EASC finished the 23-24 school year strong after an academic year full of events and colloquium.
We were delighted to welcome four Colloquium speakers over the Spring semester’s theme of Art and Performance, including Dr. Hippocrates Cheng, Dr. Judith Zeitlin, Dr. Meimei Zhang, and filmmaker Christine Choy. Choy’s Colloquium talk was followed by a screening and Q&A session of her most recent work, The Exiles, co-sponsored by IU Cinema and IU Global.
This semester, we wrapped-up our nine-month project with Japan Foundation New York that highlighted the cultural and creative industries in Japan. With the help of guest speakers and our own IU faculty and graduate students, we explored topics such as the impacts of AI as an artistic tool, translation aid, and how different creative industries like theatre and anime impact each other. EASC Director Morten Oxenboell led a workshop exploring . . . Japanese fermentation, where participants learned lexical terms to describe a variety of flavors while exploring ways to understand how cultural norms influence the perceived palatability of certain foods.
In January, as part of IU’s Taiwan Studies Initiative (funded by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, Chicago), we virtually welcomed faculty experts to discuss the results of the 2024 Taiwanese presidential and legislative elections. Following Spring Break, EASC hosted a workshop on cultural entrepreneurship and translating humanities skillsets into marketable terms. On March 22nd and 23rd Professor Oxenboell hosted a multi-disciplinary seminar on the ethics of violence, with EASC as a co-sponsor for the faculty-led seminar. We were pleased to host Dr. William T. Cavanaugh (DePaul University), Dr. Amy Schwartzott (North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University), and Dr. Matthew Lange (McGill University). Guest speakers and seminar participants explored the topic of violence from a variety of cultural and religious perspectives, considering how violence is motivated and informed today. This seminar was funded in part by the College of Arts and Humanities Institute Symposia and Workshop Grant.
With the help of visiting Fulbright scholar, Dr. Roslynn Ang, we are expanded our discussions of Indigeneity in East Asia. As part of a podcast series (stay tuned for the fall release!) centered around conversations with experts in this field, Dr. Ang interviewed Dr. Megumi Chibana, Dr. Dawa Lokyitsang, Dr. Guldana Salimjan, and Yu Liang. Dr. Ang also presented a talk to IU faculty and students focusing on her current book project centered around her collaborations with Ainu communities in Japan.
Aside from an exhaustive rotation of events, EASC has also made more of an effort to expand social media presence. During the fall semester, Dr. Oxenboell met with colloquium guests to record podcast episodes about violence in East Asia. The beginning of this semester announced the official publishing of the first episode on our podcast channel. The continuation of our podcast channel is one of the center’s ongoing goals. This semester also marked the addition of podcasts focused on the creative and cultural industries in Japan, sponsored in part by Japan Foundation New York. Many of our current and formal grad students, such as Adam Noffsinger, contributed their knowledge from their respective fields to engage with a wide variety of listener interests. The creation of a blog to document our activities and introduce the Center’s objectives has also been one of our public engagement goals. Not only as a place to talk about our current activities, but also as a way for us to convey ideas developed in our “Innovation Incubator” (term proposed by Dr. Oxenboell). With goals to expand our initiatives across the pillars of IU’s 2030 strategic plan, we hope to continue to ponder the possibilities within this blog space and see how the community could become more involved.
Lastly, if you are interested in being a part of EASC’s ideas, initiatives, and goals, we have an active volunteer base that has grown exponentially this semester. Whether your interests lie in participating in larger events in the Bloomington community or helping out at smaller cultural events here at IU, we have volunteer opportunities constantly popping up. If you are interested, contact easc@iu.edu, and we will reach out to you with information about active opportunities. We would love to see students as well as faculty and staff become more involved.
Authored by Jillian Clark, EALC graduate student and EASC program assistant
Additional content by Kathryn Vandrey and Laura Judson
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