Education About Asia: Online Archives

Browse and download over 1,900 articles — feature articles, lesson plans, interviews, classroom resources, and book and film reviews — from Education About Asia (EAA)!

Sign up for the EAA Digest E-Newsletter and receive monthly updates and announcements from the EAA editor. Subscribe

Help us do more

by supporting EAA through print subscriptions and donations.

How to use the EAA Online Search Engine

PLEASE NOTE: All article and essay illustrations, including many images and graphics necessary for understanding the content, may be viewed in the PDF.

  1. 1

    Use the dropdown menus

    to search by author, geographic location, article type, and academic field

  2. 2

    Enter keywords

    to search the full text of articles (where search terms may not appear in the article title, eg.)

  3. 3

    View an article

    by clicking on its title. To view the original print version of the article, select “PDF”

Search for Articles

(culture, history, art, marriage, etc...)

NOTE: Archive articles may be downloaded and reproduced for personal or classroom use only.

Columns

Editor’s Message

I hope readers are having the best fall possible given continuing unusual times. “Engaging Asia: Film, Documentaries, and Television” at times seemed like we were interacting with a “cast of thousands” but developing the special section has been deeply gratifying; especially because of the creativity of all of you who contributed in so many ways to this special section. An experiment that involved the theft of a Turner Classic Movies moniker with experienced EAA contributors i...

Columns, Film Review Essay

The Little Girl of Hanoi (Em Bé Hà Nội)

The Little Girl of Hanoi (Em Bé Hà Nội) By Hải Ninh 1974, 72 minutes, color Available with English subtitles at https://youtu.be/vFuEYCGV5ZY Reviewed by Margaret B. Bodemer   When American students learn about the Socialist Republic of Việt Nam (SRV), it is typically in the context of what Americans call the Việt Nam War but that is known in the SRV as the American War. Courses that address this conflict tend to emphasize American over Vietnamese experiences.1 This re...

Columns, Film Review Essay

Have You Seen This Man?

The acknowledged first recorded film made in China is The Battle of Dingjunshan by Ren Qingtai from 1905. As such, the China National Film Museum in Beijing has on exhibit signage that notes this acknowledgment, along with the recreation of the filming. However, there are a number of Chinese film scholars who have their doubts about whether it was ever actually made. Mention is made in a July 1904 article in the professional magician’s journal Mahatma on the Chinese magician C...

Columns, Film Review Essay

Day of the Western Sunrise

Day of the Western Sunrise By Keith Reimink Daliborka Films, 2018 76 minutes, DVD, Color Japanese language with English subtitles By Angie Stokes, with Keith Reimink [caption id="attachment_16419" align="aligncenter" width="894"] The Lucky Dragon, dwarfed by the Castle Bravo nuclear blast eighty-five miles away. Source: Screen capture from the documentary.[/caption] Day of the Western Sunrise is a Japanese-language, English-subtitled, animated documentary film that follows t...

Columns

In Memoriam: Ezra F. Vogel (1930–2020)

Those of us who are committed to studying East Asia lost an extraordinary scholar, teacher, and friend when the retired Harvard University Sociology Professor Ezra F. Vogel died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this last December.

Columns

Facts About Asia: Human Flourishing, Energy, and the Environment

By the end of 2019, four Asian countries ranked in the top ten world-wide in total energy consumption, the majority of which is derived from fossil fuels. The Asia Pacific region alone consumed 257.6 exajoules (a joule is a unit of energy measurement and one exajoule is one quintillion joules) of energy, the most in the world. China leads the world by a considerable margin with 141.7 exajoules of energy consumed, almost 50 more than the second-place user, the United States.

Columns, Online Supplement

Facts About Asia: India’s Thriving Technology Industry

North American readers of this journal, even if they are not especially tech savvy, are likely familiar with Silicon Valley, located in the San Francisco Bay area, and many of the companies like Apple and Google that make the region their home. Fewer are likely aware of India’s own “Silicon Valley” and the various Indian private companies and startups that help to make the IT sector one of the more faster growing sectors of the economy and create the prospect of India becoming a world lead...

Columns, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

A Confucian Classroom in Qing China

In September 2005, at the Panjiayuan Antiques Market in Beijing, I  bought a book of materials once used by an elementary school teacher.  It seems the teacher took some of his classroom materials to a shop in  the city of Panshi in Jilin Province in northeast China and had them copied  onto clean, handmade paper and bound together with string. The shop put  its stamp on the cover, so we know the city where it was located.1 The title  the shop wrote on the cover of this collection was Thre...

Columns, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

How to Measure a “Giant”?: A Short Guide to Gross Domestic Product Figures

Instructors in political science, history, and area studies have long known that the rapid economic growth of Asian countries is one of the most important world trends to teach students. Political scientists and international relations experts regularly view a country’s economic size as a reflection of its international power. The size of the economy helps set military budgets and acquisitions, foreign aid, and public diplomacy. These capabilities help a country influence other countries, or t...

Asia: Experiential Learning, Columns, Resources

Asia: Experiential Learning — Guest Editor, Tommy Lamont: Encompass Southeast Asia: A Unique Experiential Learning Opportunity through the University of Richmond

The Office of International Education (OIE) at the University of Richmond (UR) developed Encompass Southeast Asia (Encompass SEA) as part of a pilot program to engage students who have not historically participated in study abroad opportunities at UR and its partner institutions. Participants included students from challenging socioeconomic backgrounds, nontraditional students, students of color, athletes, males, and students with limited travel experience. Historically, such cohorts have not pa...

Columns, Facts About Asia, Resources

Facts About Asia: South Korea and Singapore: Economic and Political Freedom

Editor’s Introduction: By the 1990s, the dynamic economic growth of four polities—Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan—earned them the nickname “Four Little Dragons.” Each of the “Little Dragons” also obtained moderate to significant levels of political freedom (Freedom House ranks South Korea and Taiwan as free and Hong Kong and Singapore as partly free). Please see our column from fall 2019 on the other two “Little Dragons”: Hong Kong and Taiwan. Economic ...

Columns, Resources

Facts About Asia: Taiwan and Hong Kong: Economic and Political Freedom

Despite their modest sizes, Taiwan and Hong Kong both possess very strong economies, ranking 20th  and 30th in GDP (the market value of all goods and services) in a ranking of the top fifty world leaders. Taiwan has massive information and communication technology industries, as well as acting as a major international supplier of goods, while Hong Kong’s four key industries are in financial services, tourism, trading and logistics, and professional and producer services. Since 1996, the Frase...

Columns, Digital Asia, Resources

MOOCS (Massive Online Open Courses) and Asian Studies

“Given that education has been calcified for 500 years, we really have to completely reimagine it. It’s like going from ox carts to the airplane.” This was the challenge laid out to a TED audience in January 2014 by Anant Agarwal, CEO of EdX. In his talk, Agarwal promised nothing less than to revolutionize education through MOOCs (or massively open online courses). By the end of the year, an article in the MIT Technology Review hit back, suggesting that “For all the hype, MOOCs are reall...

Asia: Experiential Learning, Columns, Resources

Experiencing China through a “Wide-Angle Lens”: Observation, Participation, Reflection

Seeing it once is better than being told 100 times. —Chinese proverb A critical factor in generating successful experiential learning outcomes in China is to actively engage students in multiple contexts (e.g., individually, peer to peer, and group interactions) while promoting intentional oral and written reflection about such experiences. By engaging student learners in what philosopher and professor Donald Schön refers to as “reflection-in-action,” students are able to actively a...

Columns, Digital Asia, Resources

Water and the Environment in Asia

This new column will highlight digital resources related to Asia with an eye to how they might be useful in the classroom. Each issue will consider a different theme, and sources will be selected that are aligned to best develop that theme. In this issue, we examine present-day water security challenges in Asia. After pointing to some background sources, the emphasis below is on materials that might be useful in constructing teaching units around this potentially transnational and cross-discipli...

Asia: Experiential Learning, Columns, Resources

Tasting Soy Sauce, Teaching Culture: A Case for Experiential Learning

Imagine teaching a lively class where even the quietest student gets involved. When students sample soy sauces from all over Asia and even the heart of Kentucky, comments like “I didn’t know soy sauce had such flavor” and “I didn’t know we made soy sauce in America” pour out of students’ mouths. Tasting soy sauce is an interactive way of engaging students with Asian cultures and history. My discussion here concerns a course called China: Food and Cultures at the Culinary Institu...

Columns, Web Gleanings

Web Gleanings: The Best of Web Gleanings

A Tribute to Judith Ames It is with some regret, but enormous gratitude, that I share the news that Judith Ames, who almost certainly holds the record for the most number of words published in EAA, recently informed me that she decided to retire as the columnist for “Web Gleanings.” Back in 1995 when I posted announcements for EAA editors, Judith, who previously was associated with the Japan Society in New York and has worked, among other endeavors, as an editorial and computer consultant, ...

Columns, Resources

In Memorial: James M. Becker

A tireless champion for international understanding, often cited as the “Father of Global Education,” James M. Becker (Jim) passed away at age ninety-seven. He is survived by his four children, seven grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Professor emeritus at Indiana University’s School of Education, Jim was extolled by many at a memorial service January 28, 2017, at the education building. Friends and family recounted numerous academic accomplishments, as well as a wicked sense of h...

Columns, Resources, Web Gleanings

Web Gleanings: Sports, Culture, and Asia

GENERAL Sports Across Asia: Politics, Cultures, and Identities URL: http://tinyurl.com/z5yf6d3 This entry in Routledge’s Research in Sport, Culture, and Society series, edited by Katrin Bromber, Birgit Krawietz, and Joseph Maguire, was published in 2013. As is the case with all books featured by Google Books, only portions of this book are provided. The Introduction and the first article are presented with only a few pages omitted. The first article looks at the globalization of sports wi...

Columns, Resources, Web Gleanings

Web Gleanings: Major Universities in Asia

For those who wish to study at a university in Asia, there are thousands of choices. To narrow the choices, it is helpful to consult with sites that rate the universities on a number of factors. Below are several important evaluation sites: A) Best Global Universities in Asia Source: US News and World Report URL: http://tinyurl.com/jap4d6x B) QS University Rankings: Asia 2015 Source: Top Universities URL: http://tinyurl.com/j4tgchc C) Asia University Rankings 2015 Source: Time...