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

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.