Lawrence Today magazine, Fall 2002
By Gordon Brown
From Marco Polo to Commodore Perry to Richard Nixon, visitors to China and Japan have gone there with a variety of motives and returned with stories to tell.
Thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the Freeman Foundation, Lawrence is launching faculty members and students on their own voyages of discovery and understanding in East Asia -- and they are most definitely expected to come back with stories to tell.
Imagine that you are a Lawrence student, with a beginner's command of Mandarin Chinese -- what one might call "survival-level Chinese" -- and you are about to embark on a study tour of China. You might receive these instructions:
For the duration of your time in China, keep a journal of linguistic encounters with Chinese speakers. What did they call you (xiaojie, xiansheng, or whatever)? What topics did you talk about? Questions they asked you? Questions you asked them? What new vocabulary did you learn? What encounters were successful and why? Where did linguistic breakdowns occur and why? When you return to the States, write up your findings in a short report with examples.
Experiences like that might be called "baptism by immersion," an introduction to an unfamiliar culture characterized by the choice of sinking or swimming -- and it is that kind of learning-by-being-there that lies at the heart of Lawrence's new Asian study programs.
"Over the next four years," says Brian Rosenberg, dean of the faculty, "we expect to send literally dozens of members of the Lawrence community on such trips. In effect, we will be strengthening the study of East Asia at Lawrence by taking the campus, at least temporarily, to East Asia itself."
Three main areas funded by the grant are student-faculty collaborative learning, faculty study tours and curriculum development, and the addition of Japanese language instruction to the offerings of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Awarded in July 2001, the grant has completed the first of its four years in effect.
Jane Parish Yang, associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures, and Franklin Doeringer, the Nathan M. Pusey Professor of East Asian Studies and professor of history, are co-directors of the grant, joined by a steering committee consisting of Dirck Vorenkamp, assistant professor of religious studies, and Peter Peregrine, associate professor of anthropology.
Already in full operation are activities designed to "promote student-faculty collaborative learning in coursework and research on site in Asia." Since July 2001, the grant has made possible student-faculty study tours to destinations in China, Japan, and Korea; funded advanced research in Asia; and sponsored participation in a conference relating to Asia.
The first study tour, in December 2001, made stops in Korea and Japan and was designed to provide academic and cultural enrichment opportunities to faculty and students of the Conservatory of Music. Janet Anthony, cellist and professor of music, along with Catherine Kautsky, pianist and professor of music, accompanied eight students -- four pianists, three cellists, and one violinist.
In February, another conservatory contingent, led by Anton Miller, violinist and assistant professor of music, and Professor Anthony, took three other faculty members and six students to Beijing. A concert by the faculty members, performing as the Lawrence Chamber Players, opened the spring season of the Imperial Concert Series at the Forbidden City Concert Hall.
A third expedition, a historical and cultural tour of Japan and China during the college's spring break, involved 20 students, accompanied by Professors Yang, Vorenkamp, and Doeringer, as well as Jennifer Yo, instructor in Chinese.
Although the students had different majors, all had taken advanced coursework dealing with some aspect of Asian culture, history, languages, or politics and were primed for the opportunity to learn about traditional East Asian civilizations firsthand.
The Freeman Foundation grant also encourages students to undertake independent study under the guidance of Lawrence faculty members. This past summer, several survival-level Chinese language students traveled to China with Professor Mark Frazier. While he conducted surveys on state workers' pension plans, the students worked independently on language interactions with a variety of Chinese speakers. Frazier, assistant professor of government and a specialist in Asian political economics (whose position was made possible by a previous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation), is the author of The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace.
In addition to an agenda of increasingly ambitious faculty-student study tours planned for the remaining three years of the grant, opportunities are also being developed for student research.
During the 2002-03 academic year, the Freeman grant will support internships by two students in Vietnam and China, and a student with advanced language skills will intern in Shanghai with an Asian public relations firm and afterwards write about her experiences as part of an independent study project. A second student will return to Vietnam to work with studio artists and learn the art of lacquer ware as part of a larger project.
Under the heading of faculty development, 20 faculty members who teach Freshman Studies spent two weeks in China and Japan in June, on an itinerary designed to help them better understand the contrasts between traditional and contemporary East Asia so that they become better classroom teachers. Two high school teachers from Appleton also took part in the experience.
Beginning this fall, 20 students from Japan's Waseda University will be coming to Lawrence each year to strengthen their English skills and to participate in a special liberal arts experience modeled on Freshman Studies. Though this program is not directly tied to the Freeman Foundation grant, it will complement it, in that the Waseda students may serve as peer tutors in the college's new Japanese language program.
Adding the teaching of Japanese language to the instruction in Mandarin Chinese already offered at Lawrence is, in fact, a final element of the Freeman grant. Professor Ayako Yamagata has joined the EALC faculty as an assistant professor teaching a variety of courses in both Japanese language and culture.
Over, around, and through all these efforts lies the college's professed ambition to encourage an increased interest in Asia on campus and to promote additional coverage of the area in the curriculum. As Professor Yang notes, "East Asia is an important part of the world economically and is becoming more so. It is important to have people in the United States who know about this part of the world, who know the languages, and, especially, who understand its history and cultures."
Recommended reading:
The East Asian languages and cultures department's Freeman Trip page