[asiacouncil] Teaching Asia 2019 workshop - preliminary ideas

Thu Jan 24 10:42:24 EST 2019

Thank you for sharing with us your area of expertise, Sunita.  For those of you not familiar with Sunita's work, I'm including a link to  info about her book, and a brief bio from her university website with relevant areas of expertise and courses taught highlighted in yellow.

Eric Kendrick

https://frontpage.gcsu.edu/announcement/dr-sunita-manian-publishes-book-hivaids-india

Dr. Sunita Manian has a PhD in Economics and specializes in issues of Gender in South Asia.  Her publications relate to gender and sexuality in South Asia, migration and diasporic dislocation in Europe, sex trafficking between the Maghreb and Europe, and most recently a book on HIV, Gender and Sexuality in India. She is currently the Chair for the department of Philosophy and Liberal Studies.
Courses/Topics Taught: Gender and Sexuality in South Asia; Muslims in Europe; North Africans in France; Gender and Development; Multicultural Britain; Women and Economic Development; Ethics of Global Inequalities; Colonialism and Neo-colonialism; Global Economic Crisis and Future of the Euro.
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From: Sunita Manian <sunita.manian at gcsu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2019 9:13 AM
To: Leightner, Jonathan <JLEIGHTN at augusta.edu>; Eric Kendrick <ekendrick at gsu.edu>; asiacouncil at lighthouse.valdosta.edu
Subject: Re: Teaching Asia 2019 workshop - preliminary ideas

Dear colleagues, I too support the topic of gender and sexuality. Having studied the topic in the Indian context I believe there is dire need for it to be discussed.

My book on HIV, Gender and Sexuality (based on an ethnographic study among male, female and trans sex workers, men who have sex with men and HIV positive women) was published by Routledge in 2017. I am currently working on an ethnographic study of Youth Sexuality (including lack of sex Ed and awareness in the face of changing sexual mores) in India. I am happy to share this if needed. Of course there are awesome faculty in the System working on gender in Asia and I would love to (and much rather) hear from them!

Sunita

Dr. Sunita Manian
Professor of Political Economy
Chair, Department of Philosophy and Liberal Studies
President-Elect Association of Global South Studies
Georgia College and State University
Beeson 317
Ph: (478) 445-5221

'Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.'  ~Voltaire
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From: asiacouncil-bounces at lighthouse.valdosta.edu<mailto:asiacouncil-bounces at lighthouse.valdosta.edu> <asiacouncil-bounces at lighthouse.valdosta.edu<mailto:asiacouncil-bounces at lighthouse.valdosta.edu>> on behalf of Leightner, Jonathan <JLEIGHTN at augusta.edu<mailto:JLEIGHTN at augusta.edu>>
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2019 8:12:28 AM
To: Eric Kendrick; asiacouncil at lighthouse.valdosta.edu<mailto:asiacouncil at lighthouse.valdosta.edu>
Subject: Re: [asiacouncil] Teaching Asia 2019 workshop - preliminary ideas

Dear Colleagues,

I would support a gender topic.  Furthermore, I have two Augusta University colleagues who may be willing to give presentations:

Sandrine Catris who spoke on the Islam in China last spring.

Sudha Rattan who is a political scientist specializing in India and her neighbors. However Sudha's expertise may overlap too much with Salli's, and Salli should have priority.

Since my recent knee surgery will prevent me from attending, I thought I would share these possible presenters via e-mail.

Jonathan

________________________________
From: asiacouncil-bounces at lighthouse.valdosta.edu<mailto:asiacouncil-bounces at lighthouse.valdosta.edu> <asiacouncil-bounces at lighthouse.valdosta.edu<mailto:asiacouncil-bounces at lighthouse.valdosta.edu>> on behalf of Eric Kendrick <ekendrick at gsu.edu<mailto:ekendrick at gsu.edu>>
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2019 7:55:22 PM
To: asiacouncil at lighthouse.valdosta.edu<mailto:asiacouncil at lighthouse.valdosta.edu>
Subject: [asiacouncil] Teaching Asia 2019 workshop - preliminary ideas

Asia Council colleagues:

Since we'll be discussing the Teaching Asia 2019 workshop at this Friday's meeting, I wanted to go ahead and get the ball rolling on a few points:

1.       Date and Location

2.       Topic and Speakers

3.       Connection with ASDP as a regional conference

DATE & LOCATION

As noted in a previous email, I'm organizing the following event (also attached) on Saturday, April 13, at the Dunwoody Campus.  If interested, we could schedule the Teaching Asia workshop on the Dunwoody Campus the same weekend (Fri & Sat) so that participants could attend the Arts event after the workshop ends on Saturday. This date is a week later than the Japan workshop two years ago, and about three weeks later than the Islam in Asia workshop last year.  However, just in case the Council is interested in this, I went ahead and reserved space at Dunwoody for April 12th and 13th

Points #2 and #3 below.

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D4B3D1.794A8290]

TOPIC & SPEAKERS

As there was interest in addressing Gender and Women's Issues in Asia for 2019, I want to bring up a couple of potential speakers if we indeed go with this topic.

1.       Anne Zacharias-Walsh

For the 2017 Teaching Japan Workshop, Anne was recommend to me, but we had already filled the lineup, so I put this on the back burner for a workshop focused on gender issues.  I have not been in contact with her, but the reference said her husband was a professor at Georgia Tech.  Below is her book and bio.

Anne Zacharias-Walsh is an activist and writer who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She has worked with progressive labor unions and social justice organizations and campaigns throughout the United States and Japan for more than twenty-five years.

[Our Unions, Our Selves]

In Our Unions, Our Selves, Anne Zacharias-Walsh provides an in-depth look at the rise of women-only unions in Japan, an organizational analysis of the challenges these new unions face in practice, and a firsthand account of the ambitious, occasionally contentious, and ultimately successful international solidarity project that helped to spark a new feminist labor movement. In the early 1990s, as part of a larger wave of union reform efforts in Japan, women began creating their own women-only labor unions to confront long-standing gender inequality in the workplace and in traditional enterprise unions. These new unions soon discovered that the demand for individual assistance and help at the bargaining table dramatically exceeded the rate at which the unions could recruit and train members to meet that demand. Within just a few years, women-only unions were proving to be both the most effective option women had for addressing problems on the job and in serious danger of dying out because of their inability to grow their organizational capacity. Zacharias-Walsh met up with Japanese women's unions at a critical moment in their struggle to survive. Recognizing the benefits of a cross-national dialogue, they teamed up to host a multiyear international exchange project that brought together U.S. and Japanese activists and scholars to investigate the links between organizational structure and the day-to-day problems nontraditional unions face, and to develop Japan-specific participatory labor education as a way to organize and empower new generations of members. They also gained valuable insights into the fine art of building and maintaining the kinds of collaborative, cross border relationships that are essential to today's social justice movements, from global efforts to save the environment to the Fight for $15 and Black Lives Matter.

2.       Dr. Megan Sinnott

Director of Graduate Studies, Associate Professor

Institute for Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

I do not know Dr. Sinnott personally.  When I was organizing a collaborative event in Fall 2017 between GSU's Asian Studies Center and the Institute for Institute for Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, I came across her profile and made a note to also keep this on the backburner due to her specialty on Sexuality and Gender in Asia.

[website-photo]

Megan Sinnott's main research interests have been the configurations of sexuality and gender in Thailand, specifically female same-sex relations and gendered identities.   Topics on which she has written include Thai nationalism and the state's policies and discourses on sexuality and gender, non-governmental organizations and activism,  and the sexual and gendered identities of "tom" and "dee." She has spent approximately nine years in Thailand studying and conducting research on these topics.  Her new interest is ghost and spirit stories and how these narratives emerge and circulate within particular historical and political contexts.   Before coming to Georgia State, she taught anthropology and women's studies at Mahidol and Thammasat universities in Thailand, University of Colorado-Boulder and Yale University. She is currently working on a book project on the topic of affect, hauntings, and gender in Thailand.

She teaches a course on Sexuality and Gender in Asia.

Others

I remember that one of the speakers from last year - Jonathan Leightner's contact if I'm not mistaken (apologies if I'm wrong on that) - was interested in speaking if we pursue the Gender and Women's Issues theme.

Also, our own Salli Vargis is both an Asian Studies specialist and a Women's Studies specialist.

CONNECTION w/ ASDP AS A REGIONAL CONFERENCE

We briefly discussed this in the past, but given our experience and expertise in faculty development and that we are hosting the 2020 ASDP (Asian Studies Development Program) national conference, this is the ideal time to connect with ASDP on making our annual statewide conference an ASDP regional event.  Given that our new chair, Eric Spears, is on the ASDP Alumni Board, and that a number of our members have participated in ASDP events in the past, we certainly have the connections for this.

Okay, that's just some food for thought prior to our meeting Friday.  See everyone then!

Eric Kendrick

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