacher.

“An EAA Interview with the 2017 Franklin R. Buchanan Prizewinner, Anne Prescott, for East Asia in the World: An Introduction”

East Asia in the World: An Introduction. Reviewed by Stephanie Lee Rizas.

• “Asia in the Core Curriculum” by the late Wm. Theodore de Bary is the first EAA reprint in the journal’s history. The article originally appeared in the 1996 inaugural issue and is still as meaningful as it was almost 22 years ago.

Best of EAA Articles, Number 7. Read the previous posts in this series.

To subscribe to Education About Asia or sign up for the free EAA Digest e-newsletter, please visit the EAA website. EAA is currently soliciting manuscripts for its fall 2018 issue, which will include a special thematic section on “Demographics, Social Policy, and Asia (Part II).” The deadline for the initial receipt of manuscripts is April 20, 2018.  

Best of the EAA Archives: Using Literature in the Classroom Edition

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The “Best of EAA Articles” are a series of posts that include outstanding articles, essays, interviews, and reviews that are among the over 1,500 archived open access materials available on the Education About Asia website. Titles, short annotations, and links are below.

Throughout the years, a number of superb literature articles, essays, and interviews have been published in EAA. This is the first installment of several we plan to post in the coming weeks.

• “History As Literature, Literature As History, Lost Names: Scenes From a Korean Boyhood — An EAA Interview with Richard Kim” (fall 1999): Richard Kim describes his novel about a young boy in Japanese-occupied Korea: “…all the characters and events in the book are real but everything else is fiction.” Middle school, high school, and undergraduate instructors have all assigned this superb work.

• “Her: An Indonesian Short Story” by Titis Basino, translated by Florence Lamoureux (spring 2001): The only short story published thus far in EAA depicts the interplay between divorce and Islam in one Indonesian family.

• “Using Novels to Teach the Cultural Geographies of South Asia” by Jean Lavigne (spring 2011): A geographer’s creative essay on how she uses novels to help students better understand South Asia.

• “Bringing Students Into The World: Asia in the World Literature Classroom” (spring 2013): Melek Ortabasi does a nice job in this essay of providing engaging sketches of both classical and modern examples of Asian literature she has used in her own classes.

• “Natsume Sōseki and Modern Japanese Literature” (fall 2015): Marvin Marcus introduces readers to the life and major works of Japan’s most famous Meiji-era novelist.

Best of EAA Articles, Number 6. Read the previous posts in this series.

To subscribe to Education About Asia or sign up for the free EAA Digest e-newsletter, please visit the EAA website. EAA is currently soliciting manuscripts for its spring 2018 issue, which will include a special thematic section on “Asian Politics.”  

Best of the EAA Archives: Maritime History Edition

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Maritime History is a field of study that often is not integrated into high school or beginning undergraduate survey courses. The articles and essay below, from our fall 2014 special section “Maritime Asia,” provide readers with a variety of choices that are applicable to world history, geography, and anthropology courses.

The “Best of EAA Articles” are a series of posts that include outstanding articles, essays, interviews, and reviews that are among the over 1,500 archived open-access materials available on the Education About Asia website. Titles, short annotations, and links are below.

• “When the World Came to Southeast Asia: Malacca and the Global Economy” Historian and Southeast Asia specialist Michael Vann uses a once-great port city in assisting readers to understand that Southeast Asia has played an important role for a long time in the global economy.

• “Maritime Southeast Asia: Not Just a Crossroads” Historian and anthropologist Jennifer Gaynor’s essay begins in prehistoric times with her depiction of the development of connections and exchange circuits that have created both Southeast Asian and global networks.

• “The Saga of Manjiro” Journalist and historian Junji Kitadai tells the story of a Japanese fisherman who became the first person from the archipelago to live in the United States.

• “Japan and the Sea” Anthropologists Theodore and Victoria Bestor’s article is a superb general introduction to the historic and contemporary impact of the seas and ocean in shaping the lives of Japanese.

• “The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World” Naval War College Professor James Holmes writes an engaging review of a truly unique general work in world history.

Best of EAA Articles Number 5. Read the previous posts in this series.

To subscribe to Education About Asia or sign up for the free EAA Digest e-newsletter, please visit the EAA website. EAA is currently soliciting manuscripts for its spring 2018 issue, which will include a special thematic section on “Asian Politics.”  

Best of the EAA Archives: November 28, 2017 Edition

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The “Best of EAA Articles” are a series of posts that include outstanding articles, essays, interviews, and reviews that are among the over 1,500 archived open access materials available on the Education About Asia website. Titles, short annotations, and links are below.

• “Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada: Digital Teaching Resources”(fall 2017) High school and undergraduate survey-level instructors who access the fall 2017 EAA online supplements will find two excellent educational modules (China’s One-Child Policy, The Rise and Fall of the Khmer Rouge Regime) and learn about a prominent not-for-profit organization that focuses upon Canada’s relations with Asia.

• “More Than a Meal: School Lunch in Japan” (spring 2017) Alexis Sanborn in this engaging article lucidly depicts how Japanese schools use school lunches as highly effective pedagogical tools.

• “Who Did What in a Chinese Lady’s Autobiography? A Text and Lesson Plan on Li Qingzhao’s Ambiguous Narrative” (spring 2017) Historian of China Sarah Schneewind shares a lesson plan in which students interpret primary source excerpts, learn about their historical context, and get a sense of the ambiguity of translations.

• “New Perspectives on the Sunzi (Sun Tzu) from Contemporary Chinese Military Writings” (spring 2016) Mark Metcalf’s article is an excellent introduction to a seminal thinker and a thoughtful discussion of how contemporary China’s military officers interpret Sun Tzu’s (Sunzi) ideas.

• “Indonesia, Asia, and the World: An Interview with Leonard C. Sebastian” (spring 2016) Professor Sebastian creates in an EAA interview a wide-ranging and thoughtful portrait of a nation that is increasingly important geopolitically and significantly affects the global economy.

Best of the EAA Archives Number 4. Read the previous posts in this series.

To subscribe to Education About Asia or sign up for the free EAA Digest e-newsletter, please visit the EAA website. EAA is currently soliciting manuscripts for its spring 2018 issue, which will include a special thematic section on “Asian Politics.”  

Best of the EAA Archives: November 10, 2017 Edition

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The “Best of EAA Articles” are a series of posts that include outstanding articles, essays, interviews, and reviews that are among the over 1,500 archived open access materials available on the Education About Asia website. The following articles are a sample of what appears in our latest fall 2017 issue (vol. 22, no. 2) with the special section “Water and Asia.” Titles, short annotations, and links are below.

• In “China’s Water Challenges: National and Global Implications,” David Pietz offers compelling examples of the potential worldwide effects of China’s water crisis.

• Judith Shapiro’s amply illustrated “China: Harnessing the Waters” provides historical context for China’s current water situation and chronicles the activities of individuals and organized groups to improve water quality in China.

• Robert Ivermee does a nice job in “The Hooghly River: A Sacred and Secular Waterway” of combining the metaphysical and the material in an interesting account of a major South Asian river that stretches from the distant past to the present

• Soy sauce lovers will particularly appreciate this issue’s Asia: Experiential Learning column by Willa Zhen, “Tasting Soy Sauce, Teaching Culture: A Case for Experiential Learning.”

• “Top Ten Things to Know about Singapore in the Twenty-First Century” by Charles Chao Rong Phua should serve as an excellent student introduction to a nation whose achievements far exceed its size.

Best of the EAA Archives, Number 3. Read the previous posts in this series.

To subscribe to Education About Asia or sign up for the free EAA Digest e-newsletter, please visit the EAA website. EAA is currently soliciting manuscripts for its spring 2018 issue, which will include a special thematic section on “Asian Politics.”  

Best of the EAA Archives: October 27, 2017 Edition

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This post includes articles on Chinese and Japanese history, traditional Korean culture, Indian food, and everyday Shinto. Titles, short annotations, and links are below.

The fall 2017 EAA featuring the special section “Water and Asia” is now published and online. Read Lucien Ellington’s “Editor’s Message” from the issue in this #AsiaNow post. Next week’s post will highlight several tasty nuggets from the issue but if you can’t wait, visit our EAA archives now.

• We’ve published a number of nifty simulations in EAA but here is one of our better offerings: “Contesting Twentieth-Century China: A Simulation” by Joseph W. Esherick and Jeremy Murray (fall 2010).

• Many education articles that include the term “critical thinking” feature fluff instead of substance. This is not the case with Ethan Segal’s fine essay “Can Samurai Teach Critical Thinking? Primary Sources in the Classroom.” (winter 2010).

• Many people are aware of haiku but ignorant of sijo. David McCann’s article “The Sijo: A Window into Korean Culture” is an excellent and accessible introduction to this topic (spring 2010).

• Anthropologist Tulasi Srinivas illumines readers about both Indian culture and a wide array of South Asian food practices in this article that appeared in our special section “Food, Culture, and Asia,” “Exploring Indian Culture through Food” (winter 2011).

• Scholar of religion Paul Watt creatively focuses upon one Shinto shrine in assisting readers to better understand this Japanese belief system in “Neighborhood Shinto: Tokyo’s Ana-Hachiman Shrine” (fall 2010).

Best of the EAA Archives, Number 2. Read the previous post in this series.

To subscribe to Education About Asia or sign up for the free EAA Digest e-newsletter, please visit the EAA website. EAA is currently soliciting manuscripts for its spring 2018 issue, which will include a special thematic section on “Asian Politics.”  

Introducing the Fall 2017 Issue of Education About Asia, “Water and Asia”

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Below is the Editor’s Message from the newest issue of Education About Asia, the open-access teaching journal of the Association for Asian Studies. For complete online access to this issue, as well as over 1,500 articles from 22 years of Education About Asia, please visit the EAA website.

By Lucien Ellington, Education About Asia Editor

We hope readers had an enjoyable summer. This issue of EAA includes the special section “Water and Asia.” Scholars who have published extensively on China environmental issues provide in the first two articles, comprehensive overviews of China’s water problems that complement each other and should be quite useful for the classroom. In “China’s Water Challenges: National and Global Implications,” David Pietz offers compelling examples of the potential worldwide effects of China’s water crisis. Judith Shapiro’s amply illustrated “China: Harnessing the Waters” provides historical context for China’s current water situation and chronicles the activities of individuals and organized groups to improve water quality in China. Pierce Salguero’s “Cultural Associations of Water in Early Chinese and Indian Religion and Medicine” takes readers back in time to better understand how perceptions of water and beliefs associated with it helped to shape traditional Indian and Chinese cultures.

Kimberley Thomas in “The ‘Mundane Violence’ of International Water Conflicts” focuses upon Asia in probably introducing many EAA readers in developed nations to a potential problem they haven’t or would rather not contemplate. Robert Ivermee does a nice job in “The Hooghly River: A Sacred and Secular Waterway” of combining the metaphysical and the material in an interesting account of a major South Asian river that stretches from the distant past to the present. Allison Hahn in “Mongolian Dzud: Threats to and Protection of Mongolia’s Herding Communities” documents the great amounts of livestock deaths and damage to Mongolia’s economy caused by severe winter storms often involving massive snowfall. In the last special section feature article, Monika Dix in “Water, Tradition, and Innovation: Flowing through Japan’s Cultural History” writes about both traditional and contemporary ways water influences Japanese culture. Jared Hall, our new guest columnist, focuses upon water in his Digital Asia column that will be appearing in each issue. Jared both identifies excellent resources in the column and discusses how they might be utilized with students. Two long-time EAA editors, Art Barbeau and Gary DeCoker, each contribute brief water-related essays based upon their experiences in respectively, China and Japan.

The fall issue includes a teaching resources essay and three additional book essays on textbooks and primary source-based readers specifically intended for the classroom, as well as a book review on twentieth-century China. The classroom-friendly “Ten Top Things to Know About Singapore in the Twenty-First Century” should serve as an excellent student introduction to a nation whose achievements far exceed its size. Soy Sauce lovers will particularly appreciate this issue’s Asia: Experiential Learning column by Willa Zhen. Readers should also see our fall Online Supplements for an introduction to the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and some excellent digital instructional resources they have developed for social studies teachers, as well as a short essay by Damon Woods, author of a forthcoming Key Issues in Asian Studies volume on the Philippines.

The winter 2017 special section is “Demographics, Social Policy, and Asia (Part I).” November 30th, 2017 is the deadline for initial receipt of manuscripts for the spring 2018 special section, “Asian Politics,” and April 20th, 2018 is the deadline for fall 2018, “Demographics, Social Policy, and Asia (Part II).” Please visit the EAA website for author guidelines and for information about all planned special sections; non-thematic manuscripts are also considered for each issue.

Please encourage friends and colleagues who prefer EAA print copies to subscribe at our low rates. This can be done online at the EAA website. Readers interested in accessing PDFs of all EAA articles and essays through the current issue can visit the EAA website for no charge and no required password. In the meantime, please like us on Facebook, follow EAA on Twitter, and tell your friends to do the same. Readers especially interested in EAA developments should go to our website and register for the EAA e-mail digest; there is no charge, the newsletter is distributed every five-six weeks, and subscribers will also learn about other Asia-related teaching resources.

Best of the EAA Archives: A New #AsiaNow Feature

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This is the first of a series of posts that will highlight outstanding articles, essays, interviews, and reviews that are among the over 1,500 archived open access materials available on the Education About Asia website. Titles, short annotations, and links are below.

• Nimish Adhia’s “The History of Economic Development in India since Independence” (winter 2015) is a superb, clearly written introductory overview for students on Indian economic history since 1947. 

• Marvin Marcus, also the author of the Key Issues in Asia Studies volume Japanese Literature: From Murasaki to Murakami, in “Natsume Sōseki and Modern Japanese Literature” (fall 2015) published an engaging biographical sketch of the iconic Japanese novelist. 

• Readers of Wang Ping’s autobiographical “I am a Chinese English Teacher” (fall 2015) will learn not only about the life of a Chinese high school teacher, but also get a sense of the changes that occurred in China over a short period of time.

• Angela Lee’s “Periodization and Historical Patterns in Chinese History: Approaches to Historical Thinking Skills in AP World History” (spring 2016) gives teachers classroom-tested strategies that promote critical thinking in World History. 

• Edward Baker’s “Kim Dae-jung’s Role in the Democratization of South Korea” (spring 2014) profiles the Korean statesman, who the author knew well and who is often compared to Nelson Mandela.

Best of the EAA Archives, Number 1

To subscribe to Education About Asia or sign up for the free EAA Digest e-newsletter, please visit the EAA website. EAA is currently soliciting manuscripts for its spring 2018 issue, which will include a special thematic section on “Asian Politics.”