Education About Asia: Online Archives

NEW FOR 2023: Beginning with Spring 2023, subscribers to the print edition of Education About Asia (EAA) will receive additional exclusive digital access to the current year’s three issues (spring, fall, and winter) as an online flipbook for the duration of their active subscription. Articles from the three print issues for 2023 will be uploaded to the EAA Digital archives in 2024. View the TOC and Editor’s Message for the Spring 2023 issue. Subscribe today to stay up to date with EAA!

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EAA Digest Exclusive

What to Expect in the Next Issue (Fall 2023)

by EAA Editorial Office

Understanding Daily Life in Wartime Japan: 1937–1945 Historian Thomas Havens argued that the war had a lot of popular support and elucidated his main points. But I found myself wanting to know more about how exactly the wartime government generated and maintained that support and whether the home front population really believed what they were told. In the 1990s, I set out to try to answer these questions. I searched for the wartime letters and diaries of ordinary Japanese men, women, an...

EAA Digest Exclusive

Asia, World War II, and Beyond

by EAA Editorial Office

On July 11th, the day I am writing this column, six of the ten most viewed articles in the EAA archives are directly linked to the “Pacific War,” or World War II in Asia. One of the six “most viewed” articles featured below is a lesson plan on teaching Pearl Harbor and the other five “most viewed” articles focus upon the impact of the war on later events. It is inconceivable to me that anyone with background knowledge of World War II would argue the topic is irrelevant. Unfortunate...

EAA Digest Exclusive

2022 Retrospective: EAA Volume 27

by EAA Editorial Office

Editor's Message 2022 Retrospective: EAA Volume 27 Thank you for your continued support of Education About Asia. In 2022, we published volume 27 of EAA including the spring special section “Asia in World History: Comparisons, Connections, and Conflicts (Part 2),” the fall special section “Teaching Asia in Middle Schools,” and in the winter, our first non-thematic issue in 18 years! I am sincerely grateful and privileged to collaborate with EAA and AAS staff responsible for devel...

EAA Digest Exclusive

Learning About Asia and Ourselves: Written Communication and Reading

by EAA Editorial Office

Engaged reading, and at least some knowledge of any culture’s written communications, is imperative for basic knowledge and understanding of other cultures, as well as our own. The following five varied selections from the EAA archives will hopefully inspire both instructors and students who seek to learn and reflect upon the profound impact of written communication and reading.

EAA Digest Exclusive

What to Expect in the Next Issue (Spring 2023)

by

“Nakae Chōmin’s A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government (1887) from Japan and Sholem Abramovitch’s The Mare (1873) from Ukraine are two satirical novels that can engage students in high school and beyond. They highlight several major struggles—physical and moral alike—that peoples from outside the West faced in the nineteenth century. Such ethnicities as Japanese and Jews were trying to make sense of the swirl of changes—new social movements, technologies, national identit...

EAA Digest Exclusive

World History and Southeast Asia

by

Many people of the eleven nations that constitute Southeast Asia, a region often considered esoteric in North American educational institutions, have interacted with much of the world for thousands of years. The following entries from the EAA archives only scratch the surface; look for a substantial number of additional essays, articles, and teaching resources featuring Southeast Asia in our archives.

EAA Digest Exclusive

Good Stories for a Troubled World

by EAA Editorial Office

Large numbers of EAA readers will soon experience seasonal holidays intended for peaceful spiritual or personal reflection. Unfortunately, particularly since spring 2020, a plethora of events with many profound actual and potential negative consequences overwhelm us all at times. The following quartet of selections from the EAA archives are intended to celebrate human beings coming together, fighting for freer societies, saving lives, and intrepidly creating the first “classic” Chinese food ...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Back to School Special: “The Top Ten Most Viewed” and More

by EAA Editorial Office

the EAA “most viewed” list indicates the top ten most viewed articles in a given week. Several articles have remained high on the list for long periods of time, but there is enough movement up, down, or off the list that checking it regularly remains interesting. The articles below from our top ten most viewed rankings were taken on August 26th, 2022.

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

International Politics and Archeology: Disparate Critical Teaching Topics

by EAA Editorial Office

Although these two topics will probably attract different readers, they both are important components of a liberal arts education. Virtually all high schools and colleges in North America and elsewhere offer modern world history; in the US, AP Comparative Government and Politics; and in Europe, the US and elsewhere, International Baccalaureate Programs courses in the “individual and societies” curriculum focus upon international politics and issues. Increasingly, college and universities of...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

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, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

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, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

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, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

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, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

EAA and Afghanistan: Nine Years Ago

by EAA Editorial Office

Two authors with impressive expertise on Afghanistan and the ability to write for educated lay people as well as high school and university students were each solicited to write separate essays entitled “What History Can Teach Us About Contemporary Afghanistan.” Those teachers who are looking for well-done, concise, and high quality contextual articles for themselves and their students that provide some foundation to think more deeply about unfolding events in Afghanistan that will potential...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

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, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

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, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Intercultural Contacts 2: Visual Learning, Belief Systems, and the Silk Roads

by EAA Editorial Office

The term Asia is both, at one level, geographically accurate, and conceptually useful in understanding specific cultures but at another level, the concept of “Asia” is limiting because of regional and global connections that have existed since antiquity. The focus of the January 2021 EAA Digest Exclusive was intercultural contacts, as is the case with this month’s column. Given the subjects most EAA readers teach, understanding the humanities and social sciences means realizing the power o...

EAA Digest Exclusive, Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

Armed Conflict in Asia

by EAA Editorial Office

Learning about the profound multiple causes and effects of armed conflicts on past, present, and possible future generations is a critical component of a liberal education and an imperative part of reflective democratic citizenship, including, and especially, electing executive and legislative leaders.

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.