2006-2007 Annual Report of the ASIANetwork,
A Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges
To Promote Asian Studies

Submitted to the Association for Asian Studies
March 19, 2007
By Dr. Teodora O. Amoloza
Executive Director, ASIANetwork

INTRODUCTION

ASIANetwork, conceptualized in 1992 and incorporated in 1993, has grown to become a consortium of over 170 liberal arts colleges seeking to strengthen the study of Asia on our campuses. Its headquarters is at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois with Dr. Teodora O. Amoloza as the Executive Director. ASIANetwork runs on an April to April calendar, revolving around our annual spring conference, when new board members are elected and a new board chair and vice-chair assume their responsibilities. This report bridges the work of the 2005-2006 board chair, P. Richard Bohr (College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University) and the 2006-2007 board chair, Phyllis Larson (St. Olaf College).

CURRENT BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF ASIANETWORK

The Board of Directors of ASIANetwork includes the Executive Director, nine board members and the past board chair as ex-officio member. As ex-officio member, the past board chair has no voting privilege. The current board members are:

COUNCIL OF ADVISORS

MEMBERSHIP

At the end of the 2005-2006 academic year ASIANetwork had 176 institutional members (138 full, 27 associate, 11 affiliate members) plus 7 affiliate individual members; 16 new institutional members joined the consortium during the fiscal year September 1, 2005 through August 31, 2006. As of this writing, 163 institutional members have renewed their memberships and 5 new members joined the consortium for a total of 168 member institutions (plus four affiliate individuals) in the 2006-2007 academic year. ASIANetwork has a solid core base of support as evidenced by the fact that over 50 institutions have been ASIANetwork members for 10 or more years, and over 50 additional institutions have been members for 5 or more years.

At the spring business meeting of ASIANetwork held April 30, 2000, members of the consortium approved the following formula for ASIANetwork membership. Full Membership is open to degree-granting institutions who define their sole or primary mission as the provision of an undergraduate liberal arts education and whose enrollments are roughly between 500-2500 students. (Annual dues: $250) Associate Membership is open to degree-granting institutions who define as one of their basic missions the provision of an undergraduate liberal arts education. Typical Associate Members are small universities, some community colleges, and private and public colleges with somewhat larger enrollments. (Annual dues: $150) Affiliate Membership is open to either organizations (foundations, publishing houses, etc.) (Annual dues: $100) or individuals with an interest in undergraduate liberal arts education. (Annual dues: $50). Dues from member institutions cover about 1/3 of consortium expenses.

Six faculty members from each member institution receive all ASIANetwork mailings and our current membership list includes over 1,100 individuals. Faculty members from member institutions are eligible to attend the spring conference at the reduced membership rate. Faculty from Full and Associate Member institutions are eligible to apply to participate in ASIANetwork programs, but in the case of competing applications for fellowships and grants administered by ASIANetwork, and for board membership, Full members are given priority.

ASIANETWORK ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Venue: Hickory Ridge Marriott Conference Hotel
Date: April 21-23, 2006
Attendance: 200 approx.

The 14th annual conference was held at the Hickory Ridge Marriott Conference Hotel in Lisle, IL on April 21-23, 2006. Featured speakers were Richard Bresnahan, Artist-in-Residence and Master Potter at Saint John’s University in Minnesota whose talk was titled “Ancient Fires to a Humane Future: Asia as the Foundation to Twenty-first Century Environmentalism” and Fred de Sam Lazaro, international correspondent, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, whose talk was titled “Making Distant Stories Relevant”. A showing of the Emmy award winning documentary on Richard Bresnahan’s life and work capped his Friday evening keynote address. The conference also featured two plenary sessions, one titled “Web Tools for Teaching Asian Studies” chaired by Sarah Withee of Colorado College and the other presented by Charles Nolley on “The Use of Documentary and Telecommunication in Academic and Cultural Exchanges with Asia.” There were seventeen concurrent sessions including a panel presentation by Vietnamese faculty exchange scholars and their hosts as well as a drumming demonstration on Saturday evening by the Taiko Club of St. Olaf College.

The conference this year will again be held at the Hickory Ridge Marriott Conference Hotel in Lisle, IL on April 20-22, 2007. There will be three featured speakers. Bardwell Smith, the John W. Nason Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies at Carleton College, will give the Friday evening keynote address. Known for his work on Buddhist studies in South and Southeast Asia, he is also a gifted speaker on religious and social consciousness in many other contexts, including America after the tragic events of September 11th. His talk is titled “Beyond Stereotyping: The Enemy has a Face.”

Dorothy Ko of Columbia University is the Saturday morning plenary speaker. Born in Hong Kong, Ko is a cultural historian of early modern China, with special interests in the history of Chinese women. Her recent book Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (California, 2005), is already a classic not only on footbinding itself but on the relationship between the body, language, and historical reality. Her talk is titled “Perspectives on Footbinding.”

On Saturday evening Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago will give the third plenary address. Professor Doniger is already well known to many ASIANetwork members as a past president of the Association for Asian Studies, for her translations of Sanskrit texts including the Rig Veda, Laws of Manu, and Kamasutra, and for her more recent interpretive works such as the recent book The Woman Who Pretended To Be Who She Was. Her talk, which is about her own experiences as an Asianist, promises to be in the genre, and is entitled “How my Life Imitated My Art, or, How A Sanscritist Masqueraded as a Historian of Religions.”

There will be fifteen concurrent sessions including a panel presentation by Vietnamese faculty exchange scholars and their hosts, as well as a Philippine cultural presentation that features high school graduates from Mindanao on Saturday evening.

ASIANETWORK PROGRAMS

Student-Faculty Fellows Program funded by The Freeman Foundation: This program that I initially directed for eight years is now directed by Van J. Symons (Augustana College). During the summer 2006, 65 students and faculty mentors comprising 13 research teams from ASIANetwork member colleges conducted research in the following countries: The People’s Republic of China (seven teams), Japan (four teams), Singapore (one team), and Indonesia (one team). The schools of the recipients and their destinations are as follows: Elon College (Japan), Gettysburg College (Singapore), Green Mountain College (China), Guilford College (China), Haverford College (Indonesia), John Carroll University (China), Loyola Marymount University (Japan), Marietta College (China), Mills College (China), Oglethorpe University (Japan), Trinity University (China), Valparaiso University (China), and Wittenberg University (Japan).

Careful management of Freeman resources has enabled ASIANetwork to offer funding to fourteen research teams (73 individuals altogether) for the summer 2007 programs. Research will be conducted this summer in six different areas of East and Southeast Asia: People’s Republic of China (seven teams), Japan (two teams), Malaysia (one team), Philippines (one team), Malaysia & Philippines (one team), Thailand (one team), and Vietnam (one team). The home colleges of the research teams and their destinations are: Bard College (Malaysia and Philippines), Colby College (China), Colorado College (Japan), Eckerd College (Malaysia), Gettysburg College (China), Green Mountain College (Philippines), Hiram College (China), Illinois Wesleyan University (China), Naropa University (China/Tibet), Purchase College of SUNY (Thailand), Swarthmore College (China), University of Puget Sound (Japan), Valparaiso University (China), and Virginia Wesleyan College (Vietnam). Of the 14 colleges that received the grant, 5 have not been recipients before: Colby College, Naropa University, Purchase College of SUNY, Swarthmore College, and Virginia Wesleyan College.

Because of the immense success of this program (during the eight years of funding the program has supported 432 participants from 68 different colleges), the Freeman Foundation has entertained a renewal funding application of $1,299,000 for a fourth three-year cycle of Student-Faculty Fellowships. We hope to hear in April about the decision of the Freeman Board of Trustees. If funded again, this program will enable a minimum of 180 individuals to undertake research in Asia during each of the summers of 2008, 2009, and 2010.

Asian Art in the Undergraduate Curriculum funded by The Henry Luce Foundation: We have received from The Henry Luce Foundation the last installment of the $370,000 grant to enable twenty-four ASIANetwork member colleges to invite art historians and art specialists to their campuses to evaluate Asian art and material resources in their collections. Based on these consultancies, a book will be produced, along with an accompanying DVD and web materials of images of the art that is discovered, that will make the case for more effective integration of Asian art into the classroom, and also focus on the historical connections between American colleges and Asia as evidenced in these collections. The Asian Art in the Undergraduate Curriculum book, co-edited by Paul Nietupski (John Carroll University) and Joan O’Mara (Washington & Lee University) will become the first volume in a set of teaching resources that will be proposed to the Association for Asian Studies as part of the “Resources for Teaching about Asia” series. Editor-in-chief of the AN teaching resources series is Rita Kipp (Sewanee, University of the South).

During the first year, the following eight schools received consultancy visits: Beloit College, Connecticut College, DePauw University, Dickinson College, Eckerd College, Earlham College, Guilford College, and Wittenberg University. Eight more schools received consultancy visits during the 2006-2007 academic year. They were: College of Wooster, Fairfield University, Luther College, Marietta College, Ohio Wesleyan University, St. Lawrence University, Union College, and Washington & Lee University. For the last round of consultancies in 2007-2008, the following schools were selected: Berea College, DePauw University, Lake Forest College, Mills College, Swarthmore College, Valparaiso University and Willamette University. In addition, subgrants of $1,500 each were awarded to the following schools to help them digitize and document some of their Asian arts collections: Bowdoin College, Carleton College, St Olaf College and Wittenberg University.

This is the last batch for such consultancy and subgrant awards. The project will then move to its next phase, the writing of a book with accompanying DVD that discusses how selected pieces of Asian arts and material culture collections that were discovered during the consultancy phase can be used in the teaching about Asia. The target date for publication of the book is Spring 2009.

ASIANetwork Consultancy Advisory Program: The ASIANetwork Consultancy Advisory Program Coordinator is Richard Bohr (College of Saint Benedict/St. John’s University). Drawing from the highly successful ASIANetwork Luce Consultancy Advisory Program, which was conducted from 1994-98, this program matches experienced consultants from established Asian studies programs at liberal arts colleges with ASIANetwork member institutions seeking advice on how to strengthen the study of Asia on their campuses. Twenty-two consultancies were conducted under the Luce grant; 25 consultancies were conducted after the grant expired; three consultancies were conducted last year and two consultancies were conducted this year.

“ASIANetwork EXCHANGE, A Newsletter for Teaching About Asia”: The 32-page newsletter of the consortium is published three times annually, fall, winter and spring and distributed free of charge to over 1100 faculty and administrators at ASIANetwork member institutions. The current co-editors of the newsletter are Thomas Lutze and Irving Epstein with Patra Noonan as associate editor (Illinois Wesleyan University).

The ASIANetwork Website, www.asianetwork.org : The consortium’s website was created with support offered by the Henry Luce Foundation in fall 1997 and is located at St. Olaf College. Robert Y. Eng (University of Redlands) provides board oversight for the web, and Craig Rice (St. Olaf) manages the site. Use of the website has grown dramatically. An on-line Directory of ASIANetwork Members is posted at our website and is widely utilized. We have also instituted a “Members Only” site. The agreement with St. Olaf College to continue to host the website until 2011 has been renewed. A new design of the site is currently being developed and the target is to launch the new website design in late summer/early Fall 2007.

The Endowment Fund: A $300,000 “Securing the Future of ASIANetwork” Grant from the Henry Luce Foundation that ended last year that was used to support some of ASIANetwork’s services to members. This enabled us to build our endowment fund that is now very, very close to the target amount of $1Million.

FULBRIGHT-HAYS GROUP STUDIES ABROAD PROGRAM: PEARL RIVER DELTA FACULTY DEVELOPMENT SEMINAR

A second Pearl River Delta Faculty Development seminar focused on the history and culture of the region is currently under consideration by Fulbright-Hays. If funded, this will enable a group of 12 faculty members to study the rich cultural and historical heritage of the region. Participants for the program have already been selected and are divided into the following groups with three participants each: Historical Memories and Interpretations, Philosophy and Religion, South China’s Connection to the World, and Traditional and Contemporary Culture. The travel seminar will take place on July 21-August 18, 2007. This seminar is organized in partnership with the Hong Kong-America Center.

THE ASIANETWORK /AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES/ CENTER FOR EDUCATIONAL EXCHANGE WITH VIETNAM FACULTY EXCHANGE PROGRAM

With funding provided by the Henry Luce Foundation, AN and ACLS/CEEVN are working together to enable eight faculty members from Vietnamese universities to spend semester long periods at ASIANetwork member colleges to examine the academic environment, teaching methods, and curricula of the host institutions, and to stimulate academic exchanges and long-term relationships between North American liberal arts colleges and universities in Vietnam. As part of the exchange, during the summers of 2006 and 2007, the grant provides funds to select appropriate scholars from the North American host schools to be guests at the Vietnamese universities involved in the exchange. Three Vietnamese scholars were hosted by ASIANetwork member schools in 2005-2006: Phan Quang Minh at Pomona College (Claremont, CA), Nguyen Quy Thanh at the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, WA), and Tran Thi Phuong Phuong at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Geneva, NY). In summer 2006 or during the following academic year, each host school sent a faculty member to Vietnam as part of the exchange. Currently, five AN schools are hosting five more Vietnamese scholars namely: Edgewood College in Madison, WI (Nguyen Thi Tuyet Oanh), Millikin University in Decatur, IL (Truong Thi Kim Chuyen), the University of Findlay in Findlay, OH (Tran Le Hoa Tranh), Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT (Lam Thi My Dzung )and Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA (Nguyen Van Suu). In summer 2007 or within the next academic year, each host school will send a faculty member to Vietnam as part of the exchange.

“RESOURCES FOR UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING” BOOK SERIES

ASIANetwork is currently working on plans to publish several volumes for its “Resources for Undergraduate Teaching” series. These books will be submitted to AAS for inclusion in its “Resources for Teaching about Asia” series. The first book in the series is the end product of the Asian Art in the Undergraduate Curriculum project funded by the Luce Foundation. Some other topics for the series that was approved by the Board are: Asian Missionary Archives, Asian Performing Arts, Asian-American Histories, Asian Cartography/Geography, Asian Media, and Asian Contemporary Religions. The Development Committee is currently investigating sources for funding for this book series.

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