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ASA-JAAS
ASA-JAAS Delegate Report 2003
That evening, back in Naha, Mr. and Mrs. Nelson treated us to a roast turkey dinner in their home.
Finally, about my visit to Okinawa I want to acknowledge that one of my prime reasons for asking Mr. Nakamura and others if I might go there was that when I served as a teaching and resident fellow at Doshisha University and Amherst House, in Kyoto, thirty-five years ago, my best friend was Kosei Kinjo, a student from Okinawa when there were only few from Okinawa in the universities of the main islands of Japan. My paper for the trip was in part about him, inspired by him and our fun, long ago, over how similar our boyhoods appeared to be—on our islands in locales dominated by American military bases. He spoke the Okinawan language. I spoke Hawai´i Creole. Aboard streetcars we would baffle the Japanese people of Kyoto who could not tell what either of us was speaking. Mr. Nakamura at the Embassy in Tokyo and Mr. Nelson in the Consulate in Okinawa were very considerate about my request for information and tried hard to locate Kinjo Kosei for me. We had not seen each other for 35 years. They found several other men with that name. Just before I left on my trip I asked Professor Fujikura if our Amherst House directories could locate my friend. Professor Fujikura then learned that Kinjo Kosei had died of cancer on 28 September 2001. I had often imagined how he would appear at one of my talks in Okinawa, and that would be how I would find him again. Now I found myself telling Professor Yamazato and his colleagues, my friends Mr. Nakamura and Mr. Nelson, Mayor Gibu, and the community resource group of Kin-cho about Kino Kosei, and I was dedicating my talk about him now in memory of him.
7 June: Nanzan University, Nagoya; lunch hosted by Donna A. Welton, Director of the Nagoya American Center, with Ms. Yukiko Fujiwara, Public Affairs Specialist of the U. S. Consulate Nagoya. The afternoon program was a lecture/discussion on “Okinawa and Hawai´i: A Comparative Perspective.“ About thirty faculty members and graduate students attended, from several different universities. Host: Professor Yoshimitsu Miyakawa, Director of the Center for American Studies, Nanzan University, co-sponsor of this afternoon program with Nagoya American Studies Association. Three hours or more were devoted to this program. Here my Okinawa paper bloomed. I had wondered why Nagoya had requested this paper, but the intellectual curiosity that the participants possessed and clearly enjoyed perhaps best accounts for their interest in Okinawa and the comparisons I offered. No interpretation was required. I was able, thus, to deliver the full paper plus some thoughts that were occurring to me because of and since my actual visit to Okinawa just prior to this afternoon. I did screen the video clips, but more for comic relief than anything else, because try as I might, before my trip, I could not make or get clear copies of the videotapes that I had rented for the purpose of recording clips. My re-recordings were scrambled to prevent piracy. In fun, Professor Miyakawa later told the audience that his Center for American Studies would go on to buy commercial, clear copies of the videotapes we had tried to play. This was a very good program—lively and enjoyable.
8 June: Arrival in Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan. Lodgings in the Grand Hyatt Fukuoka, located in “Canal City,“ a global shopping mall said to be the first of its kind in Japan. My hotel room while small, was simply beautiful. I was happy to have some time in Fukuoka just to be on my own.
9 June: Fukuoka American Center; host, Bruce Kleiner, Director; Ms. Sanae Hanada, Public Affairs Specialist; Mr. Masayuki Tominaga, interpreter. Lecture/discussion, “Japanese American Literature in Historical Perspective”; 60-minute presentation with simultaneous translation; 30-minute Q&A. Audience: about 50 scholars, business people, city officials, and members of the Japan America Society of Fukuoka. Of most interest here was a response from a literary scholar accompanied by two of her graduate students. She observed that my approach to Japanese American literature is heavily historicized, even when she took into account that that approach, after all, is called for by the title of the talk. She went on to state that she tries to look for, analyze, and discuss “universals” in literature, to the contrary of the historical constructionist approach. She wanted to know what Japanese American literature I considered “universal,“ and why. And might some of our authors disagree with being treated in historicized rather than aesthetically focused ways? This discussion continued beyond the session. I would have liked to have the time to continue talking with this scholar and her students. I felt that whereas in the United States we historical constructionists tend to dismiss the aestheticists and surely have arguments on both sides to crush the other, the questions raised in Japan (and they occurred once in Korea as well, in one of my programs) are informed and motivated by factors that would be new to me in the arguments and counterarguments.
(That night, on my own again and loving it, I went where the concierge advised, to eat moderately-priced sushi at a place called Futaba in nearby Nakasu, a neighborhood packed with bars and strip shows. Futaba was a sanctuary from the barkers everywhere outside that called me to enter their sexy shops. As usual for me, I explained to the sushi man in Japanese that I, being an American, do not speak well. I come from Seattle. To our mutual surprise, the Itamae, sushi chef, said that he had lived for a year in Moses Lake, Washington, and I knew immediately that he had been at that faraway place near Spokane because of the major Japan Air Lines training airfield there. A JAL captain was this man’s friend, and they had bunked together. The chef, Mr. Shibata, proceeded to serve me wonderful sushi, varieties of which I doubt I would ever have eaten otherwise in my life, because I didn’t even know they existed. Last week I received a summer greeting card and personal message from him. He says he was so happy to be able to talk with someone about Moses Lake; no one else in Fukuoka/Hakata seems to know what that is. Indeed.)
10 June: I flew from Fukuoka to Tokyo with Mr. Tominaga. Once checked into the imperial-class Hotel Okura, I went alone by trains, familiar to me, to Tsuda Women’s College in Kodaira-shi, about an hour away from the hotel. A large group of my former graduate students and my Tsuda faculty colleagues greeted me with refreshments and celebration in my grand house, from September 2001 to January 2002, on the Tsuda campus. It was a quick reunion, but it renewed our open invitations to visit one another and to keep in touch and enabled me to retrace my route back to Tsuda and from there back to downtown Tokyo. In the past week, two of the graduate students and one of the faculty colleagues have been in Seattle thanks to the continuing relationships we have.
The U. S. Cultural Affairs Officer Mark Davidson and Ms. Sumiko Davidson hosted a marvelous reception that evening. JAAS colleagues and other guests filled their residence in an apartment building for American personnel of the Embassy. The invitation said that the party was in my honor; and I truly felt honored. At the same time, it was an awfully thoughtful and celebratory way of drawing the visit of our ASA delegation toward a close and to honor all our JAAS hosts, who for weeks had never relaxed their attention to our safety and convenience. Thanks to Mark and Sumiko. Thanks to all.
11 June: Tohoku University, Sendai; host Alec Wilczynski, U. S. Consul General Sapporo; the Public Affairs Program Assistant, Ms. Maki Tagaya; and the Dean and faculty of the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies; lecture/discussion, “Okinawa and Hawai´i”; with consecutive interpretation by Mr. Tominaga, 60 minutes; response by Professor Yoji Sawairi, followed by 20 minutes of discussion. I needed to shorten my paper to thirty minutes or less in order for it and the translation to fit the time. The discussion could have run much longer, in part because the shortened paper actually invited more questions about the resulting gaps. This was my final talk on the 25-day tour. Mr. Tominaga and I had to abide by a strict schedule for this last day trip, to catch the Shinkansen back to Tokyo, 104 minutes away. I would have loved to stay longer at any of the places I visited in the two countries.
12 June: Return to Seattle.
I did not begin with the intention of writing so long a report. I found myself writing more as I proceeded because the act of writing stirred my memory. This may account for why the South Korea part of this report is much shorter than the Japan part. This difference, however, might also reflect how the entire project has affected me over the years, such that the greater emphasis and longevity of the JAAS project, fourteen years since its first implementation, seems to call for the greater accountability. The ASAK project is three years old. If an ASA president were to schedule a visit to ASAK after the JAAS visit, she or he might find the South Korea half more expansive. For myself, I was in effect establishing a rhythm of my journey in Korea. I regretted at times that by taking on two “personal programs” I had given up two free days that my work in Korea (and the U. S. Memorial Day Holiday) earned for me, because once I left Seoul for Gwangju, Daegu, and Busan I felt we were narrowly rushing from place to place, and the entire trip so far seemed cramped (though in a sense it was not at all). I wanted to warn my ASA presidential successors, Professors Amy Kaplan and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, to refrain from accepting “personal programs” and to be as aware as possible, for their trips, of the demands of the schedules for Korea and Japan. I still am going to advise them. The fact is that I was feeling much less rushed in Japan even though the schedule was still as brutal as in Korea and, judging by my report above, I was observing everything more broadly, the journey having grown expansive. This growth of the journey I think accounts for the uneven lengths of my Korea and Japan reporting, more than or in addition to the greater attention the JAAS project has demanded from me.
The ASA Presidential Speaking Tour of South Korea and Japan has been for me a fulfillment of a long personal history that goes back at least as far as my first teaching job, at Doshisha University, in 1968-1969, which itself has deep antecedents. The circumstances and conditions for the recent trip will never again occur. I nevertheless do expect to make new opportunities happen so that I may once again teach in Japan and serve somehow in Korea, possibly through a Fulbright fellowship. I have been urged to apply for one when my time is right. I sincerely thank all of you who have made it possible for me to catch up with some of my past and to look toward the future by giving me the opportunity to speak in South Korea and Japan this year.
Reports of the JAAS Graduate Student Delegates to the Hartford Conference of the American Studies Association in 2003
Hitomi Kinuhata, East Tennessee State University
Department of History, MA Program
First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude for having given me a great chance to attend the conference. Without the grant that I and other Japanese students got, I could not afford to take part in the conference. In the conference, I could learn several things that I have not learnt from my own daily studies and classrooms. I also had a good opportunity to visit both Mark Twain House and Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford. Because of its usefulness, I hope other Japanese students can get the same chance to attend the ASA conference in the future.
The conference lasted four days from Thursday to Sunday, although I could not attend the sessions in Thursday because of my class schedules. For three days, I attended several sessions as many as possible in my schedule. Thinking about whole sessions that I attended, by-and-large, I enjoyed them; especially, I was interested in how presenters interpreted their topics. This year, because of the main theme, Violence and Belonging, many presenters discussed their topics along social history; however, each presenter had their own unique views even presenters discuss same events or things. I belong to history department and have not had chances to know the perspectives from American Studies, so several things looked new and can learned new perspectives. In addition, many presenters came from department of English, and I had hardly shared with same topic from the persons in English department; however, this conference gave me such chances.
Among several sessions which I had attend, one of the interesting one was “Fairs, Pageants, and Spectacle” (8:00- 9:45 AM, October 17) chaired by Prof. Jonathan Silverman (department of English, Virginia Commonwealth University). Since my major field of interest was world’s fairs in the United States and how Japan was considered there when I studies in Tsuda College in Tokyo, I could share with some opinions with the presenters. In the session, four speakers presented each other as to world’s fairs.
All presenters talked in different perspectives and expositions. First speaker, Evie Terrono, focused on exhibits in world’s fairs and discussed the differences between images and fact of exhibits. Considering both, she mentioned how the impact of exhibitors was formed. The second speaker, Eden Osucha, focused on the Columbian Expositions in 1893 and the centennial celebration of landing by Columbus. She especially discussed the anti-movement against the celebration from racial perspective. The third speaker, Li Shao, focused on Chinese and its participation in two world’s fairs in the United States and engaged in the Chinese relationship with the United States. The last speaker, Marcia G. Synnott, focused on South Carolina and its cultural symbols. Although four speakers talked about different things, I enjoyed the different perspectives and learned how to deal with the world fair.
Other session which impressed me was one roundtable session titled “American Studies in Questions: Dialogues across Borders” (10:00-11:45 AM, October 17). It is very difficult to summarize what four panelists said because they spoke very different topics especially concerned with Latin America. The most useful thing that I got from the roundtable was how we combined history with recent events. I often think about how I contribute to the recent events by researching history and this session gave me a kind of hint in my future research.
In addition to getting useful things from attending sessions, another great thing was to communicate with many professors. Usually, I have not had chances to talk with professors; however, sharing with the same conference, I could get useful information and advice from them. Besides, meeting with other Japanese graduate students was very great. We talked each other a lot about our problems that we are facing in studying in the United States and some gave me good advice about my future and my study. We could share same spaces and extended our network.
Another thing that I learned was the way of presentation. Many presenters were very good at insisting on their opinions and attracting audience. Even in the small presentation in my class at graduate school, as for me, it is very hard to make other students understand my points and how to attract them. I knew that I could use eye contact and gestures in my presentation, but sometimes I do not know how to do so; however, attending several sessions, it was gradually clear to me.
The four days meeting in Hartford was worthwhile visiting and I hope I can get such opportunities again in my future. I also hope many students can get a same opportunity to attend such a big conference for their future careers.
Wakako Araki
First of all, I would like to express my deep appreciation and gratitude for the great opportunity to attend such an inspirational conference of American Studies Association.
Throughout the conference, I attended the following sessions: “Exclusions and Inclusions: Constructing/Confronting Cultural Violence in the Plantation Fiction of Postbellum America”; “Claiming Afghan Women: U.S. Feminism, Cyberspace, and the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) in the Post-9/11 Era”; “World War?and the Construction of Memory”; “New Visual Dispensation? Sex, Gender, and Race during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age”; “Playing Indian: Primitive and Self-Fashioning in Twentieth-Century American”; “Opportunities in Publishing: A Guide to the Publishing Process for Graduate Students”; “Return of the Radicalized: Violence, Legitimation, and the Limits of the Nation-State”; “Plenary Session: The State of War”; and ASA Presidential Address: “Violence and Belonging.“
Surely all of them are very beneficial, but I have to note most inspiring and impressive ones among them; these are “Playing Indian: Primitive and Self-Fashioning in Twentieth-Century American,“ Dr. Tariq Ali’s speech at the Plenary Session, and Presidential Address.
“Playing Indian” session was well organized in advance with excellent three papers delivered. Moreover, the commentator for the session, Dr. Louise Newman did not only acknowledge importance of each work, but also show the audience the relations and contribution of these papers to the different fields such as Cultural Anthropology, Native American Issues, Gender, Race, and U.S. History in general. Based on the issues addressed, Dr. Newman suggested further direction of the research with very insightful criticism to each paper as well as to the fields. It is this kind of moment when an international student of American Studies like me can relate to the study because issues dealt at the session contained interdisciplinary concerns, interrelations of differently “categorized” people, and multi-layered process of approaching “America.“
With similar reasons, I enjoyed Dr. Tariq Ali’s, and President Amy Kaplan’s address on the US-Empire’s influence on the war. Their speech was so important that I wish rest of all the scholars of American Studies in the world had heard it. Some of historical yet contemporary keywords and concepts addressed by Dr. Amy Kaplan (“American Exceptionalism,“ “Whitemen’s Burden,“ “Homeland Security,“ “Violence of Belonging” and “Alternative Spaces” are these examples) were excellent tools which help us see the situations and devices of US-British Empire today. Dr. Ali and Dr. Kaplan further questioned our role as a student and scholar of American Studies. Roles we play in the construction and reconstruction of the “Empire” are never less significant than those in the business and politics of the real world.
Therefore, as I have stated above, I gained not only theoretical-academic knowledge on American Studies, but maybe more significantly, I saw and learned responsibilities and positions to realize as a student of American Studies at this innovative association.
I am indeed very thankful for the opportunities provided for us by the ASA-JAAS project. I hope to be able to be any contribution for the Japan-US friendship project in the future.
Mikiko Tachi
Brown University
Thanks to the generous travel grant for JAAS graduate student members residing in the U.S., I had the opportunity to attend the American Studies Association Convention in Hartford, Connecticut (October 16-19, 2003). As a graduate student who recently gained an ABD status and started to work on a dissertation, I found the conference very helpful in looking for models of high-quality research. I attended as many sessions as I could in order to make the most of the experience. In particular, I was pleased to find a number of sessions on music, as my research topic is folk music in the U.S. and its influence in Japan. In addition to the panelists, some of the people in the audience were also interested in similar topics. I conversed and exchanged email addresses with some of them. It was encouraging to know other scholars, ranging from a senior professor to a postdoctoral fellow to a graduate student, who share research interests. I hope to be able to present a paper of my own in the future, and the people I met there would make a good network for forming panels. The conference reinforced my motivation in research.
One interesting experience in attending the conference was to get to see the authors of some of the books I read for the preliminary examination and referred to in my papers and dissertation proposal. These include Professor E. Taylor Atkins, the author of Blue Nippon, an ethnographical work on the history of jazz in Japan; Dr. Benjamin Filene, whose work on folk music, Romancing the Folk, was the most important secondary literature in my master’s thesis (to be precise, his work was still a dissertation when I was working on my thesis – I later read his book and even gave a lecture on it when I served as a TA last semester for a course on Popular Culture), and Professor Wini Breines, the author of Young, White, and Miserable, which discusses the 1950s youth discontent that set the stage for the social movements in the 1960s. I had also found her article on the distinction between the old left and the new left quite educational. I believe that I benefited from the conference even more as I had made myself familiar with major research in American studies, due to the rigorous study for the preliminary examination I took last year in December.
The conference was not only a place for academic exchange; it served as a place for reunions and meetings. I was glad to see professors from Japan, some of whom I had known before, and others I met for the first time (although their names were already familiar to me from books and journals). I also attended a gathering where graduates of Brown’s American Civilization Department reunited from across the country. For example, I got to see a classmate of mine who is doing research in California. It was nice to get up to date.
Following is the summary of sessions and meetings I attended:
Thursday (10/16)
“Participating in Mass Media: Consumption, Gender, and the Production of Citizenship” (10:00-11:45)
Research focus was on the audience of media. Of particular interest to me was a paper on the TV program “Judge Judy,“ which argued that the show and the judge promoted neoliberal value by criticizing lower-class women who rely on institutional support.
“Re-Orienting Orientalism: Asian Americans, Market, and Cultural Citizenship” (12:00-1:45)
The three papers concerned Asian Americans’ use of Orientalism in business. It was an interesting perspective and made me think about the classic question of oppression and agency – did the Asian American businessmen reinforce prejudice in exchange for profit, or did they exercise agency?
“Beyond Belonging: Performing the Traditional in Butoh, Blues, and JapanPop” (2:00-3:45)
The paper on blues was cancelled. The paper on JapanPop was very interesting – Professor Csaba Toth presented three streams of current JapanPop as symbolized by artists and places in Tokyo.
“Belonging to a Culture of Protest: Identity and Community in the 1960s Antiwar Movement” (4:00-5:45)
The papers brought in the perspectives of gender and sexual minorities to the culture of protest, which tends to be understood in terms of conventional masculinity.
Reception for International Scholars and Visitors (6:00-7:30)
It was a good occasion to meet scholars from abroad and to get to meet professors and graduate students from Japan.
Friday (10/17)
“Inside Out?: Storytelling, Place, and the Power of the Particular” (8:00-9:45)
A roundtable centered on the question of how one can make a case by using a specific story such as a biography. The interchange of the particular and the general was indeed an interesting topic.
“Race War in Twentieth-Century U.S. History” (10:00-11:45)
The papers underscored the important role race played in U.S. diplomacy, particularly in wars. A paper on the Asian American movement against the Vietnam War was an interesting one, as the war was racially charged.
ASA-JAAS Meeting
The luncheon meeting allowed me and other graduate students to meet with professors in liaison between the ASA and JAAS.
“Misrecognitions, or Racial Casting” (4:00-5:45)
Intriguing topics from the three papers concerning race and theater include: the interchangeability of minorities such as Latino/Arab in casting and the meanings of racial masks – blackface associated with “naturalness” and yellowface with “foreignness.“ The presenters’ use of language was impressive.
Saturday (10/18)
“The Way We Come with Such Brute Force: Musical Violence and/as Community” (8:00-9:45)
Hip-hop and country music, the two contrasting genres of music, were examined in terms of the meanings of violence. One paper, for example, examined the Dixie Chicks and their humorous anti-domestic violence song “Good Bye Earl” to argue that the apparent violence associated with the murder of “Earl” was more symbolic than literal.
“Women Who Fly: Black Women, Popular Music, and the Quest for Community” (10:00-11:45)
The papers included one by a former executive in the music industry. The behind-the-scene story of how the industry was run complemented the other papers, which focused on the artists from scholarly perspectives.
“Confronting and Refiguring the Past: Historical Memories of Violence in American Literary Culture” (2:00-3:45)
The panelists were all Michigan graduate students. Among them, the paper on The Wind Done Gone, a recent parody of Gone with the Wind, was interesting; so was the paper on the evangelical movement among transnational Puerto Rican communities where preachers use music and working-class representations of Jesus Christ.
“Religion: Beginnings and End Times” (4:00-5:45)
The topics ranged from early Puritans to contemporary evangelical missionary activities in Haiti, and so this was the most eclectic panel. I was particularly interested in the paper about narratives and the rhetoric of evangelists as seen in their recruiting video.
“Plenary Session: The State of War” (6:00-7:30)
This was an informative session, as panelists explained and analyzed the current war in Iraq. For example, Professor Judith Butler gave a talk about the possible consequences of the recent Patriot Act. She expressed her concern that this act may result in a violation of the civil rights of men of color and non-citizens in the future. The presentations were followed by questions and comments by the audience, which at times became heated. I thought it was a very important event as this was where scholars got together to think about current issues.
In conclusion, I am very glad and grateful that I was chosen as the recipient of this grant. I would like to thank the ASA and JAAS for making this trip possible.
Shiho Imai
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History
Brown University
The ASA-JAAS project was a wonderful opportunity for graduate students to reach beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries to explore the field of American Studies. Not only did the program introduce us to outstanding scholars from the U.S. and Japan, but also allow us to engage in meaningful discussion through this year’s theme, “Violence and Belonging.“ In the sessions that I attended alone, the topics ranged from radio in wartime to present-day “gated communities” with far reaching implications for feminism as well as labor and race relations in the U. S. The program made me realize how fortunate we are to be able to exchange our ideas with scholars of diverse backgrounds to enrich our understanding of American history and culture. The annual meeting has led me to reexamine my own work and pedagogy to reflect recent scholarship and address some of its pressing issues. Being able to experience the thrill of presenting a paper and join in on the camaraderie among graduate students made this experience all the more exciting. Thank you for inviting me to participate in the program. I look forward to the next ASA meeting in Atlanta.
Naoko Kurabayashi
University of Virginia
Department of History
It was my great honor and pleasure to attend the annual meeting of American Studies Association thanks to the grant provided by the ASA-JAAS project. It was my first time to participate in an academic conference in the United States. I enjoyed some sessions I attended as well as meetings with other members of ASA and JAAS. I was very excited at the conference in which scholars in various fields gathered from all over the world. I had a great time at Hartford.
I attended several sessions. I chose not only the sessions focusing on the United States, but also the ones that had transnational perspectives. In particular, I enjoyed three of them: “World War II and the Construction of Memory,“ “Americas Studies in Question: Dialogues across Borders,“ and “Far and Away: Imperial Longing in the Formation of Early U.S. Cultures.“
The most interesting session for me was “World War II and the Construction of Memory.“ I am interested in “memory,“ which sets the latest trend in American studies. I was surprised at the diversity of objects each scholar analyzed. Ms. Abele analyzed the novels about World War II. Mr. Yaguchi did research on the reactions of Japanese visitors to the Arizona Memorial. Ms. Kishimoto focused on Japanese and American mass media broadcasting the issue of apologies for atrocities their ancestors did during World War II. Of particular, I was very interested in the presentations by two Japanese because I was very familiar to the topics. Both scholars mentioned that the memory of World War II still remained among most of the Japanese, especially older people who directly experienced the war. Since the impact of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, many Japanese feel that they are victims and overlook the atrocities they and their ancestors did in Asia during the war. Ms. Kishisimoto mentioned the conservative reaction of Japanese mass media to the issue of apologies coming to the surface in 1995. She was critical of Japanese education in which students learn a part of history that was favorable to Japan. I agree with her. We need to interpret our history from various points of view and convey well-balanced history to the next generation. In addition to the presentations, I enjoyed the questions and comments the audience made. The audience asked many questions, compared Japanese with Europeans (especially German), and discussed this issue very well. I realized that the memory of World War II should be analyzed beyond the border. (It should be a transnational issue.)
The session of “Americas Studies in Question” was interesting to me, too. In this roundtable discussion, scholars in various fields (area studies besides the United States—Latin America and Caribbean) discussed the relation between the United States and the areas they are studying. The issues with which they dealt were diaspora, transnationality, civic society, public space, and globalization. They made a presentation for 10-15 minutes each and led discussion by answering many questions from the audience. The reason why I enjoyed this session is that it was full of information new to me. It was a little difficult for me to completely understand the discussion. Since I major in American history now, I always focus on the United States only. I had little knowledge about Latin American and Caribbean countries that had been greatly influenced by the United States because of their physical and psychological (as for Creoles to blacks in the US) closeness. These countries had different history from the one we understood from US perspectives. This session reminded me that I saw only “metropolis,“ not “periphery.“ The discussion between panelists and the audience worked very well. The room was full of people, and some could not be seated. So many people asked questions, and there was not enough time to cover all questions. I was greatly impressed by the audience’s great interest in the issue.
As for the session, “Far and Away: Imperial Longing in the Formation of Early U.S. Cultures,“ I enjoyed last two presentations in particular. The first presentation on Native Hawaiian Identity was interesting to me, too. It used books and Disney movie to analyze the melancholy feelings of the Native Hawaiians. But I was more interested in the other two presentations on early republic, for I just read the books on it before coming to Hartford. It was my first time to listen to the presentations by scholars in English. Their insight focusing on time and place to analyze early republic culture was new to me. I was interested in the argument by Mr. Grasberg that the national identity succeeded in terms of space (land) through generation, for example, from Jefferson’s empire for liberty to Turner’s frontier. I could compare these presentations with the discussion I had in class at UVA a few days before. These presentations would be helpful for me in developing my thinking on the republican virtue, which I think is an important tradition to understand the United States.
In addition to the annual meeting itself, I enjoyed the communication with professors and graduate students. The lunch-on was a precious opportunity to talk with the executives of ASA and JAAS. I was stimulated by the meeting with graduate students who was studying in the US. Most of them had studied in the US for a long time, so I got much useful information from them. I thought it would be much better if more graduate students participated in the annual meeting.
As a whole, I was very satisfied with the conference. Each session stimulated me very much. I was very surprised that the audience asked so many questions and sometimes had a heated discussion with speakers. I understood what the academic conference was. I got new knowledge about American studies from various presentations and discussions. Since the American Studies included various kinds of fields as well as history, I was sometimes greatly impressed by fresh insights the speakers showed. I had a precious opportunity to hear many opinions from various perspectives. The talk with professors and graduate students outside the sessions would be very helpful in broadening my horizons, too. I recommend other graduate students to apply this grant, even if they are busy in the middle of the semester. I hope more graduate students will get a chance to participate in the ASA annual meeting and communicate with other scholars and graduate students next year.
Azusa Ono
University of Oklahoma
Department of History
Different scholarly organizations have varied agendas and goals to achieve. While some organizations devote themselves to polishing researches of one discipline, others include scholars of different disciplines crossing the borders between them. The American Studies Association (ASA) annual meeting of 2003 showed a good example of the latter type of organizations that try to examine issues with interdisciplinary approaches. During the meeting, entitled “Violence and Belonging,“ many participants showed examples of how scholars of different disciplines can examine the shared issues by exchanging ideas and approaching the issues from different angles.
The ASA meeting was the very first ASA conference that I had ever attended. Because of my few experiences in participating in scholarly meetings, I was thrilled to listen to various presentations and to have conversations with scholars of different disciplines. Thanks to the great presentations of panelists and scholars who gave me chances to discuss our research, I could realize both of my expectations. During the meeting, I could expose myself to the broader perspectives of different areas of research, including the Native American history, which is my own research area. Considering my future career as a teacher in Japanese colleges, I have acknowledged the need to cover a wide range of areas in addition to my own interested areas. The meeting gave me an opportunity to explore possibilities to expand my research objectives and methods.
During the meeting, I tried to participate in as many sessions as possible so that I could absorb a lot of information and learn from scholars over disciplinary boundaries. I have a special interest in the Native Americans and thus tried to attend the sessions presenting issues of the Native Americans. Simultaneously, however, I participated in the sessions dealing with gender and ethnic issues. In sum, I attended seven sessions as well as the presidential address. Every session gave me new insights, introduced different approaches to problems, and showed possibilities of scholarly collaboration. Although I found every session I attended interesting in different ways, several of these sessions gave stronger impressions than others because of their connections with my own research areas and interests.
The session, entitled “Panthers, Paranoias, Pathologies,“ was one of these exceptionally informative sessions and gave me a lot of inspirations regarding how I can locate my study of the post-WWII Native American history in a larger framework of American studies. Three papers presented in the session took different approaches to the Black Panther Party and each paper exemplified a variety of possible approaches to a shared theme. The paper presented by Ms. Masumi Izumi, entitled “Sharing the Memories of Violence: Minority, Dissidents, and the ‘American Concentration Camp Law,‘“ especially helped me to imagine my future research in American Studies. Ms. Izumi’s paper, examining how radicals of ethnic minorities reacted to a rumor to create concentration camps for political radicals and aliens, placed the Japanese-Americans’ experience of the detention camps as a historical event that also threatened other minority groups as well. She found connections between radicals of different minority groups regardless of their ethnicity, and how they shared memories of the concentration camps during WWII. By crossing over ethnic differences and time periods, we can find a conventional attitude of the United States government against ethnic minorities and aliens as well as similarities of reactions from the minorities.
While many sessions focused on presenting scholarly examinations of deep research topics, some sessions focused on rather practical problems we face and gave suggestions to solve these issues. The session titled “Borders and Belonging: The Challenge of Working across (Inter) Disciplinary Boundaries” was one of the examples which took this style of approach. By revealing the issues they themselves have faced being minority female scholars, the panelists raised questions over how American studies can collaborate with gender or women studies. It was shocking to listen to the personal experiences of panelists, and discriminating activities of their colleagues. These activities not only hurt their feelings, but also reaffirmed the hardship to be a minority female or homosexual scholar. Their stories revealed how minority female scholars are expected to act in a certain way as an Asian-American woman or as a Chicana. The panel exposed the existence of the boundary between ethnic studies and women studies, and how we can address these issues. The session of “Native American Studies and the ASA: Indigenous Presence in Comparison” was another example of sessions that raised questions over the interdisciplinary approaches, and showed how we can apply the method to our own research areas. Three paper presenters addressed the shared experience among the African Americans and the American Indians and the issues of mixed race of Africans and Native Americans. Through their presentations, the panelists showed an innovative avenue of comparative research in different races.
The sessions also represented a new trend of scholarly research. Since the 1960s when the civil rights movement of ethnic minority groups and women voiced their grievances for their exclusion from American history, historians, especially social historians and ethnohistorians, have searched for the way to address these resentments. They have focused on a certain cultural, ethnic, and gender group to research and sought to create divided American histories for minorities. Recently many scholars seem to step forward and find the importance in the relationships between different ethnic, racial, cultural, and socioeconomic groups. Many presentations at the ASA conference represented this trend and showed examples of potential applications.
One of the outstanding experiences I had during the meeting was that I could have conversations with scholars of various disciplines with diverse interests. Through the conversations with them, I realized the importance of broad-mindedness in our research and the possibility of collaborations with non-historians. Because of the long-sustained tendency to find interests in microscopic historical subjects, historians have long been criticized for their separation from other disciplines and pinpointed approaches to the research objectives. Recently, however, the Native American historians try to utilize studies of different disciplines, such as anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, geography, and sociology. The personal conversations with scholars of other disciplines enabled me to sense how I can employ non-historians’ research into my projects.
It was a great honor for me to be able to participate in the ASA meeting with generous financial support without which I could not have had this outstanding experience. I am more than thankful and satisfied with the outcome of my participation in the meeting. I learned from various portions of the conference and had an opportunity to reconsider how to direct my own research projects. I look forward to attend the meeting held next year and hope that I can also contribute to further development of the ASA by presenting papers in the near future.
Quick Links
American Quarterly [official journal site]
American Quarterly [editorial site]