Webinar: Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic

Repost from H-Asia.

All are invited to join the Association for Asian Studies on Monday, December 14 at 3:00pm Eastern Time for an AAS Digital Dialogue, "Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic."

How did the pandemic compel creative new approaches by faculty teaching Asian Studies courses in 2020? In what ways did these experiences expose fissures in the discourse and framing of Asia-centric pedagogy in the U.S.? This panel addresses these questions in the shadow of global pandemic. The participants, each a contributor to the AAS “Asia Shorts” book Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic, explore a range of innovative pedagogical approaches developed in the earliest months of the COVID-19 shutdown. Panelists and contributors span diverse disciplines and range from seasoned online instructors to those forced suddenly into an online environment. Their papers reflect scaffolded approaches to online/offline teaching and learning that resonate with regional area studies alongside disciplinary approaches and priorities. Pedagogical interventions discussed include asynchronous student blogging and social media activism, somatics as radical pedagogy, interrogating impermanence and loss through Medieval Japanese exile narratives, and an effort to salvage a study abroad experience through student-to-student autoethnographic collaboration. Their regional foci include Southeast and South Asia, as well as East Asia. Panelists additionally discuss the ways the pandemic and their responses to it have led them to approach Asian Studies teaching through new lenses, exposing weaknesses in their earlier epistemological framings, and arming them with compelling new pedagogical toolkits.

Session Participants

Gareth Barkin, University of Puget Sound

Adam Frank, University of Central Arkansas

Nabaparna Ghosh, Babson College

David Kenley, Dakota State University

Susan Spencer, University of Central Oklahoma

For more information, and to register, please visit the AAS website: https://bit.ly/AASDDTeaching

AAS Digital Dialogues are made possible with generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation