Education About Asia: Online Archives

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EAA Digest Exclusive

South Asian Literature

by EAA Editorial Office

Although Asian indigenous cultural variations appear endless, that said, China and India have historically, the most widespread influence throughout Asia, (and elsewhere), when compared with other Asian civilizations. Hopefully, the articles, essays, and resources in both sections of this column assist educators and students in their efforts to learn about and from South Asian literature. 

EAA Digest Exclusive

Teaching Asia through Literature: China, Japan, Korea

by EAA Editorial Office

Teaching Asia through Literature: China, Japan, Korea [caption id="attachment_18783" align="alignleft" width="200"] Book cover for My Borther's Keeper by Julie Lee[/caption] Contemporary education at almost every level, through its seeming obsession with "Objectives," "Learning Outcomes," and intensely political ideologies, seems to be minimizing the pleasure, varying emotions, and truth that literature conveys about the human condition. EAA readers and subscribers familiar with Asia wil...

EAA Digest Exclusive

Xi Jinping, China, and the World (Part 1)

by EAA Editorial Office

During the last 4-5 years, President Xi Jinping’s government has engaged in aggressive domestic and global policies that raise profound concerns for human rights and freedom. This exclusive focuses upon China’s actions in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Xinjiang.

EAA Digest Exclusive

Rethinking our Notions of Asia

by EAA Editorial Office

Fifteen years ago, we published a special section titled “Rethinking our Notions of Asia.” This column will hopefully help EAA readers and their students continue this process in multiple ways. Most fundamentally, students should first learn basic information about Asian cultures. That said, instructors and students in middle school, high school, and undergraduate classes can learn even more about Asia and the world through considering the essays below.

EAA Digest Exclusive

Teaching Asian Geographies: Overcoming Pedagogical Barriers

by EAA Editorial Office

Understanding geography, especially physical geography, is not easy for me. A deceased relative once described this ineptness as “not having even a bump of locality.” This handicap notwithstanding, my advocacy for geographic literacy in general, and geographic understanding of Asia in particular, as essential foundations of liberal and international education becomes stronger each year. Despite enormous digital advances in pedagogy, the apparent persistence of widespread geographic illitera...

EAA Digest Exclusive

Teaching Japanese Culture: Timeless Influences

by EAA Editorial Office

At the most fundamental level, no humans have created cultures that are completely unique in human history. That said, indigenous practices, interactions with other cultures, and subsequent creative cultural adaptations help to richly enhance any culture. Each one of the following archived EAA articles, intended for teachers and students, are illustrative of cultural practices and influences that remain “timeless” in influencing many Japanese.

EAA Digest Exclusive

Southeast Asia EAA Archives

by EAA Editorial Office

Southeast Asia still seems to garner too little attention in American school and university courses. The following sample archival selections should be useful as student assignments and/or teacher backgrounders. Southeast Asia is Maritime Asia at one level and understanding the Indian Ocean and its role in global history is a good place to start. Most students (and some teachers, including myself two decades ago), have little or no specific understanding of the size and importance of the India...

EAA Digest Exclusive

Teaching Resources: Integrating Visual Arts: Humanities and Social Sciences Classrooms

by EAA Editorial Office

Just as they enrich our lives, the visual arts have wonderful potential to stimulate students’ imaginations, intercultural understanding, and knowledge of other academic subjects.  The following selections from the EAA archives should prove helpful for teachers and students from a wide range of academic disciplines including anthropology, history, communications, religion, philosophy, and art history courses. Each teaching resource essay has rich visuals, most include teaching questions an...

EAA Digest Exclusive

Early Asian History

by EAA Editorial Office

Given the publication this week of our “Teaching Asia in Middle Schools” issue, this month’s Digest Exclusive theme is Early Asian History. Each selection contains interesting “stories” for middle school teachers or non-specialists at any level who teach about early Asia in survey courses. Charles Holcombe’s “Rethinking Early East Asian History” (Vol. 11, No. 2, Fall 2006) is a “big picture” lucid account of the origins of the region. Although specifically developed...

Facts About Asia, Resources

Facts About Asia: EAA Archival Recommendations: Asia in World History (Part 2), and Comparative Asia and the World Websites

by EAA Editorial Office

EAA Archival Recommendations: Asia in World History (Part 2), and Comparative Asia and the World Websites In order to provide recommended, highly-utilized teaching resources that directly relate to this special section, the first part of this column includes (arranged, roughly chronologically, from the latter part of the sixteenth century to the present), annotations of a variety of EAA feature articles, teaching resources essays, and in some cases, book reviews. Annotated entries in this porti...

Teaching Resources Essay

Reacting to the Past: Teaching Asian and World History through Role-Playing Games

by Yidi Wu

Teaching world history as a survey course is difficult for both faculty and students: the course requires a temporal and geographical scope that is often beyond individual faculty’s expertise, and for a variety of reasons, most American students, unless they have a love of world history or possibly intend to major in history, have either low level of knowledge in history or, are historically illiterate.1 Although most states require high school students to take some form of world or American h...

Online Supplement

Syllabus for Global History Since 1500

by Ken Hammond

History 112G Global History since 1500 MWF 10:30-11:20 Hardman-Jacobs Learning Center 230 Ken Hammond Breland 245 khammond@nmsu.edu This is a course on the history of the world over the last five centuries. As such it is of necessity devoted to the study of major patterns and processes, rather than the detailed coverage of all places at all times. We will be largely concerned with several themes, including the development of global economic and political systems, the dynamics of nationa...

Online Supplement

Handouts for “Twentieth-Century Chinese Entrepreneurs before 1949: Literature Excerpts for the Classroom”

by Juanjuan Peng

Introduction: In September 1931, Japan invaded and soon acquired the Manchurian region of China. On January 18, 1932, five Japanese monks were beaten severely near Shanghai’s Sanyou Factory by agitated Chinese workers, causing the death of of one monk. Two days later, a group of Japanese burnt down the factory as revenge. One Chinese policeman was killed and several more were injured when they arrived to help put out the fire. The conflicts soon caused an upsurge of anti-Japanese protests call...

Book Review Essay, Feature Article

Franklin R. Buchanan Prize Book Review Essay

by Ihor Pidhainy

An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty Harvard East Asian Monographs (Book 408) Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018 496 pages, ISBN: 978-0674983885, Paperback Michael Fuller’s An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty is a complete joy to read. Winner of the Franklin R. Buchanan Prize for Curricular Materials, Fuller’s volume has achieved recognition as a pedagogical wo...

Feature Article

An EAA Interview with the 2019 Franklin R. Buchanan Prizewinner Michael A. Fuller for An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty

by Lucien Ellington

This is our twenty-third consecutive interview with the recipient of the AAS Franklin R. Buchanan Prize. This year’s winner is Michael A. Fuller, who is the author of An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty. The textbook for learning classical Chinese poetry moves beyond the traditional anthology of poems translated into English and instead brings readers―including those with no knowledge of Chinese―as close as possible to the texture o...

Feature Article

Twentieth-Century Chinese Entrepreneurs before 1949: Literature Excerpts for the Classroom

by Juanjuan Peng

China has amazed the world with its rapid economic growth during the past four decades. Since 2010, China has passed Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy behind the United States.1 By 2018, 111 Chinese companies had joined the Fortune Global 500 list,2 and 373 individuals had made the Forbes Billionaires list.3 How do we understand the recent success of the Chinese economy and Chinese businessmen? If there are continuities in modern Chinese history, can we possibly trace the stor...

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.