Education About Asia: Online Archives

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Feature Article

Sri Lanka in the Classroom

by Udan Fernando

Editor’s Introduction: A Virgin Vote, a short film by director Udan Fernando, follows a Sri Lankan citizen voting for the first time in the country’s 2020 parliamentary elections after becoming stranded due to Sri Lanka’s COVID-19 lockdown. In the essay and short interview that follow, Fernando discusses A Virgin Vote and its production, as well as the ongoing political crisis in Sri Lanka. The basic information below provides context for readers unfamiliar with Sri Lanka and the c...

Feature Article

Why I Made a Virgin Vote

by Udan Fernando

It all began with a very long conversation I had with a person. He became both the subject and protagonist of what later became a short English-language film, A Virgin Vote, released in September 2021 in Colombo and online. The conversant was a childhood and teenage classmate in Sri Lanka. Our conversation took place in a bar/restaurant in July 2020, literally a stone’s throw away from the school we attended. I had just returned from Singapore, where I was located for about three months during...

Feature Article

A Brief Interview with Udan Fernando

by EAA Editorial Office, Udan Fernando

Udan Fernando obtained his PhD from the University of Amsterdam. He currently functions as an Independent Researcher from Sri Lanka and Singapore. Until March 2020, he was Executive Director of the Center for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), a Sri Lankan think-tank. Throughout his career, as Head of the Development Commission of the National Christian Council of Sri Lanka (1989–1995), Executive Director of Paltra (gte) Ltd (1996–2001), Guest Researcher at University of Amsterdam (2002–2007...

Feature Article

Singapore Immigration and Changing Public Policies

by Chris Hudson

The demographic composition of the contemporary population of Singapore reflects a complex and vibrant history of a melting pot nation that has grown out of successive waves of immigration stretching back nearly 200 years. As an immigrant society, Singapore is a product of the forces of globalization that have been a constitutive feature of the historical development of many nations. When Britain’s Sir Stamford Raffles signed a treaty in 1819 with local rulers, a swampy little island was trans...

Book Review Essay, Resources

Theravada Buddhism: The View of the Elders

by Todd Lewis

Asanga Tilakaratne’s Theravada Buddhism: The View of the Elders offers an overview of “southern Buddhism” that is both traditional and innovative, yet also problematic. Educators will find a valuable resource in its chapters that analyze central doctrines and practices. These offer apt and refreshing perspectives on Buddhism as a lived tradition for the monks and householders adhering to the dominant lineage of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia today.

Feature Article

How China’s Approved Destination Status Policy Spurs and Hinders Chinese Travel Abroad

by James Mak, Shawn Arita, Sumner La Croix

By the end of this decade, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) forecasts that the People’s Republic of China (hereafter referred to as China) will be sending 100 million tourists abroad each year. By then, China is expected to be the world’s largest tourist-generating country. How is that possible? Before 1978, China was pretty much closed to the outside world. Few Chinese citizens were allowed to travel to other countries. Those who did were either businessmen, government officials, or s...

Feature Article

South Asia in the New Global Textbooks

by Richard H. Davis

World History survey courses are on the increase throughout American colleges and universities. The reasons are diverse, including greater heterogeneity in the US college population, the ever-growing role of the United States in world affairs, and the worldwide economic and cultural trends (and academic fashion) we call “globalization.” Along with this growth, a new paradigm for presenting World History in such courses has emerged, one in which Asia plays an increasing role....

Web Gleanings

Web Gleanings: Asian Newspapers — English-Language Editions

by Judith S. Ames

[Editor’s Note: In order to include as many newspaper sites as possible, remarks have been limited to a single sentence.] BANGLADESH Title: The New Nation URL: http://nation.ittefaq.com/ This paper provides broad coverage of the news of Bangladesh and is associated with a newspaper founded in 1953. Title: The Independent A leading daily newspaper published in Dhaka; articles from its weekly magazine are also indexed on the homepage. Title: Bangladesh Observer URL: http://ww...

Teaching Resources Essay

Reading Across the Curriculum: Using the Fiction of the Indian Subcontinent in Social Science Classes

by Andrea Caron Kempf

There is a publishing boom in fiction by authors from the Indian subcontinent. Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Bangladeshi authors are being discovered almost daily. The literature from India is several thousand years old. However, following the notoriety of Salman Rushdie, the meteoric success of Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things, and the Oscar-winning screen adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, it is almost impossible to open the New York Times Book Review w...

Film Review Essay, Resources

Buddhism: Footprint of the Buddha

by Anne E. Monius

Reviewed by Anne E. Monius This third episode of the widely-acclaimed BBC Long Search series, if used with some caution, can serve as a good introduction to Theravada Buddhism that is suitable for both high school and introductory college courses. Filmed entirely on location in Sri Lanka, Footprint of the Buddha conveys some of the essentials of Buddhism through the interpretive eyes of a university professor or anthropology and distinguished monk; three refuges, the four noble truths, the nota...

Book Review, Columns

Abhidhamma Studies: Buddhist Explorations of Consciousness and Time

by Richard Booth

This reflective, scholarly work was written during the aftermath of World War II, following the author’s return to Sri Lanka, after having spent the years 1941 to 1946 in a civilian internment camp at Dehra Dun. The present edition is the fourth and reflects what Bhikku Bodhi, the editor, considers to be a clearer explication of the first three editions. It should be noted that the manuscript was written in Pali rather than Sanskrit, so words like kamma, sutta, and dhamma may need to be transp...

Resources, Web Gleanings

Web Gleanings: Asian Literature

by Judith S. Ames

Title: Bibliography of Modern Chinese Literature, Film and Culture Extensive bibliographies of Chinese literature in translation, of reference materials including dictionaries and literary compendiums, of studies of Chinese authors arranged alphabetically, and of journals that deal with Chinese literature and culture. Published in conjunction with the journal, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. Title: Chinese Classical Poetry Text and audio files of Chinese poetry, some of which are trans...

Columns

The Status of Women in South Asia

by Anne B. Waters

The term South Asia refers to the Indian subcontinent, which includes the contemporary nation-states of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. This geographical spread has a corresponding range of cultural and linguistic diversity. Further, this region is home to over a billion persons. On any issue of global importance, be it social welfare, population growth, cultural and economic development, or the environment, what happens in South Asia, and to its peoples, is significant. Women...

Feature Article

Incorporating Asia in the General Education Curriculum

by Fritz Blackwell, Roger Chan, Theodore Nitz, Thomas Kennedy

Washington State University is probably not very different from many mid-sized universities, rooted in mid-America and laboring in the midst of a curriculum reform. This article, the distillation of the experience and study of three of our general education faculty members, is submitted in the hope that it may prove useful to the hundreds of faculty in scores of similar institutions struggling with the problem of how to integrate Asia in the general education curriculum. Specifically, we have be...

New to EAA?

Before viewing the full archives, view Editor’s Choice Articles, handpicked by EAA Editor, Lucien Ellington, which provide a good overview of EAA and introduction for new readers.