East Asia National Resource Center - NRC

04/09/2025

Join the NRC and GWIKS to discuss career pathways, professional development, and lived experiences studying and working in Asia, followed by a networking reception where students can connect with government, industry, and research professionals. To RSVP: https://lnkd.in/eEe-xkK6

04/09/2025

The Mid-Atlantic Korean Speech Contest is an annual event aimed at encouraging students to showcase their language skills and share their learning achievements with learners from different institutions. Specifically, in the Mid-Atlantic region (Washington D.C, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, more than 3,300 students from 15 universities have enrolled in Korean language courses during the 2024-2025 academic year. The upcoming 4th Mid-Atlantic Korean Speech Contest will be held on Friday, April 11, 2025, building on the success of the past three contests.

This event has grown to be a vital platform for collaboration among regional institutions, celebrating Korean language education, and promoting cultural exchange. The 2025 contest will continue as a virtual event, allowing students from various universities to participate without geographical or financial barriers. The virtual format, which was successfully adopted in previous years, ensures that students from all economic backgrounds can join and that institutions can collaborate across long distances. This year, the contest is expected to include even more participants and institutions.

The 4th Mid-Atlantic Korean Speech Contest 2025
Friday, April 11, 2025, 3:00 PM – 6:30 PM (EDT)

(Virtual Event) https://gwu-edu.zoom.us/j/99405398217

04/07/2025

Come join the GW Institute for Korean Studies, alongside the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Taiwan Education & Research Program, and the East Asia National Resource Center, for a signature conference featuring experts on Disability Rights in East Asian democracies on Friday, April 11th from 9:00am-2:00pm! A light breakfast and lunch will be provided for conference participants.

This event will highlight cutting-edge research in the growing legal and social scientific scholarship on disabilities in East Asia’s democracies. Speakers will discuss a range of topics, including (but not limited to) the development of laws related to persons with disabilities; disparities across disability categories; the role of regulations and technology in the employment of people with disabilities; the enfranchisement of persons with intellectual disabilities; the gendered division of labor for care; and the intersection of globalized concepts of rights with local disability politics.

For more details, check out our website and go to the link below for reservation.

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/disability-rights-in-east-asias-democracies-2025-tickets-1302248041949?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

03/17/2025

The Okinawa Collection is cohosting a webinar with the OPG-DC office, "Doing Research on Okinawa," on Wednesday, March 19th, at 7:00 pm (EST). The panel includes Lynette Teruya (Okinawan Studies Librarian, University of Hawai'i), Hana Omine (Librarian, Okinawa Prefectural Library), Jacqueline Toma (President, Okinawan Genealogical Society of Hawai'i), and Cameron Vanderscoff (Oral Historian, Okinawa Memories Initiative, UC Santa Cruz).

Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScgYBf8fGnQlfei-C6PumwqJhkOoJrKsMQxtw6qmb9a-3sAsw/viewform

03/10/2025

The East Asia National Resource Center (NRC) and the Sigur Center for Asian studies held the final session of our China Peripheries Seminar on Friday, March 7th, on the theme of “identities.”

Amy Liu, Associate Professor in the Government Department at the University of Texas, Austin, introduced her two surveys on public attitudes towards immigrants. Her research focused on Taiwanese attitudes towards new residents, the diversity of new residents, and the linguistic barriers and racial discrimination that some face. She then outlined her findings, illustrating that Taiwan is generally accepting of new residents, and that new resident experiences seem positive overall.

Sean Roberts, Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at The George Washington University, spoke about the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) in Syria and their role in the toppling of the Assad government in December 2024. Professor Roberts described the history of the TIP and their connection to the rest of the Uyghur diaspora around the world.

After their presentations concluded, they took questions from the audience. Thank you to all who participated!

03/10/2025

The East Asia National Resource Center (NRC) held an event on Thursday, March 6th, entitled “Intersections of Disability in Sinophone Culture.”

Hangping Xu, Assistant Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, spoke about his research on disabled figures in CCP literature. He introduced Wu Yunduo’s autobiography, Devoting Everything to the Party, and described Wu’s influence on the Chinese population throughout the 1950s as a “super-crip” narrative that showed how disabled bodies could be made useful for the party.

Carmen Yau, a full-time Lecturer in Social Work and the Lead of Wellbeing Research Unit in the Goldsmiths University of London, spoke about the intersectionality of disabled women in Chinese communities. She examined her research on domestic and partner violence against disabled women and summarized the ways that disabled women are telling their stories of abuse to advocate for policy change.

After their presentations concluded, they took questions from the audience. Thank you to all who participated!

03/03/2025

The East Asia National Resource Center (NRC) and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies held the second session of our China Peripheries Seminar series on Friday, February 28th. The topic was “borderlands.”

Tashi Rabgey, Professor of international affairs at the George Washington University, spoke about the homogeneity in the Tibetan region of the PRC, protests in the region, and the fragmentation of governance and regionalization and how they affected the Tibetan autonomous region.

Denise Ho, associate professor in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, spoke about the history of the Hong Kong Shenzhen border. She highlighted different border reforms throughout different periods of Chinese history, and how it affected the local economy, refugees, and policing.

After their presentations, the two speakers invited questions from the audience. Thank you to all who attended!

02/26/2025

Join the East Asia NRC for the third part of our Diversity in East Asia series: a virtual talk on the Intersections of Disability in Sinophone Cultures on Thursday, March 6th from 1:00-3:00pm!

Professor Hangping Xu will discuss his research on disabled figures in CCP literature. In the 1950s when China broke away from its ideological tie to the Soviet Union, the CCP authorities promoted Wu Yunduo as “China’s Pavel” to replace the bed-ridden, blind protagonist of the Russian novel "How the Steel was Tempered," who had already become the revolutionary hero in the Chinese imagination. Wu wrote an autobiography entitled Devoting Everything to the Party (ba yiqie xiangei dang; 1953), in which he chronicles how he ultimately makes himself disabled by experimenting with dynamite for military use. This presentation offers a critical reading of Wu’s autobiography with a comparative look at Pavel and with a contextualization of the period. Professor Xu will argue that disability functions as an aesthetic foil with which to imagine the superhuman revolutionary subject, concretizing the ideological fantasy of the invincible national body politic. The revolutionary body is not only perfect, grand, and tall; beautifully disabled, it also transcends the biological limits of the flesh.

In this session, Dr. Carmen Yau will also talk about the intersectionality of disabled women in Chinese communities. She will start by sharing her work on domestic and partner violence against disabled women. She will further explore the agency of disabled women to navigate abusive relationships. She will also share her recent work on a photovoice to unearth the story of disabled women being carers, which facilitates policy change to recognize the entitlement and welfare for disabled carers.

02/26/2025

The East Asia National Resource Center (NRC) and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies held a movie screening event on Thursday, February 20th, of Mark - A Call to Action. The inspiring film highlighted the life of global disability advocate Dr. Mark Bookman, a Fulbright Scholar and disabled individual who earned a Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania, became a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo, and led efforts to increase accessibility in Japan.

The film was followed by a roundtable discussion between the director of the film, Ron Small, Mark’s father, Paul Bookman, and GW faculty Celeste Arrington and Richard Grinker.

Thank you to all who attended!

02/20/2025

The East Asia National Resource Center (NRC) held an event on Tuesday, February 18th, entitled “Disability in Asian Studies: Blindness and Leprosy in Early Modern Japan.”

Professor Wayne Tan from Hope College in Michigan spoke about blindness and disability in Early Modern Japan while also explaining a framework for understanding disability before modern ideas of disability developed.

Professor Susan Burns from the University of Chicago spoke about leprosy and other skin diseases in Early Modern Japan. She described the beliefs surrounding these diseases as well as the social position of people suffering from them, at the same time outlining the causes, curability, and the possibility of treatment.

After the presentation, both speakers took questions from the audience. Thank you to all who participated!

02/20/2025

The East Asia National Resource Center (NRC) and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies held an event on Thursday, February 13th, entitled “Unearthing Similarities: Okinawan Religion’s Entanglements in Japanese Rule from 1878-1945.”

Professor Tze M. Loo from the University of Richmond spoke about the Ryukyuan-Okinawan religion, the importance of utaki, or sacred groves, the hierarchy of female ritualists in the Ryukyan kingdom, and historical claims that the basis of the religion in the Yaeyama Islands was deeply connected to the Shinto religion of Japan.

After the presentation, Professor Loo took questions from the audience. Thank you to all who participated!

02/13/2025

The East Asia National Resource Center is proud to virtually present Diversity in East Asia: Blindness and Leprosy in Early Modern Japan on Tuesday, February 18th from 3:00-5:00PM!

This presentation will explore the cultural and historical contexts of blindness in early modern Japan (1600-1868), and asks: What was blindness, and how did people live with blindness? Featuring examples of early modern Japanese medical culture and social history, Professor Wayne Tan will explain how the methods of disability studies/history enhance our understanding of disability in Japanese society, and why we need new approaches to expand the coverage of current disability studies/history.

Raibyō or “leprosy,” a disease category that likely included both true leprosy (as defined by the presence of M. leprae) and other disfiguring skin diseases, was a highly stigmatized disease in Japan from ancient times. In the early modern period, it became the object of an explosion of medical writing in the form of treatises and case studies, as doctors debated its causes, curability, and the possibility of treatment. In this presentation, Professor Susan Burns will explore the medicalization of leprosy and its social and cultural effects. She argues that medicalization did not lessen the stigma of the leprosy but in fact heightened it. As leprosy came to be understood as a disease of “bad blood,” not only individual sufferers but also their family members were subject to discrimination.

Please register with the following link:

Join us for the Diversity in East Asia series talk on historical contexts of blindness and leprosy in early modern Japan.