Asia in the edges: a narrative account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore

Abstract

The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School is a Biennial event that invites Masters and PhD students from around Asia to participate in conversations around developing and building an Inter-Asia Cultural Studies thought process. Hosted by the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society along with the Consortium of universities and research centres that constitute it, the Summer School is committed to bringing together a wide discourse that spans geography, disciplines, political affiliations and cultural practices for and from researchers who are interested in developing Inter-Asia as a mode of developing local, contextual and relevant knowledge practices. This is the narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” which was hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012.     

Asia Pacific studies in an age of global modernity

This article argues that the end of the Cold War and the attendant globalization of capital call for a reconfiguration of areas, including the Pacific, has played a significant part in the ideological formation of globalization. The resultant formation is ‘global modernity’, representing at once the globalization and the fragmentation of capitalist modernity. The article discusses five intellectual responses to this situation in studies of Asia and the Pacific that propose new configurations to substitute for earlier area studies: civilizations, oceans, diasporas, Asianization of Asia studies, and indigenous studies. It argues that these substitutes themselves are tied in with new formations of power, and should not be taken at face value. Most important is to remain attentive to configurations from the bottom up that are products of struggles against oppression and exploitation.     

Trajectories,institutions, and re-locations: a conversation on Inter-Asia outside Asia

ABSTRACT

This conversation explores the resonances of the Inter-Asia project outside the geographical boundaries of Asia. The participants, who represent diverse national, institutional, and professional experiences, discuss the following topics: how Asia and the Inter-Asia project has affected their intellectual trajectories; navigating academic institutions and formations; the changing meaning of diaspora and migration and their effects on language and communication; and the relationship between the academy and social movements. Particular attention is paid to reframing Australia and Canada from an Inter-Asia perspective.     

Decolonizing educational/curriculum studies in East Asia: problematizing shadow education in South Korea

This essay review critically engages Young Chun Kim's book, Shadow Education and the Curriculum and Culture of Schooling in South Korea, by responding to two central questions at its heart: What does decolonization of educational research mean and what does it look like? In what way can cultural studies of countries with histories of colonized educational systems challenge the inertia to recapitulate colonized historical consciousness? Kim provides theoretical and empirical foundations for generating intellectual space that reveals the dialectical relationship between the dominant modes of discourse in educational research and aspirations of the colonized to envision their own educational culture and history.     

For a comparative film studies

The paper argues that the comparative approach to the study of modern cultural forms should be founded on the common experience but divergent histories of the development of a capitalist mode of production and the impact of its reformatting dynamics on social, including cultural, relations. The paper then goes on to explore and propose a number of probably inevitable theoretical frameworks and tools to implement a comparative approach to the study of a thoroughly industrialized cultural form, such as cinema and films.     

Re-envisioning media literacy education as feminist arts-activism

ABSTRACT

This project interrogates the premises of media literacy education – the predominant approach to equipping K-12 students to navigate the contemporary media environment – by moving it beyond teaching students to critique commercial media toward undermining ideological messages about health, violence, race, and gender embedded in media discourses. This participatory programme evaluation uses mixed-methods to assess the effectiveness of an alternative, performing arts education-based approach to media literacy called The Girl Project (TGP), a feminist artist-activist programme based at a non-profit community theatre in Versailles, Kentucky. The 12–18 high school-aged girls who participate in TGP every year are engaged in workshops by guest artists from around the nation to express what they think is important for their audiences to understand about their lived experiences as girls in a conservative sociopolitical environment.

The project employed “youth-adult partnership model” to programme evaluation that involved working with programme alumni as co-researchers to evaluate TGP 2017. In June 2017, a team of eight co-researchers comprising alumni from the 2014, 2015, and 2016 classes met to develop evaluation questions and make data collection decisions. Data collection included surveys and interviews conducted pre- and post-programme with participants, field notes of the co-researchers’ observations of workshops and rehearsals, and feedback from guest artists and audience members. The team met again in January 2018 to collaboratively analyse how the data answered their evaluation questions. The survey data allowed us to see that girls’ statistical scores on mental health and body confidence measurements significantly improved after their participation in TGP, meaning that girls are less vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. In talking with participants and audience members, we learned that TGP participation increases girls’ self-confidence and ability to set boundaries in friendships, family relationships, and romantic relationships.     

An overview of Chinese American poetry studies: 1988–2018

ABSTRACT

Chinese American poetry, with its socio-cultural and aesthetic values, chronicles Chinese American personal and collective experiences in the past 160 years. The review of Chinese American poetry studies from 1988 to 2018 shows that research on Chinese American poetry has generally progressed through three stages: identity studies, literary aesthetic studies and philosophical studies. From the emphasis on identity studies to the call of aesthetic studies, the critical discourse in Chinese American poetry has developed in the shadow of Chinese American literary criticism and has not yet formed its own critical paradigms. For this, the philosophical study of Chinese American poetry shows its strength and opens up a broader space for the future research. This critical approach must benefit the study of other Chinese (or Asian) American literary genres. Though this paper has divided the studies into three categories, the actual critical practices are usually more complex and comprehensive, thus future researchers should have more profound and interdisciplinary perspectives on the study of Chinese American poetry.