EAA Articles Archive - Association for Asian Studies

Welcome to the EAA open access archives. Browse and download over 1,500 articles — feature articles, lesson plans, interviews, classroom resources, and book and film reviews — from twenty-four years of Education About Asia.

Use the search bar to enter keywords. Use the dropdown boxes to select article tags. You may select tags in multiple dropdowns. To view an article, click on its title. PLEASE NOTE: All article and essay illustrations, including many images and graphics necessary for understanding the content, may be viewed in the PDFs available on each page.

New to EAA? View 40 archive articles, handpicked by EAA Editor, Lucien Ellington, which provide a good overview of EAA.

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Online Supplement

Modeling Asia: An East China Sea Simulation

by Lauren McKee

Tensions in the East China Sea have risen dramatically in the last decade between China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and a number of Southeast Asian countries. This conflict has been driven primarily by territorial contestations over islands each country claims as their own, for example, the Senkakau/Diaoyu Islands the Japanese and Chinese both claim. Add to the fray growing nationalist sentiments in many East Asian countries, a United States tied to Japan by treaty, unintentional military clash...

Online Supplement

Online Resources for “USG Asia Council: Teaching Southeast Asia Workshop” and “Teaching Southeast Asia Interactively: The ASEAN ‘Plus Three’ Simulation”

“USG Asia Council Teaching Southeast Asia Workshop” From Paul Rodell’s Southeast Asian History Presentation “Southeast Asia in World History,” World History Bulletin, Spring 2009. Available at http://tinyurl.com/mmut7v9 PDF and PowerPoint Presentations “Southeast Asia History: Themes & Resources,” http://tinyurl.com/pawfzlt. “Early Southeast Asian States,” part I, http://tinyurl.com/qckqmcw; part III, http://tinyurl. com/ltn6whm. (part II is currently unavailable on...

Feature Article

New York City as Classroom: Exploring Buddhism Through Experiential Learning

by Chaya Chandrasekhar, Ihor Pidhainy

Experiential learning can be particularly useful when teaching about Asia, as few students in an introductory course come with much knowledge about the region’s vast history, distinct cultures, and complicated political and social structures. Nevertheless, how does an instructor provide students direct experience of Asia without planning expensive study abroad opportunities or site visits? How does an educator encourage engagement with Asia without relying entirely on guest speakers or informa...

Key Issues in Asian Studies, Online Supplement, Resources

Key Issues in Asian Studies: East Asian Societies

by W. Lawrence Neuman

Editor’s note: Authors of the two most recent Key Issues in Asian Studies have each contributed an essay about their volume. For more information about this pedagogical resource, visit www.asian-studies.org/publications/KIAS.htm Few students approach their study of Asia with a blank slate; rather, most start with a mixture of stereotypes, misconceptions, and fragments of accurate information. East Asian Societies attempts to convey the excitement and significance of East Asia to American te...

A Global Crossroads Reemerges in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction to Central Asia

by Reuel R. Hanks

The Where and Why of Central Asia As a scholar of Central Asia, I have frequently been asked two questions by students and colleagues over the course of my career: Where is Central Asia, and why is it important? Strangely, the first question is often more difficult to answer precisely than the second. The terms “Central Asia,” “Inner Asia,” and more recently “Central Eurasia” all refer to a region that is marked by a frustrating imprecision of location. Here I will consider Central ...

Book Review, Resources

Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness

by Susan Walcott (Reviewer)

This large, heavily illustrated book is suitable for a school library collection, supplementing others on Bhutan. Through his photographs and narrative, John Wehrheim presents his personal interpretation of the country based on numerous trips taken over several decades. His presentation pitches Bhutan as the “Exotic Other,” illustrated by photos taken on his trips that carry out the theme that this would be a cool place (in more ways than one) for a special holiday. The Association of Bhutan...

Book Review Essay, Resources

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

by Edward Friedman (Reviewer)

BY EZRA VOGEL CAMBRIDGE, BELKNAP PRESS, 2011 849 PAGES, ISBN: 978-0674055445, HARDCOVER This most important political biography of Deng Xiaoping argues that only Deng’s unique leadership strengths made China’s extraordinary economic rise possible. Senior scholar Ezra Vogel focuses on the period from 1969 to 1992. During Mao’s vigilante violence against and purges of people perceived as disloyal to Mao and his dogmas, a period known as the Cultural Revolution, Deng was sent to a rural fa...

Book Review Essay, Resources

A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-first Century

by Keith N. Knapp (Reviewer)

BY CHARLES HOLCOMBE NEW YORK: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2011 456 PAGES, ISBN 978-0-521-51595-5, HARDBACK; ISBN 978-0-52173164-5 PAPER Charles Holcombe has given instructors of East Asian history courses and world history teachers a welcome gift: his book, A History of East Asia. This volume is packed with both information and insights. The author provides interesting facts that will spice up lectures and illuminating statistics that will give students a vivid sense of East Asia’s size a...

Feature Article

Major Asian Rivers of the Plateau of Tibet: The Basics

by Stewart Gordon

In relatively recent geologic times, less than forty million years ago, the Indian subcontinent crashed into the Eurasian tectonic plate. As the South Asian plate began to subduct under the Eurasian plate, it pushed up the Himalayas, the Plateau of Tibet, and folded the ranges of mountains to the east of the Plateau of Tibet. The Indian plate is still converging on the Eurasian plate at a little over three-quarters of an inch per year, deforming the boundary and raising the Himalaya Range. This...

EAA Interview, Feature Article

Tibetan-Chinese Relations: An EAA Interview with A. Tom Grunfeld

by Lucien Ellington

A. Tom Grunfeld is SUNY Distinguished Professor at Empire State College of the State University of New York. Grunfeld is widely sought as a speaker and commentator on China-Tibet issues and on US policy regarding the Tibetan independence movement. Grunfeld is the author of several books including The Making of Modern Tibet and over 150 articles and book reviews, many of which address Tibet and China related-issues. In late spring 2009, he graciously consented to the following interview with Luci...

Film Review Essay

Angry Monk: Reflections on Tibet

by Andrew Quintman (Reviewer)

DIRECTED AND PRODUCED BY LUC SHAEDLER DISTRIBUTED BY FIRST RUN/ICARUS FILMS DVD, 97 minutes, color, 2005 Reviewed by Andrew Quintman Luc Schaedler’s rich and timely film Angry Monk: Reflections on Tibet opens with a series of contrasting and provocative images: Tibetan boys toss firecrackers in an alleyway of the old Tibetan capital as a pair of monks walk by. A devout pilgrim prostrates himself across Lhasa’s trash-ridden streets, narrowly avoiding the late-night taxi traffic. Car...

Asian Educational Media Service, Film Review Essay

Teaching Narrative Analysis with A&E’s “Biography”

by John H. Sagers (Reviewer)

Hồ Chí Minh AN A&E BIOGRAPHY PRODUCTION DISTRIBUTED BY A&E HOME VIDEO DVD, 50 minutes, color, 2000 Kim Jong Il AN A&E BIOGRAPHY PRODUCTION DISTRIBUTED BY A&E HOME VIDEO DVD, 50 minutes, color, 2003 Dalai Lama: The Soul of Tibet AN A&E BIOGRAPHY PRODUCTION DISTRIBUTED BY A&E HOME VIDEO Reviewed by John Sagers A&e’s Biography series provides a valuable source for analyzing narrative and representation of Asian subjects on American commercial televis...

AEMS Media Section, Columns

Three Tibetan Films by Puhua Dongzhi

by Gerald Roche

AS EDUCATORS, AND SPECIFICALLY AS EDUCATORS WITH A SPECIAL INTEREST IN ASIA, one of our major tasks is to represent the world to our students. In lieu of taking them around the globe, we explore with them the facts, figures, images, texts, sounds, and so on that stand in place of the real world. Given this fact, it is not insignificant that one of the most important recent debates amongst critical thinkers has focused on a so-called ‘crisis of representation.’ This debate focuses on the...

Web Gleanings

Web Gleanings: Asian Literature

by Judith S. Ames

Title: The World of Asian Books URL: http://www.loc.gov/rr/asian/guide/guide-world.html This is a Library of Congress Interactive Guide to their Asian book collection. By going through this guide, one can see the variety and breadth not only of the Library’s collection, but of Asian literature itself. Title: Asia Source: Literature: Authors URL: http://www.asiasource.org/links/al_mp_03.cfm?TID=21,29,41 Annotated links to a variety of works by Asian authors can be found on this p...

Film Review Essay, Resources

Tibetan Medicine: The Knowledge of Healing

by C. X. George Wei

A FILM BY FRANZ REICHIE DISTRIBUTED BY FIRST RUN/lCARUS FILMS 32 COURT STREET. 21 ST FLOOR BROOK.LYN. NY 1120 I E-MAIL: MAILROOM@FRIF.COM WEB SITE: HTTP://WWW.FRIF.COM 1997, 89 MINUTES COLOR CLOSED-CAPTIONED VHS OR DVD The Knowledge of Healing is the first cinematic effort to record and introduce time-tested, mysterious Tibetan medicine to a Western audience. The film, through interviews with Tibetan doctors, patients, scientists, and the current Dalai Lama, explains the philosoph...

Essay, Resources

Bringing the Himalayas into Your Classroom: On-Line Resources and Materials for Teaching about the Abode of Snow

by Amanda McClure, Kelly McKee

For most American teachers, getting to know the Himalayas necessitates a trip halfway around the globe. But in the summer of 2002, the Himalayas came to Massachusetts in the form of the NEH Institute’s Cultures and Religions of the Himalayan Region. Led by prominent scholars Todd Lewis and Leonard van der Kuijp, this month-long program brought leading researchers from around the world to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. While the reading list was mountainous and the lectures int...

Web Gleanings

Asian Popular Culture

by Judith S. Ames

ASIA Title: Asia Food URL: http://www.asiafood.org/features.cfm The Asia Society has provided the features of this site replete with information on the foods, the recipes, and the eating habits and customs of many Asian nations. In addition to separate pages for each Asian country and a search engine for recipes by keyword, region, or type of dish, there are articles about Asian food and some video clips. Title: Puppetry in Asia: A select bibliography URL: http://www.nla.gov.au/as...

Book Review Essay, Columns

The River’s Tale: A Year on the Mekong

by Gerald Fry

The great rivers of the world seem to have a magical appeal to writers. Fulfilling a long-held dream, Edward A. Gargan embarked in 1998 upon a roughly 3,000 mile journey down the Mekong River from near its source (at an altitude of 16,441 feet) in Tibet down to the Mekong Delta where it flows into the South China Sea. Early on we learn that the Mekong is called the Dzachu in Tibet and the Lanang Jiang in China....

EAA Interview

Robert Thurman: An EAA Interview

by Lucien Ellington

Robert A. F. Thurman has become one of America’s leading voices for the teachings of Buddhism, making these teachings more meaningful to Americans in a manner unequaled by any other Westerner. Time magazine chose him as one of its 25 most influential Americans in 1997, and described him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the dharma, the precious teaching of Siddartha, from Asia to America.” The New York Times recently said Thurman “is considered the leading Ame...

Book Review, Resources

The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947

by Sumi Colligan, Sumi Colligan (Reviewer)

By Tsering Shakya NEW YORK: COLUMBIA UNJVERSTY PRESS, 1999 XXIX. 448 PAGES, 12 PHOTOS, 7 MAPS. ANNOTATED, APPENDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, INDEX Tsering Shakya's book is a breath of fresh air. which deliberately avoids the polemics that so frequently pervade scholarship on Sino-Tibetan relations. In fact, he states that his goal is to offer some correction to both Chinese and Tibetan historical renditions that have contributed to a "denial of history,"' a process which necessarily entails a negation...

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