ASIANetwork Freeman Foundation
Student-Faculty Fellows Program
for Collaborative Research in Asia

Summer 2010 Program

Overview

During the summer of 2010, the ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellows Program will support collaborative research in East and Southeast Asia for a twelfth year. Over $400,000 has been provided by the Freeman Foundation to support the research of thirteen faculty mentors and fifty-six undergraduate students in Cambodia, China-Tibet, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, the People’s Republic of China, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Six programs will be undertaken in East Asia, five in Southeast Asia, and two in Nepal. When the summer 2010 program is completed, this program will have provided 146 grants to 633 student-faculty fellows from 89 different colleges throughout North America.

This year’s grant review committee received a larger number of grants from a wider array of disciplines than in past years with a more notable balance of proposals between Southeast Asia and East Asia. Throughout the past twelve years, the quality of mentoring and the level of Asian course work and language study preparation of the undergraduate researchers has markedly improved along with the sophistication of the research proposals. In short, if one uses the ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellows Program as a gauge to evaluate trends in Asian studies programs at small liberal arts colleges, it suggests that they are rapidly becoming stronger. We thank all 45 mentors and their students who submitted applications in this year’s competition and extend our hearty congratulations to the student and faculty grant recipients.

The teams funded this year along with the titles and a brief description of their research projects are given below.

 

Recipients:

Carleton College

Mentor, Gao Hong Dice, Music Department
Andrew Terwilliger, ’10, Ava Navasero, ’12, Shao Min Tan, ’12
Joint Project: In Search of Ancient Melodies: Temple Music in Kyoto, Beijing, and Lhasa

Temple music is an aural tradition that is quickly dying out. Three students from Carleton College, who collectively know several Asian languages and play a number of relevant Asian musical instruments, will spend four weeks traveling to Kyoto, Beijing and Lhasa to hear and record, in both audio and transcribed forms, temple music in these three centers of the art. The students will collect musical scores of previously unwritten pieces of music and once back in the States will work to preserve, understand, and spread knowledge of this temple music.

College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University, Team 1

Mentor, Zhihui Sophia Geng, Chinese Language and Literature
Shazreh Ahmed, ’13, Abbie Helminen, ’11, Katlynn Nelson, ’13,
Taylor Peterson, ’12, Philip Whitcomb, ’12
Joint Project: The Storytelling Tradition of Geng Village:
Preserving an Intangible Cultural Heritage

Geng Village in Gaochen City, Hebei Province is a small farming village that emerged in the early 15th-century around the tomb erected by Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming dynasty, in memory of Zaichen Geng, his foster father. Because of its importance historically and its pivotal location, an impressive tradition of oral storytelling became identified with the village, and today Geng Village has over 230 officially recognized storytellers. Five students from CSB/SJU will spend a week in Beijing interviewing scholars and officials in China who are seeking to preserve China’s “intangible cultural heritage,” including some of the tales told by oral storytellers in Geng Village. They will then travel to Geng Village to spend three weeks conducting on-site observations, person-to-person interviews, and videotaping Geng Village storytellers. Once back they will complete an academic paper focused on their discoveries, compile a collection of fifteen of the folktales they discover at Geng Village, and produce a video documentary about storytelling in Geng Village.

College of Saint Benedict/St. John’s University, Team 2

Mentor, Gar Kellom, Center for Men’s Leadership and Service
Elizabeth Carroll-Anderson, ’10, “Tutoring in Spanish as a Means to
Determine Why Women in Nepal Become Nuns”
Megan Kack, ’10, “The Promotion and Marketing of Dental Hygiene in Rural Nepal”
Sarah Mahowald, ’11, “A Modern Voice for Nepali Art”
Jessica Najarian, ’10, “Creating Awareness of Alzheimer’s Disease in Nepal”
Jamie Utzinger, ’10, “Women of Nepal in the 21st-Century: A Photographic Journal”

This research group plans to spend six weeks in Nepal. Two projects will be conducted by biology majors who plan to enter graduate studies in medicine and dentistry. The first will focus on a qualitative study of the lack of adequate understanding regarding Alzheimer’s and dementia in the Kathmandu Valley as well as outside the valley in Biratnajar and Dharan. The second will study the socio-cultural forces that hinder the ability of Western dental practice to bring advanced dental technology to Nepal and consider strategies for alleviating this problem. Two other projects focus upon Nepali women in villages and monasteries. The first will chronicle the life stories of five women through narratives and photographic images in the Pokhara area in order to produce an image collection and photo-journal for display in selected sites in Nepal and in the CSB/SJU art gallery. The second student will tutor Buddhist nuns in Spanish, and while doing this, conduct research on why Nepali women enter monasteries and what their current roles are in the monastic community. Her work will be included in a publication by her mentor produced shortly after their return. The fifth project focuses upon the lack of adequate instruction in art, modern art techniques and art history in the schools of Nepal. The student researcher, who is returning to Nepal for a second summer, will help design and integrate an art education curriculum for several art schools in Nepal.

Concordia College

Mentor, Tamara Lanaghan, Religion Department
“Renewal and Reconstruction of Ties between N. Thailand and Xishuangbanna in China”
Gregory Albing, ’10, “Chanting Styles as a Means of Renewing Cultural Ties”
Michael Clark, ’10, “Buddhist Monks as Carriers of Traditional Medicine”
Dustin Dertinger, ’10, “Changing Dimensions of Identity Formation”
Alyssa Gullekson, ’13, “Comparing Buddha Footprints in Chiang Mai and Xishuangbanna”
Adrianne Philion, ’11, “Using Religious Imagery to Promote Travel”

This group of students plans to spend thirty days in Northern Thailand and Southern Yunnan to conduct a collaborative project, based on five independent research investigations, to study the ways in which newly emerging exchanges between the Tai Yuan people of northern Thailand and the ethnic minority Tai Lu people in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, China, are leading to the renewal and reconstruction of a shared cultural heritage that dates back to the Tai Yuan kingdom of Lanna in northern Thailand and the building of the “New City”, Chiang Mai. The five students will study how religious rhetoric, visual imagery in marketing, ethnomusicology, traditional medicine, and the political use of religion, respectively, have become secular and religious forces contributing to this renewal.

Davidson College

Mentor, Hun Y. Lye, Religion Department
Zachary Herron, ’12, Brian Leahy, ’11, Whitney Webb, ’12
Joint Project: Globalization and Localization of Chinese Malaysian Religiosity:
Case-Studies on Minority Imaginings and Constructions of Identity

This research group of three students and their mentor seeks to place the resurgence of religion across the world . re-enchanting it for many, politicizing it for others, redeeming it for not a few and yet condemning it for some-within the context of the contemporary immigrant Chinese Malaysian experience. Each student has worked extensively with Dr. Lye at Davidson, and once in Malaysia each will be paired with a field research assistant drawn from a local university. The first student will study the connections and contrasts that Chinese Malaysians see between two deities whose worship is ubiquitous in Chinese Malaysian communities, Tudi Gong and Datuk Kong. The second student will research why some Chinese Malaysians choose to use the services of a spirit-medium over both Western-style doctors and even Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The third student will study the prevalence, patronage, and practice of Tibetan Buddhism in the Chinese Malaysian community in Penang.

Drake University

Mentor, Darcie Vandegrift, Department for the Study of Culture & Society
Carly Hurley, ’10, Tyler O’Neil, ’11, Sheng Peng, ’11, Kathleen Stephenson, ’10, Xian Zhang, ’10
Joint Project: Ba Ling Hou Identity and Consumption in Urban China

During a month in Nanjing, each member of this five-person research group will focus upon one aspect of consumer culture (art, books, hairstyles, social media, and food) in order to explore how post-eighties young Chinese adults construct their identity and interpret contemporary Chinese society in an environment newly steeped in modern values of rationalization, consumerism, leisure, accumulation, and increasing global awareness.

Hobart & William Smith Colleges

Mentor, Tenzin Yignyen, Asian Languages & Culture
Yanli Guo, ’12, Margaret Horner, ’12, Rashid Perkins, ’12,
Alyson Feldman-Piltch, ’11, Andrew Upton, ’12
Joint Project: Continuities & Discontinuities in the Traditional Ritual Arts of Tibet

The traditional arts of Tibet are not only a precious reminder of Tibet’s long and rich history, but are also intricately linked to the heart of Buddhist teachings. They serve as guides to remind Tibetans and others of their deepest traditional beliefs. Unfortunately, much of this art and the buildings that house them have been destroyed during the past sixty years, and Tibetan culture, itself, continues to be challenged. This research group, led by the Venerable Lama Tenzin, will spend three weeks visiting key Tibetan monasteries such as Ganden, Sera, and Drepung and the Potala Palace and also meet with artisans in Lhasa and Shigatse. During their time in Tibet each student will research the current state of a different Tibetan art form: clothing styles, textile art, temples and houses, sculpture, and Thangka painting, and once back in America complete a research paper on what she/he has discovered.

Hope College

Mentor, Robert Hodson, Music Department
Larry Figueroa, ’11, Zachary Pedigo, ’12, Nathaniel Roberts, ’11, David Webster, ’13
Joint Project: Jazz in Japan: Music, Community, Culture

Jazz, an American art form, has also had a presence in Japan throughout most of the 20th-century, and the current jazz scene in Japan is highly developed and thriving. This group of four students will undertake ethnographic work to explore various aspects of Japanese jazz including jazz clubs, jazz kissaten, jam sessions, and jazz education. They will interview jazz musicians, club owners, listeners, and jazz students to ascertain how Japanese jazz differs from American jazz, the degree to which Japanese jazz musicians incorporate Japanese musical elements into their jazz studies, how jazz musicians learn to play jazz, how the Japanese jazz community is constructed, and how it relates to the larger community in Japan. In addition, the research team-made up of skilled jazz musicians-will give several performances in various settings, as well as performing alongside Japanese jazz students and musicians in educational settings and jam sessions.

Kenyon College

Mentor, Sam Pack, Anthropology Department
Eliza Leavitt, ’10, Jean Mougin, ’10, Michael Eblin, ’12,
Carrie Walther, ’10, Said Zahga, ’11
Joint Project: Digital Repatriation in Vietnam:
Towards an (Alter)native Media Tradition - Northern Delta Water Puppetry

Digital repatriation of indigenous knowledge is a field of study that is concerned with the dissemination of and access to cultural objects by traditional owners. This research grant will enable five students to return a trilogy of films on traditional water puppetry, filmed by the Vietnam Institute of Culture and Art Studies in 1991, 1998, and 2002, to the villagers of Bao Ha in the northern province of Hai Phong. In doing so, they will organize a series of open screenings of these films and then lead a succession of focus group discussions to gain a “grasp of the natives point of view” about these films produced at an earlier time by the central government. They will then select five villagers from these focus groups, and after training them in how to use a Flip Video camcorder, ask them to make their own film on the topic of water puppetry, thus enabling the user to form his/her own analysis and representation. Once completed, the Kenyon group will analyze how the new videos differ from those produced earlier.

Lawrence University

Mentor, Jodi Sedlock, Biology Department
Thomas Coben, ’12, Paul Senner, ’11
Joint Project: An Assessment of Cave Bats and Cave Resource Use on
Siquijor Island, Philippines

Two students, majoring in environmental science and biology respectively, will spend five weeks with their mentor developing a more efficient and effective means to assess the status of cave bat populations by conducting a study of bats in the forests and caves of Siquijor, a small limestone-covered island in the central Philippines. The students will participate in all aspects of the research, but will take the lead on certain components of the project. One will conduct acoustic surveys of cave bats in order to test the efficacy of different monitoring protocols. The other will produce several short videos-some serving as training videos for cave bat assessment and monitoring, and others highlighting the ecosystem services of bats and bat ecology. The videos will be used widely in rural Philippine classrooms, cave assessment classrooms, and be posted on the Southeast Asian Bat Research Unit website. The students will have the opportunity to live and work side by side with Filipino biologists, students, and farmers in a rural setting.

Susquehanna University

Mentor, Rachana Sachdev, English and Creative Writing Department
Street Children in Nepal-Changing Lives, Changing Stories
Christina Harrington, ’12, “Literacy among Street Children in Nepal”
Stephen Hyde, ’12, “Kinship Patterns and Homeless Children in Nepal”
Blake Mosser, ’10, “Voc. Training and Employment Programs for Street Children in Nepal”
Garth Libhart, ’10, “Politics, Compassion and Computers: Influences on U.S. Aid to Nepal since the Cold War”

Four students will spend a month in Nepal undertaking individual research projects facilitated by key NGOs in Nepal that are working with street children. Half their time will be spent in the Kathmandu-Bhatkapur area and neighboring villages, and the other half will be spent travelling to Pokhara, Jomsom, Muktinath, and Biratnagar to perform additional research. One student will study vocational training and employment programs for street children; another, literacy among the street children; a third, kinship patterns and homelessness; and a fourth, the repercussions of British colonialism and humanitarian aid on Kathmandu society and politics. As a group they seek to objectively assess what the most effective organizational blueprint for working with street children is for Nepal, and submit their findings in a report to the NGOs and then draw from it and their research to produce a paper for publication in an academic journal.

University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire

Mentor, Deborah Freund, Biology Department
Katrina Jacobs, ’12, Andrew Ludvik, ’10, Christopher Maierhofer, ’11,
Brian Pauley, ’10, Kathryn Prince, ’11
Joint Project: The Effects of Agrochemicals on Biodiversity in Cambodian Rice Paddies

The production of rice in Cambodia is central to the economic well being and survival of millions of Cambodians. Moreover, while producing this staple, Cambodian farmers also make use of the diversity in the rice paddy ecosystem to harvest and consume the fauna that live within their paddies. This study is meant to determine the degree that recent use of agrochemicals to increase the output of rice productivity adversely influences fauna by comparing sampling of invertebrates, fish, and amphibians living in rice paddies that rely heavily on agrochemicals against those that do not. The research will be conducted for four weeks near Kampong Thom and Kampong Cham where the mentor has established close relationships with the farming community. Students will sample the benthic level of the paddy, the aquatic transect, and the above water transect of a total of 15-21 rice paddies, sampling 5-7 paddies from each of three agricultural areas in order to calculate the richness of species.

Willamette University

Mentor, Sijuan Zhou, Religion Department
Kali Bonife, ’12, Morgan Faricy, ’10, Audrey Hirschberger, ’12,
Heather Hurlburt, ’12, Matthew Satterthwaite, ’12
Joint Project: Shamanic Rituals and Symbols in Yi Folk Culture

This research by five undergraduate students is centered upon the Nuoso Yi ethnic community in the Dalianshan region of South China. Led by their mentor, who will be assisted by a noted professor of shaman studies, Qinchun Luo, from Southwest Nationalities University in Chengdu, the group will visit local shaman, interview local residents, observe local folk culture and daily rituals, and record various shamanic chanting, music, and rituals. Each student will conduct his/her own study focused upon: shamanic elements in rites of passage, music and songs in shamanic rituals, artistic symbols in Yi folk culture, the reliance upon musical instruments and dance to communicate with spirits, and environmental sustainability in the Yi agricultural and herding communities.

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