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ASA-JAAS
ASA-JAAS Delegate Report 2005
Report to the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, American Studies Association, Japanese Association for American Studies, and the United States Department of State on the ASA-JAAS Project June 2005
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, ASA President, 2004-2005
Stanford University
June 30, 2005
Overview
It is a privilege and a pleasure to submit this report on behalf of the American Studies Association (ASA) on the 2005 program sponsored by the Japan-United States Friendship Commission (JUFC), the Japanese Association for American Studies (JAAS), and the U.S. State Department. Each year this program brings the ASA president and two competitively-selected U.S. American Studies Scholars to participate in the JAAS annual meeting, and to offer additional lectures, seminars and informal discussions at universities across Japan. The two scholars are supported by the Japanese-U.S. Friendship Commission, and the ASA president is supported by the U.S. State Department.
Under the auspices of JAAS and the American Embassy in Tokyo, the ASA president (Prof. Shelley Fisher Fishkin of Stanford University) gave a keynote talk at the JAAS annual conference, lectured at four Japanese universities, and participated in a seminar with the Kansai Mark Twain Circle. In addition, support from the American Studies Association of Korea (ASAK) and the American Embassy in Seoul made it possible for the ASA president to give two talks in Korea. Each of the two ASA delegates (Prof. Carla Peterson of the University of Maryland and Prof. Patricia Chu of The George Washington University) presented a paper at the JAAS conference, and each also lectured at several universities in Japan. The organizers of these events melded conscientious and astute planning with gracious hospitality to maximize the number of productive exchanges that took place. Each of us had memorable conversations and discussions and forged friendships that are likely to last long after our return, as our individual reports make clear.
The ASA is honored to collaborate with the Japanese American Studies Association, the American Studies Association of Korea, and the cultural/public affairs offices of the U.S. Department of State on this hugely successful joint venture in educational exchange.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford University,
President, The American Studies Association
Speaking Tour of Japan and South Korea, June 2005 Report of the President of the American Studies Association, for the American Studies Association, Japanese Association for American Studies, American Studies Association of Korea, and the United States Department of State
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford University
President, American Studies Association 2004-2005
The planning that preceded my visit to Japan and Korea was outstanding. I am grateful to all of the individuals who worked so hard to organize such a rich schedule, and to make it work. In particular, I am would like to thank to JAAS President Daizaburo Yui; JAAS International Committee chair Naoki Onishi, JAAS International Liaison Officer Julie Higashi, and JAAS International Committee members Juri Abe, Hisako Yanaka, Noriko Shimada, and Masako Notoji; JAAS staff member Kyoko Aoki; and ASAK President Sook-Won Shin and ASAK members Professors Miseong Woo and Jae H. Roe for all their hard work, and for all they did to make me feel so very much at home. I would also like to thank to staff members of the U.S. Embassies in Tokyo and Seoul: In Tokyo, particularly Mark J. Davidson, PAO/CAO and his wife Kuniko Davidson, as well as Program Development Officer Margot Carrington, Deputy Director of the Tokyo America Center Joanne Gilles, and embassy staff members Erica Wada and Yoko Hatakeyama; and in Seoul, Donald Q. Washington PAO/CAO at the U.S. Embassy and CAO Joanne Martin and Embassy staff member Kyung A Chung. I am grateful to all of the Executive Committee members of JAAS and of ASAK for all they do to steer their organizations so deftly. I appreciate the guidance—and the welcome—they provided. I also want to note the outstanding effort that ASA delegates Professors Carla Peterson and Patricia Chu put into their respective engagements and activities in Japan. It was a great treat to share this adventure with both of these fine scholars.
My chronological narrative below will provide a clearer sense of why I return home so energized and exhilarated by the experiences of the last two weeks. For now, suffice it to say that I return home with a host of new ideas, and at least as many new friends—and a sense of enormous excitement. I leave Japan and Korea with two new intriguing scholarly projects, as well—collaborative ventures with Asian colleagues that were conceived during this trip.
Thursday June 2nd
Prof. Julie Higashi of Ritsumeikan University, JAAS International Liaison Officer, met me and Prof. Carla Peterson, at Kansai International Airport in Osaka. It was fascinating to hear about Prof. Higashi’s scholarship on historic sites and museums in the U.S., Japan, and Germany involving World War II; and it was also intriguing to hear about her research involving the joint World War II textbook project embarked on by Japan, Korea and China. After Prof. Higashi got us comfortably settled at the Shiran Kaikan Annex of Kyoto University, Prof. Peterson and I ventured out to find a bite to eat before all the restaurants closed. Serendipity struck when we decided to try out a small local eatery where the staff made up for our inability to speak Japanese and their inability to speak English through creativity, gestures and laughter. Supper was delicious.
Friday, June 3rd
After sleeping off some jetlag, Prof. Peterson and I explored some of Kyoto. In search of either breakfast or lunch—we weren’t particular—we wandered into a charming tea house near the Sanjusangendo Temple where we were served refreshing cold noodle dishes, fruit, sweets made from beans, and green tea, as we relaxed on mats in a peaceful room. Afterwards we visited the impressive 700-year-old Sanjusangendo Temple with 1001 golden statues of Kannon, and the Kyoto National Museum, where I particularly liked the exhibits of calligraphy and ceramics.
That evening JAAS hosted a sumptuous small opening reception at the restaurant attached to Shiran Kaikan Annex. With International Committee chair Professor Naoki Onishi as master of ceremonies, there were greetings and short speeches by a distinguished group of current and former JAAS Presidents including Prof. Daizaburo Yui, Prof. Tadashi Aruga (who is also Chair of the American Studies Foundation), Prof. Toyoomi Nagata, chancellor of Ritsumeikan University and Prof. Yasuo Sakakibara. Prof. of Economics Emeritus, Doshisha. Professor Aruga also provided a history of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission. The international delegates from the U.S. and Korea were introduced and I made some remarks.
It was a pleasure to see many old friends, and to make new ones. It was good to get reacquainted with colleagues like Prof. Takashi Sasaki, whom I had first gotten to know in 1999 when I gave a keynote talk at the Kyoto American Studies Summer Seminar, and other colleagues whom I met at that gathering, or at subsequent ASA meetings in the U.S.—including Professor Masako Notoji and Professor Hiroko Sato. I had known of Prof. Sakakibara through the prize in his name that the ASA awards annually for the best paper presented at the ASA meeting by an international scholar. It was a nice surprise to find that the prize’s namesake was a scholar as charming as he was distinguished, who surprised me by extending a gracious invitation to me to visit his nineteenth-century farmhouse for lunch on Monday. It was also at this reception that I got reacquainted with JAAS board member Professor Takayuki Tatsumi, whom I had first met several years ago at a Modern Language Association conference at which he had invited me to be on the editorial board of the English-language Japanese journal Mark Twain Studies. Last year, Prof. Tatsumi had invited me to contribute to the first issue of the journal, and I was happy to comply. I had not suspected at the time that when the journal would appear in the fall of 2004 it would be one of the most important publications of the year on Mark Twain.
As we chatted about Prof. Tatsumi’s stellar success with the journal, an idea occurred to me that I shared. Having recently returned from a conference in China on “America at War and at Peace” at which I had given a talk that included a discussion of Mark Twain’s “War Prayer,“ I realized that this extremely important piece had received virtually no critical attention at any time during the hundred years since Twain wrote it. Wouldn’t it be interesting for Mark Twain Studies to sponsor an international forum of short comments from Twains scholars all over the world on this major neglected piece? Prof. Tatsumi immediately recognized the potential value of such a project, shared my excitement about it, and made plans to propose it to the journal’s editorial board. I offered to help in any way that would be useful—including co-editing the forum with Prof. Tatsumi—an offer he readily accepted.
Kyoko Aoki, an elegant and genial woman who is about to retire as secretary of JAAS, and who served the organization ably for many years, was presented with a bouquet of flowers and a hearty round of applause.
After the reception a group of us adjourned to a nearby wine bar where Professor Kazuto Oshio treated us to drinks. Others, in addition to Professors Chu, Peterson and myself, included Prof. Sook-Won Shin, Prof. Fumiko Nichizaki, Professor Tayakuki Tatsumi, and his graduate student, Keiko Shirakawa, who told me about her work on Whitman, and later gave me an essay she published on Whitman’s novel Franklin Evans.
Later that evening I had the chance to chat with one of the ASA delegates whom I had not had the pleasure of meeting previously, Professor Patricia Chu, who delighted me by giving me a signed copy of her fine book, Assimilating Asians: Gendered Strategies of Authorship in Asian America—-a book from which I had learned a great deal, and cited in my keynote address, but not a book that I personally owned. I’m very glad to have it.
Saturday, June 4th
During the Japanese-only portion of the JAAS conference in the morning Prof. Naoki Onishi had the inspired idea of inviting me to visit the house/museum of the famed Japanese potter and sculptor Kawai Kanjiro with him. It was an outing I enjoyed very much. It gave us the opportunity to chat about plans for JAAS’s 40th anniversary conference next year, and it gave me a chance to hear about Prof. Onishi’s current translation project. We returned to Kyoto University, the conference site, in time for a pleasant lunch at a French restaurant at Kyoto University with colleagues. President Daizaburo Yui gave me a very gracious introduction and I delivered my keynote talk on “Asian Crossroads: The Transnational Turn in American Studies.“ Traditionally, the ASA President has repeated at the JAAS conference the Presidential Address he or she delivered at the ASA Annual Meeting the preceding fall. But given the unusually large number of Japanese scholars who had participated in the ASA meeting in Atlanta as a result of the ASA’s International Initiative, JAAS had asked me to write a largely new talk. I confess that initially I was taken aback by this request, since I had had a year to work on the first talk, and didn’t know where I would find the time in my already over-committed spring schedule to write a new one before June. Now that it is behind me, I’d like to thank JAAS for having made that request: for it led me investigate a rich array of fascinating topics that have diverted my research in enormously fruitful new directions.
I maintained that for over a hundred and fifty years, the movement of goods, ideas, and people across borders wove Asia into the very fabric of what made the U.S. what it was—and U.S. culture has left its mark on Asian cultures for over a hundred and fifty years, as well. In the 21st century, we are increasingly recognizing that understanding these moments of interaction, intersection, contact, conflict, appropriation, appreciation, synergy, and synapse—conscious or unconscious, familiar or fresh—is a key part of our task as scholars in American Studies. Understanding the cultural crossroads of the U.S. and Asia that shape our world is increasingly central to what it means to be a scholar of American Studies today.
Like my Presidential Address, the talk asked what topics and questions become salient if we reconceive our field with the transnational at its center, and what roles comparative, collaborative, border-crossing research might play in this reconfigured field. But while my ASA Presidential address had included a few examples involving Asia, my JAAS talk took Asia as its central focus, exploring recent scholarship on points of connection and exchange with Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other Asian nations. Research I discussed included studies by Henry Yu, Laura Hyun-Yi Kang, Laura Ho, Catherine Powell, Leti Volpp, Mai Ngai, and Catherine Choy of how Pacific migrations have shaped American cities, workplaces, immigration policies, and professions; recent re-examinations by Gordon Chang, Jim Zwick, Angel Velasco Shaw, Luis Francia, Yukiko Koshiro, Ji-Yeon Yuh, and others of America’s wars in Asia and their aftermath—the U.S.-Korean War of 1871, the Philippine-American War, the Korean War, World War II, and the Vietnam War; recent explorations in books by Viet Thanh Nguyen, David Lei Li, Jinqui Ling, Elena Tajima Creef, and Patricia Chu of the ways in which racism and sexism have inflected concepts of nationhood and citizenship from a transpacific perspective; recent research by Kun Jong Lee, Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong, Niaz Zaman, Teruyo Ueki, and Fukuko Kobayashi on how Asian traditions and perspectives inform and elucidate Asian-American literature; Teemu Ruskola’s research on the place of the “District of China” in the U.S. legal system; Hitome Nabae’s study of how translations of l9th-century American fiction into Japanese helped change the Japanese language; and Tsuyoshi Ishihara’s study of how Japanese popular literature and popular culture assimilated and “Japanized” Mark Twain.
The “Asian Crossroads” framework made it possible for me to discuss border-crossing figures like the great Chicano writer Americo Paredes, who let lessons he learned as a journalist in Occupation Japan inform his understanding of the dynamics of the hybrid culture in which he grew up along the Texas-Mexico border—as Professor Ramón Saldívar tells us in his book, The Borderlands of Culture, coming out this fall); or a border-crosser in the opposite direction, Japanese feminist Ayako Ishigaki, who interpreted Japanese culture for Americans in the 20s and ‘30s, and then interpreted America for the Japanese during the Occupation—as Yi-Chun Tricia Lin and Greg Robinson remind us in the new edition of her memoir, Restless Wave, that they published last year). It also allowed me to talk about a border-crossing fiction writer like Karen Tei Yamashita and border-crossing visual artists like Zhang Hongtu and Wang Guangyi, or a border-crossing performance artist like Zhang Huan.
This framework also encouraged me to spotlight recent comparative examinations of the ways in which the public memory of Asian crossroads and contact zones is constructed through commemoration, monument, education and historical narrative—the focus of recent anthology, Perilous Memories edited by T. Fujitani, Geoffrey White and Lisa Yoneyama, a book which makes clear that U.S. is not the only nation struggling with how to address painful, conflict-ridden chapters of the past involving World War II (a topic, that is central to Julie Higashi’s research, as well, as I learned in Kyoto, ). How are painful and often embarrassing chapters of history best dealt with in history textbooks, monuments, and museums? Perhaps the transnational turn in American Studies will foster more comparative examinations of these issues, exploring ways in which textbooks in the U.S. and Japan have dealt with phenomena such as the U.S. imperialist designs on the Philippines and Japan’s imperialist designs on China and Korea; or the U.S.‘s displacement of thousands of Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II and Japan’s use of Korean, Chinese and other Asian women as “comfort women” or sex slaves for Japanese soldiers in that era. A comparative study of how both democratic nations have handled the challenge of redress, reparation and apology for past injustice would be likely to yield instructive perspectives on the battles over history on both sides of the Pacific. This issue proved to be particularly timely given the fact that the unprecedented history textbook being jointly written by Japanese, Korean and Chinese scholars and published in all three languages was in the headlines during the time I was in Asia. I was also interested to learn—and many scholars agreed on this point—that most Japanese history classes never reached the twentieth century before the school year ended, thus obviating the challenge of dealing with the most troublesome portions of Japanese history. (Interestingly, one scholar at the conference, Jun Kinoshita, emailed me after the end of the conference suggesting that I date the textbook controversies in Japan not to the 1980s, as the sources I consulted had, but rather to the mid-1950s. I was grateful for this correction.)
It was a pleasure to highlight individual studies by Japanese and Korean scholars that had impressed me during my research, as well as recent interesting anthologies like Crossed Memories: Perspectives on 9/11 and American Power, edited by Laura Hein and Daizaburo Yui and English-language journals published in Asia that deserve to have a greater impact on the field of American Studies (such as the Japanese Journal of American Studies and Japan’s Mark Twain Studies).
And it was an even greater pleasure to become acquainted with so much other fine work by Japanese and Korean scholars during this trip. Many of these scholars introduced themselves to me during the afternoon following my talk, or at the wonderful reception JAAS and Kyoto University threw that evening. I was pleased to accept the invitation of our Kyoto University hosts to make some remarks at the reception, since this gave me a chance not only to thank Kyoto University and JAAS for having organized such an extraordinarily stimulating conference, but also to recognize JAAS’s role in shaping the ASA’s International Initiative, a topic I had not previously addressed. I noted that my observations of the fruitfulness of the long-term exchanges that had been in place between JAAS and the ASA figured prominently in my decision to seek funds to launch the ASA’s International Initiative: scholars all over the world have benefited as a result. I commended JAAS for its strong commitment to international exchange and communication, and for inviting delegates from Korea (Prof. Sook-Won Shin and Prof. Yong-Jin Won) as well as the U.S. to its annual meeting. Building bonds of mutual understanding through such exchanges is a key part of laying the groundwork for a time of peace in which scholars are free to explore ideas in untrammeled ways.
Seemingly endless attractive trays of sushi, tempura, many varieties smoked fish, and all sorts of other delicacies kept arriving at a long buffet table at the center of the ballroom while lively conversations could be heard in every corner of the room. Prof. Masako Notoji introduced me to a scholar who she said could answer some questions I had raised in my talk: Prof. Sanehide Kodama, with whom I had a fascinating conversation on US-Japanese cultural cross-currents and sources on the topic, some of which, alas, were available only in Japanese. I was pleased to be made aware of his book, American Poetry and Japanese Culture, which, I am ashamed to say, I had not seen, despite the fact that it was published two decades ago in the U.S. I was also intrigued to learn from him about the role that Russian-American Jews had played in funding Japan in the Russo-Japanese War. I chatted with scholars whose talks I had not been able to attend, since they were presented in Japanese—such as Reiko Tomisawa, who had given a paper on Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois.
It was frustrating that so many of the interesting papers were presented at Japanese-only sessions. But even if I couldn’t attend a sessions, I was sometimes able to connect with a scholar whose paper interested me. I told several people, for example, that I wanted to meet Megumi Yamauchi, who had given a paper on a neglected work by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I wanted to tell her about the International Gilman Conference to be held in the U.S. a year from now. Although we never connected in Kyoto, she got my message and as a result of our email exchanges. As co-founder of the Gilman Society, I was particularly intrigued to learn that she was the author of the first Ph.D. dissertation written on Gilman in Japan. She is planning to propose a paper for the Gilman conference next year.
My one suggestion for making the JAAS-ASA exchange even more productive would be to have some additional sessions at the conference conducted in English.
At the reception (and during the afternoon, as I sat the lobby of Kyoto University), a stream of Japanese scholars introduced themselves to me. Professor Kyoko Norma Nozaki surprised me by presenting me with a copy of her book Singing My Own Song. I particularly look forward to reading her chapter on the work of Janice Mirikitani, one of my favorite contemporary poets. Throughout the afternoon and evening I continued to meet Japanese experts on literature, history, art, politics and economics, as well as a number of Americans teaching at Japanese universities—such as Prof. Evan Heimlich, who told me about the Jewish community in Kobe, where he teaches, and raised some of the challenges facing American academics teaching in Japan; and Prof. William Cohen, a Fulbright professor and native of Brooklyn, New York, where I was born. It was wonderful to see Professor Masago Igawa, a prominent Twain scholar, again. It was she who had had the inspired idea back in 1999 of inviting me to the KASSS conference, and I had enjoyed getting to know her on that occasion. She always had astute insights and imaginative ideas that surprised me. Tonight was no different in that respect: what happened, she asked me, to change Toni Morrison’s mind about Huck Finn between Playing in the Dark and the introduction she wrote for Huck Finn in your Oxford Mark Twain edition? There was, indeed, a difference between Morrison’s early and later discussions of Twain’s most famous novel, but nobody had ever mentioned it before. At least part the change, I responded, might be attributed to conversations Morrison and I had about the book during the intervening years.
When the reception ended, and the international scholars returned to Shiran Kaikan Annex, Prof. Sook-won Shin, Prof. Patricia Chu and I were on such an energized intellectual high that we decided to take a late-night walk and headed down to the river, still buzzing with ideas that had been percolating during the day—and with new ones that came up: for example I was intrigued to learn from Prof. Sook-Won Shin that the word for “translation” in Korean – “bun yuk” is almost the same as the word for “betrayal” – “ban yuk.“ It was fun to ponder what that might mean.
Sunday, June 5th
After coffee with Professor Carla Peterson, and Professor Fumiko Nichizaki, who told me about her plans to publish my JAAS keynote address in the Japanese Journal of American Studies, which she edits, I attended a conference workshop on “Hip-hopping America: Dimensions of Mainstreaming Subcultures,“ chaired by Professor Kyoko Nozaki, where a series of excellent papers were presented. Prof. Patricia Chu spoke on “Hip-hopping to Japan and Back: Japanese American Narratives of ‘Return,‘“ discussing the “the basic model of return as a sort of uncanny homecoming”—in the work of Japanese American writers including nisei writer Monica Sone (Nisei Daughter), and sansei authors including Dorinne Kondo, Lydia Minatoya, and David Mura. She also examined Dear Miye: Letters Home from Japan, 1939-1946 by Mary Kimoto Tomita. A Korean delegate, Prof. Yong-Jin Won, spoke on “Model Minority Strategy and Asian American’ Tactics,“ subtly exploring the complex ideological functions of “Model Minority” discourse in the U.S., and strategies developed by Asian Americans to deal with that discourse. And Prof. Yasumasa Fujinaga gave a lively powerpoint-illustrated talk on “The Life and Times of Tupac Shakur: A Griot of Inner-city America and Commodified African American Radicalism.“ All of the papers were stimulating, as was the question-and-answer period which followed.
After a nice lunch with colleagues in the French restaurant at Kyoto University, I attended a workshop on “Negotiating the National and the International in the American Experiences” chaired by Prof. Fumiko Nishizaki. Professor Carla Peterson spoke on “African Americans and the Quest for Citizenship: Constructing Local, National, and Cosmopolitan Identities (1830-1930).“ She explored the “small, but culturally significant number of African Americans” who, since the 1830s, “envisioned themselves as cosmopolitans” who “enjoyed the experience of being ‘citizens of the world’” and who “also brought “their newly acquired knowledge back to their communities to reshape local practices.“ Her talk explored ante-bellum black New Yorkers who articulated “links between local, global and national concerns,“ as well as postbellum black diplomats such as Frederick Douglass, Archibald Grimke, James Weldon Johnson, and Richard Greener, who represented the U.S. in Haiti; Santo Domingo; Puerto Cabello, Venezuela; Corinto, Nicaragua, and Vladivostok. Professor Toyoki Hosono spoke on “National and Subnational Aspects of United States Environmental Diplomacy,“ focusing on the Bush administration’s strategy of questioning “the validity of the science of climate change” as a rationale for rejecting international diplomatic agreements on environmental issues. (His paper took on added significance later in the week, when both U.S. and Japanese newspapers ran stories on the White House staff member who had been “editing” printed reports of government-authorized scientific commissions in the U.S. in a way that distorted the level of the scientists’ certainty regarding their explanations of global climate change.). And Yasuhiro Izumikawa spoke on “U.S.-Japan Diplomatic Bargaining on the Soviet-Japanese Normalization Talks,“ making me aware of a range of negotiations about contested territory with which I had not been previously familiar. Once again, a lively discussion followed. All six papers that I heard were very interesting, and I learned new things from each of them.
That evening we had a delightful dinner on the outdoor veranda of a Chinese restaurant overlooking the river, hosted by Professor Naoki Onishi. Guests included all of the American and Korean delegates, as well as Professor Masako Notoji, Professor Juri Abe, and JAAS secretary, Kyoko Aoki. I enjoyed hearing Prof. Notoji talk about her current research on a fascinating 19th-century American performer, Lola Montez, and I enjoyed hearing Juri Abe talk about her anthropological work on the Sioux. The evening concluded with a pleasant after-dinner stroll through Kyoto streets vibrant with night life and vendors, where Professor Onishi introduced his Korean and American guests to a popular Japanese delicacy cooked at a street side stand: hot octopus fritters.
Monday June 7th
Professors Peterson, Chu, Shin, and I took an early-morning excursion to the beautiful temple at Kiyomizudera, where ebullient Japanese children having fun on a school field trip competed with the graceful temple and striking views for our attention. Professor Takashi Sasaki then took me and Professor Peterson to Doshisha University for a meeting with the university’s president and other officials. Dr. Eiji Hatta, President of Doshisha, welcomed us into his office, where we had a brief but very pleasant meeting with him, and with Dr. Masahiro Hosoya, Dean of the Graduate School of American Studies at Doshisha, and also Dr. Nobuyuki Yamauchi, Director of the Center for American Studies at Doshisha. President Hatta surprised us with a thoughtful gift. It was interesting to encounter New England-style buildings throughout the Doshisha campus, and to hear about the longstanding relationship between Doshisha and Amherst College. American Civilization has been taught at Doshisha for over 100 years, since its founding in 1875, and the Doshisha Center for American Studies is a major center of research and teaching in American Studies in Japan. We left the President’s office with a clear sense of Doshisha’s commitment to the field of American Studies.
Professor Sakakibara, who had been President Hatta’s teacher, was good enough to drive into town to pick us up and take us back to his home for a picnic lunch. As he drove Prof. Peterson, Prof. Sasaki, and me past bucolic vistas of graceful hills covered with lush forests, Prof. Sakakibara told us fascinating stories of his childhood as heir-apparent to his father’s role as priest of a local Buddhist temple, and what was involved in being a Buddhist priest—a role he himself had indeed taken on, until recently, in addition to his university responsibilities. We also learned about his work on the economics of transportation.
When we reached the nineteenth-century farmhouse on the outskirts of Kyoto in which he lives, we were introduced to his gracious wife, a talented weaver, and to the Sakakibaras’ friends, the noted environmental law expert, Professor Koichiro Fujikura and his wife. The good talk and good food that followed were a delight (Once again, I was introduced to some wonderful new foods—a sandwich made of a kind of root salad I had never tasted, and a sandwich made of tiger shrimp that were larger and tastier than any I had ever had in the States.) The Sakakibaras gave us a tour of the house, and in the garden plucked some delicious fresh sour plums from a tree for us to taste, while picking some fresh bamboo for the other guests to take home. The Sakakibaras were marvelous hosts, and their hospitality was warm and very special. It was a most memorable afternoon!
Prof. Sakakibara then drove us all back into town, and I gave a talk at Doshisha on “Race and the Politics of Memory: Mark Twain and Paul Laurence Dunbar.“ The talk was on what we remember and what we forget about painful, complex chapters of the nation’s past, and the role of poetry and fiction in shaping those memories. I looked at similarities in strategies that both Twain and Dunbar developed to address the racial politics of their time, and the ways in which both writers continue to be misunderstood and misread.
It was a pleasure to introduce America’s first professional-African American writer to a Japanese audience largely unfamiliar with him. A tape I played of a very talented Oberlin student named Darryl Williams reading some of Dunbar’s greatest poems helped make the work come alive for the audience. Prof. Sasaki presided over the gathering with grace and skill. I was pleased to see Twain scholars including Professor Yorimasa Nasu (president of the Mark Twain Society of Japan) and Professor Takayuki Tatsumi (editor of Mark Twain Studies) in the audience, and was honored that Professor Sakakibara stayed for the talk as well. Professor Peterson and Professor Chu extended the discussion in fruitful ways during the question period.
We then adjourned to an elaborate gourmet “kaiseki” dinner hosted by the Doshisha administrators at a traditional Gion restaurant. The group also included two Americans teaching a Doshisha, Fred Nadis, a former student of mine from the University of Texas at Austin, and Carolyn Wright, and two visiting American Studies scholars, Professors John and Joy Kasson, as well as other Japanese scholars including Reiko Tomisawa, and Doshisha American Studies faculty including Prof. Masahiro Hosoya. Several people made toasts and brief remarks after dinner. Professor Sakakibara made an eloquent plea that American Studies develop better ways of integrating the social sciences with the humanities. His frustration at the domination of the field by scholars in literature and history is shared by many U.S.-based scholars who also puzzle over how to stimulate conversation across disciplines.
I was fascinated to learn from an article by Prof. Masahiro Hosoya, “Graduate Program in American Studies at Doshisha University, 1991-2000,“ that Doshisha’s graduate program had pioneered in creating “an interdisciplinary graduate program having both social sciences and humanities.“ Stanford’s American Studies Program, which I have directed for the past two years, aspires to be an undergraduate program that similarly tries to “have both the social sciences and the humanities,“ For that reason, I was particularly interested in the challenges that Prof. Hosoya described.
Prof. Sasaki was good enough to give me an instructive article he wrote entitled “American Studies in Japan: Problems and Prospects,“ which tracks Japanese awareness of the U.S. from the 1850s to the present. I was interested to learn that the first American Studies seminars in Japan was a University of Tokyo-Stanford University American Studies Seminar funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1950 during the Occupation. Early speakers in the seminar included Perry Miller, C. Vann Woodward and Henry Nash Smith. Nearly 600 participants over the seven-year duration of the seminar helped break down the intellectual isolation of Japanese scholars and lay the groundwork for an academic network of Japanese Americanists and US Americanists—the fruits of which were apparent at this year’s extraordinary JAAS conference. The Kyoto American Studies Summer Seminar which began in 1951, was familiar to me since my participation in 1999. I was intrigued to learn about the ways in which two generations of Japanese Americanists were nurtured and developed, and the ways in which they built bridges to other Asian Pacific countries including Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, Australia, Thailand, and Vietnam. And I was interested to learn about the range of multi-volume efforts to translate documents of American intellectual and cultural history.
I recognized the truth of Prof. Sasaki’s statement in this essay that “ [w]ith a few exceptions…. most of our academic achievements are published in Japanese for a Japanese audience, and are rarely recognized by the international American Studies community.“ Indeed, as I had recognized when I first visited the Kyoto American Studies Summer Seminar, even when Japanese scholars published their work in English, it rarely reached non-Japanese audiences. (My response to learning, in 1999, about the incredibly rich body of publications on Mark Twain by Japanese scholars, was to write an article entitled “Mark Twain in Japan” which appeared in the Mark Twain Circular in 1999 (“President’s Column: Mark Twain in Japan,“ Mark Twain Circular, August-September Vol. 13, No. 3. 1999) and which was reprinted in the South Atlantic Quarterly in 2000 (vol.65, no.1, fall 2000).
Professor Sasaki’s statement that “we are still importing too much from the United States, and exporting too little in the field of American Studies” is an apt one, and the challenges he identifies that complicate any effort to address this problem are difficult. His “both and” rather than “either or” solution makes a great deal of sense—“balance the studies of the United States per se with comparative and related studies.“ But I also agree with his statement that “Taking a point of view or perspective different from US Americanists also gives us an opportunity to make an original analysis of American culture and society, which may contribute to the international community of American Studies.“ The scholarship to which I was exposed during this visit to Japan convinces me that Prof. Sasaki is exactly right. His overview of generations of American Studies scholars in Japan and his views on possible direction for the future were illuminating.
Tuesday, June 7th
In the morning, Professor Hitome Nabae, a Stanford alumna whom I had met during a visit she made to Stanford last spring, and a scholar whose work I cited in my talk, came by Shiran Kaikan so that we could spend some time together. With Prof. Patricia Chu, we went for a long walk through the Imperial Garden, to the Textile Museum, where we saw a kimono show. En route Prof. Chu and I learned a great deal about how translations of American literature shaped Japanese language and culture, a topic central to Prof. Nabae’s research, and also heard stories about the role of American writer Lafcadio Hearn in preserving Japanese folktales.
I returned to Shiran Kaikan in time to meet a scholar whose work I had admired for years, but whom I had never had the chance to get to know in person. Professor Makoto Nagawara, considered by many to be the dean of Japanese Twain scholars, had corresponded with me for over a decade. I had been very impressed by an essay he had written on Mark Twain’s “A True Story,“ which I cited in Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African American Voices. Although we’d met briefly at a conference in Elmira, and had exchanged books, letters, emails—even art work—over the years, we had not had the chance to spend time together before now.
Through his emails, over the years, I had gotten at least a cursory sense of Prof. Nagawara’s story. He grew up in Hiroshima. A teenager in 1945, he had lost his parents and three siblings to atomic bomb. Several years later, he traveled to the U.S. on a Fulbright Fellowship. At a ceremony commemorating the bombing of Hiroshima at which he was asked to speak, he became aware of the complex mix of attitudes Americans had to this event. His experiences in the U.S. ignited what became a lifelong fascination with American literature.
Prof. Nagawara took me to the Hermitage of Shisen-do, at the foot of the Higashiyama mountain range in the north of the city, established by Jozan Ishikawa, a scholar of Chinese classical poetry. He showed me the portraits of the thirty-six classical Chinese poets in the main room, and walked me through the tranquil, graceful gardens filled with azalea bushes (the home and the gardens have been maintained by the Buddhist priests who owned Shisen-do since the eighteenth century.) He then took me to the Tenjuan Temple at Nanzenji, and ended the day with a dinner at the Italian-Japanese restaurant next to the Shiran Kaikan Annex that was as elegantly presented as it was delicious.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, we had fascinating conversations about literature, the academy, publishing, history, politics, and Mark Twain. Prof. Nagawara, a strong critic of militarism, told me about the Japanese-only explanatory materials he had seen around the Yasukuni Shrine. They haven’t translated those signs, he said, because their audience is Japanese who want to believe the untruths and distortions that they project. The view of history embodied in those signs, he said, was beyond belief. He urged me to go there when I went to Tokyo.
At dinner, Professor Nagawara presented me with a remarkable book that I will always treasure: a bilingual volume of edited oral histories entitled On August 6th We Were Teenagers: We Wanted to Live We Wanted to Learn (reporters/authors: Sumie Katsura, Akiko Kannami, Eriko Nomura. Hiroshima: Sobun, 2003). It included his own story as well as photos of him, his parents, and his sister as a little girl. From the book I’ve learned that as a seventeen-year-old in the period before the bomb was dropped, he recalled being “always hungry” due to food shortages, and unable to read or study at night due to the shortage of electricity and the need to “cover the light with a black cloth when an air raid caution sounded.“ He recalled quarreling with one of his little sisters the morning the bomb dropped, and still finds the memory of her slamming the door with rage as she left that day “heart-wrenching.“ He would never see her again. One hour later, the bomb struck. His house “had disappeared.“ “His father, who taught English at a school for teachers, was burned to death on his way to school (“Only his belt buckle remained from the fire. Because of the buckle they could distinguish their father in spite of his having no head, hands or limbs.“) The book described the unnatural quiet that he encountered as he wandered toward the city from his school, 2.5 km away from where the bomb hit. “Cries of woe and grief and chaos” met him as he continued. Miraculously he found his mother, and they fled from the region still burning from many fires; he also found his sister Nobuko—but he was powerless to save either of them in the end. Both died from radiation sickness. Another sister died from malnutrition. Only Makoto and two younger siblings survived from his family of seven.
I am awed that Professor Nagawara could survive this devastating trauma and remain whole. I feel enormously privileged to have his friendship.
Wednesday, June 8th
After I had a pleasant breakfast with Professor Chu, Professor Ryo Waguri picked me up at Shiran Kaikan to take me to Kyoto Koka Women’s University. I had had the pleasure of meeting Prof. Waguri at the Kyoto American Studies Summer Seminar in 1999, when he commented on the paper I delivered. In the interim, he had published a book, Mark Twain and Strangers, which he had been good enough to send me and which I had enjoyed reading.
Professor Waguri had thoughtfully prepared a brief biography of Mark Twain which he had his students read ahead of time—useful since they were undergraduates with a range of English skills. I presented a talk to an audience of about 100 students and faculty on “Mark Twain and American Culture,“ an overview of Twain’s significance and achievement that looked at the difference between the author of the boy’s book Tom Sawyer, and the social critic of the later works. After a question period, I had a pleasant lunch with Prof. Waguri and several of his colleagues at Kyoto Koka Women’s University,
After lunch was an occasion to which I’d been looking forward for some time: an afternoon of conversation with members of the Kansai Mark Twain Circle. I had been impressed with the Kansai Mark Twain Circle during my first visit to Japan in 1999, when I spent an evening with them. For years, the group has been having monthly meetings to discuss various work by Twain, including the volumes of letters published by the Mark Twain Project, and to hear about each other’s work. This afternoon was my opportunity to learn about the projects these scholars were working on. Professor Nagawara chaired the meeting with grace and skill. Each member of the group described his or her current research, and I responded, as did the other members of the group, with questions, comments, and suggestions. Prof. Waguri had helpfully prepared a little booklet with summaries of many of the research projects that was very helpful to have. I enjoyed hearing about the many interesting topics being pursued.
Professor Makoto Nagawara began by noting that he had outlived Mark Twain by two years. His current interest focuses on how Twain “comported himself, both as a writer and as a man, with the inevitable end of his life staring at him.“
Prof. Kotaro Nakagaki spoke briefly about his current work on paper on Mark Twain and Vienna that I look forward to hearing when he presents it at the International Mark Twain Conference in Elmira this August. Yuko Yamamoto described the doctoral dissertation she is completing on Mark Twain, which focuses on issues of gender and reversals of hierarchy in Huck Finn and other works, including Pudd’nhead Wilson and Joan of Arc. Prof. David Zmijewski discussed the book he is completing on parallel’s between Mark Twain’s early writing on Hawaii and some of his later fiction— finding in some figures Twain described in his early writings from Hawaii possible prototypes for the “king” and the “duke” in Huck Finn.
Prof. Ryo Waguri announced that now that his book on Mark Twain and strangers had been published, he had moved on to another topic—Mark Twain and family (he was not leaving strangers entirely: the new project will look at strangers in a family, among other topics). Prof. Waguri noted quite rightly the absence of traditional, viable or stable families in Twain’s work, a topic that, surprisingly, has been largely ignored by scholars. I look forward to hearing him present his work at the Elmira conference this summer.
Prof. Takeshi Omiya is writing about three pieces by Twain that have received virtually no critical attention whatsoever—“A Notable Conundrum” and two other short pieces which include “conundrum” in their titles, all of which were published in 1864. These pieces—episodic “hodgepodges” as Prof. Omiya rightly characterizes them—are interesting early examples of Twain’s studied effort to “give an impression of impromptu purposelessness, incoherence, chaos, digression, inconsistency, ramblings” etc. –an aesthetic quality that Twain would perfect and also theorize in later works like “How to Tell a Story.“ Having been able to read the entire paper that Prof. Omiya will deliver in Elmira, rather than just a summary, I am impressed by the sage insight he has into the meaning of slight sketches in the context of Twain’s career. It was such a pleasure to hear about these projects—and others, as well (including a graduate student planning to look at the multiple personae and voices that first-person narrators take on in Mark Twain’s work). I was fascinated to hear that Prof. Yorimasa Nasu planned to explore a possible relationship between some of Mark Twain’s writings and Buddhism in the future.
It was a delight to engage in really lively, stimulating “Twain talk” for nearly three hours before adjourning to a charming sushi bar for dinner—where the “Twain talk” continued! The talk wasn’t all Twain all the time, however. Prof. Ichigawa, for example, told me something unrelated to Twain that intrigued me. He teaches Deborah Tannen’s book You Just Don’t Understand in a communication class, and said he believes that the “rapport talk”—as contrasted with “report talk”—that Tannen classifies as women’s principal mode of communication, is actually the preferred mode of communication among all Japanese, male and female. Prof. Ichigawa remembered fondly his advisor when he was at Yale, Prof. Norman Holmes Pearson. As it turns out, I had been assigned Prof. Pearson as an advisor when I arrived at Yale, shortly before his death. It was interesting to compare notes on this memorable figure. I look forward to re-connecting with several of these scholars at the Twain conference in Elmira this summer.
Thursday, June 9th.
Prof. Higashi made sure that I made the bullet train to Tokyo on time. I was met at Shinagawa station by Yukiko Fukase, a Keio University graduate student working with Prof. Tatsumi, and Joanne Gilles and Yoko Hatakeyama of the Embassy. I dropped off my bags at the nearby Takanawa Prince Hotel, and was then taken to Keio University. I enjoyed chatting with Yukiko Fukase about her research on Toni Morrison, and was pleased to learn that my work had been helpful to her. I look forward to reading a paper she has promised to email me.
When I arrived at the lecture hall (filled with about 100 students and faculty), Professor Tatsumi gave me one of the most knowledgeable introductions I have ever received, evidence that he had read many of my books and articles. I delivered a talk on “Mark Twain and American Culture: Which Twain Do We Choose?“ that expanded on the ideas I’d outlined in the talk at Kyoto Koka Women’s University and addressed the question of why the U.S. has assimilated and appreciated some dimensions of Twain’s work but not others. I examined his place in the culture, and focused on why we should not be surprised that the same summer that Twain began Huck Finn, and the same year that Tom Sawyer appeared, he wrote a curious story about a man who kills his conscience. Might Twain have recognized that to write Tom Sawyer, a book which ignored the racism that had permeated his Southern childhood, he had had to do something like kill his own conscience? I focused on how Twain’s moral and political thinking evolved from Tom Sawyer to Huck Finn to the anti-imperialist essays and “The War Prayer.“ There were a number of interesting questions and comments—such as one student’s remarks about the importance of humor as a vehicle for social criticism, and the dire need for a “Twain-like” social critic in Japanese society today. After the talk we adjourned to a coffee shop near the university with about 20 of Professor Tatsumi’s students.
It felt as if we were playing a wonderful game of intellectual “musical chairs”: the students kept switching seats to give different people the chance to sit next to me and chat. It was gratifying to have many of the students bring well-worn, heavily-underlined copies of all of my books for me to sign, and it was exciting to find that my work had engaged them. What an effervescent group of young people! The intellectual energy at the table was genuinely exciting, and reflected Professor Tatsumi’s enviable ability to inspire such a broad range of original research projects. I was given a couple of issues of Panic Americana, a very attractive journal that his graduate seminar puts out each year, with a wide variety of contributions ranging from commentary to fiction to analysis (alas, most of it in Japanese). The group later moved to an excellent sushi restaurant, where the animated conversation continued. We were joined there by Prof. Mari Kotani, a noted science fiction critic, who often collaborates with her husband, Prof. Tatsumi. In addition to knowing a great deal about Japanese science fiction, Prof. Kotani knows a great deal about kimonos, and we had an interesting conversation about kimono culture and feminism. She also asked a question I couldn’t answer about the possible influence of pre-Raphaelite aesthetics on the design and décor of Twain’s house in Hartford. We were also joined by Eiji Okuda, of Keio University Press, a former student of Professor Tatsumi’s who designed the beautiful new journal Mark Twain Studies, which is as handsome as it is enlightening.
Prof. Tatsumi, a prolific scholar with a rather dazzling range of interests, thoughtfully gave me copies of a number of his publications—including an intriguing symposium he edited on Japanese science fiction, and an interview he conducted (with my former Texas friend and colleague Susan Napier along with Mari Kotani and Otobe Junko) of the great Japanese science fiction writer Komatsu Sakyo (both in Science Fiction Studies in 2002). He also gave me an article entitled “Full Metal Apache—Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo Diptych: The Impact of American Narratives upon the Japanese Representation of Cyborgian Identity” from the Japanese Journal of American Studies, an intriguing essay which serves as a “sneak preview” of the book by Prof. Tatsumi entitled Full Metal Apache that Duke University Press will publish later this year. As I noted before my lecture to his students and colleagues at Keio, one of the most remarkable things about Prof. Tatsumi is his apparent ability to survive without sleep: it struck me that only someone who gave up sleep nearly completely could possibly find enough hours in the day to produce such a wide range of scholarship and provide guidance and inspiration to so many talented students with such diverse interests. The enjoyable evening ended with a sprawling group photo in front of the restaurant. Friday, June 10th.
Following Yoko Hatekayma’s clear instructions I took the monorail to Haneda airport and made my flight to Gimpo Airport in Seoul. I was met there by Prof. Miseong Woo, an expert on drama whom I had met when I delivered a keynote talk a year ago at the 50th anniversary conference of the English Language and Literature Association of Korea in 2004 in Seoul. Professor Woo had given some illuminating comments on one of my papers, and subsequently shared an excellent essay she had published on the play “Ah Sin” by Mark Twain and Bret Harte ( I was pleased to have occasion to cite it in a forthcoming essay on “Mark Twain and the Theatre” in the Blackwell’s Companion to Mark Twain). We took a taxi to Korea University, where we spent a stimulating and enjoyable hour or so chatting with Professor Kun Jong Lee.
It had been a privilege to be a member of Prof. Lee’s dissertation committee at the University of Texas (it was a superb dissertation, and it was a pleasure to see parts of it published in such prestigious journals as PMLA). In recent years, Prof. Lee has moved from writing about canonical American writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ralph Ellison to focusing on Korean-American writers, as well as on interethnic literary connections in the U.S. He shared a fascinating article with me that he had recently published in the CLA Journal on “The African-American Presence in Younghill Kang’s East Goes West.“ And he also showed me six volumes of Korean-American literature before 1945 collected by Cho Kyu Ik, none of which has been translated into English, as well as an untranslated novel by Korean-American writer Kyung Sook Lee, Sa-baek-chil-sip-o-bun Do-ro-wi-eh-suh (a title that would be translated as On Highway #475), which similarly had never been translated. My curiosity was definitely piqued: what intriguing contributions to American literature might lurk in those volumes? I was pleased to be able to cite this material in the talk I gave an hour later on “Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American Studies” (an amalgam of my ASA Presidential Address and the “Asian Crossroads” talk I wrote for the JAAS conference). These texts point to a potentially very interesting “crossroads of cultures” that U.S. and Korean scholars might endeavor to translate and contextualize in collaborative projects in the future.
It was nice to see some familiar faces in the lecture hall: Prof. Hiky Moon, who had been enormously patient and helpful as the coordinator of the 50th Anniversary ELLAK conference last year, Prof, Eunjun Park, who had organized the American Studies conference at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies at which I also spoke while I was in Seoul for the ELLAK meeting, and Prof. Bang Ja Shim, head of the Mark Twain Circle of Korea, who had taken me to the Korean Folk Village after the ELLAK meeting. About 100 people attended the talk. Prof. Kun Jong Lee had circulated written copies of my talk ahead of time, and the question period was particularly animated.
I was rather startled by a very insightful question posed by Professor Junyon Kim. He said that my talk on “Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American Studies” struck him as having much in common with my American Quarterly article from 1994, “Interrogating ‘Whiteness,‘ Complicating ‘Blackness’: Remapping American Culture.“ He noted that the talk I gave today (and the version published this spring in American Quarterly) struck him as an apt sequel to my earlier American Quarterly article a decade ago, He observed that both pieces could be seen as both describing and endorsing a new paradigm for the field. Was that correct, he asked? His question was a fascinating one. I confessed that I myself had not recognized the common enterprise in which these two articles participated, but that as soon as he pointed it out to me, I realized that he was exactly right.
I also appreciated the opportunity to chat after the talk with Korea University student, Yoon Jeong Chung, who wanted to discuss the examples I cited from Shirley Geok-Lin Lim’s 2002 article in American Studies International on how American media’s proliferation of Caucasian women’s body images in Asia is contributing to a rise in both eating disorders and cosmetic surgery among Asian women. Although the written version of my talk that had been distributed referred to both of these dimensions of Lim’s article, I had only mentioned the rise in anorexia and bulimia in the talk and had skipped the part about cosmetic surgery. Ms. Chung suggested that I reverse that in the future: the references to eating disorders, she felt, may be a bit dated. However, she said, Asian women are having cosmetic surgery on their eyelids in ever-increasing numbers to conform more closely to the Caucasian beauty standards they encountered in the images spread mainly by the American entertainment, music and fashion industry. “All of my friends have had this done,“ she said. I realized that in the version of the talk that I would publish, I should foreground this issue more, as she suggested.
Prof. Miseong Woo, Prof. Kun Jong Lee and I then took a cab to the distinctive restaurant in which the U. S. Embassy was sponsoring a dinner in my honor. Hosted by Dr. Don Q. Washington, PAO and organized by Ms. Joanne Martin, CAO, with the assistance of Embassy staffer Kyung Chung, the dinner was a fascinating occasion that gave me the opportunity to see several old friends and to make some new ones.
It was nice to see Professor Youn-Son Chung again. He had shared a memorable paper he had written on American novels of the Vietnam war with me years ago, and had been the first person to invite me to lecture to Asia (I had accepted his invitation to come to Seoul in 1998, but fate had other plans for me: I went into the hospital instead for breast cancer surgery.) I had seen him during my visit to ELLAK last year. I was pleased to see ASAK President Dr. Sook Won Shin at the dinner, having become extremely fond of her during the time we spent together in Kyoto. And I was happy to meet Prof. Suh Ji-Moon, the president-elect of ASAK, who generously gave me copies of several[l] books she had edited and translated, including Brother Enemy: Poems of the Korean War. I am very glad to have both her eloquent introduction that frames the collection, and the moving and poignant poems themselves. It was a pleasure to get acquainted with Twain scholar Prof. Jin Hee Yim, who will be presenting a paper in Elmira, and I was glad that Prof. Miseong Woo, Prof. Kun Jong Lee, Prof. Eun Jung Park, and Prof. Bang Ja Shim were a part of the festivities, as well. It was also nice to meet Prof. Young Oak Lee, Prof.. Dong Ho Soh, and Prof. Young Soo Bae. And it was very special to be reunited with Prof. Sang-Dawn Lee, who had been a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin while I taught there.
Prof. Chung reported on the ASA’s International Initiative with great enthusiasm, and went into detail about what made the Atlanta meeting so special and so successful. Dr. Washington expressed interest in the initiative and in learning more about it, and was delighted to hear about the renewal of the Mellon grant that will allow it to continue for two more years.
Joanne Martin of the U.S. Embassy had conveyed a message that reached me just shortly before the dinner began asking me to give a short talk on “Mark Twain in America today” at the start of the dinner. What I came up with on short notice was taking the group assembled through 2004-2005, noting Twain’s presence in American culture at various points in the year. I began with students encountering Huck Finn on the syllabus in their high school or college American literature classes in September, and the controversies they might encounter as a result; I then moved to Twain’s birthday in November when journalists would seek opportunities to quote Twain on all kinds of topics (and cited as many of the journalists’ favorite quotes as I could); then to June, when the special issue of the Arizona Quarterly devoted to late Twain would appear; then to August, when Twain scholars—including Professor Yim and Professor Woo—would present scholarly papers in Elmira. Two of the professors whom I had known from their days as graduate students at the University of Texas—Prof. Kun Jong Lee, Prof and Sang-Dawn Lee—surprised me with unexpected thoughtful gifts. And Prof. Youn-Son Chung gave me a copy of his book about American Studies, which I am very happy to have, even though (alas, for my sake) it is in Korean. (I know it will interest one of my current graduate students at Stanford who is fluent in Korean).
I discovered two new “favorite” non-alcoholic drinks: cold barley tea, which seemed to be as ubiquitous in traditional Korean restaurants as glasses of water are in American eateries, and cinnamon-laced sweet persimmon tea (made from dried persimmons) served at the end of the meal.
Saturday, June 11th
Prof. Miseong Woo picked me up from Sangnam Management Building at Yonsei University, where I was staying, and took me to Sogang University, where I gave a talk to about 100 members of the American Studies Association of Korea as part of ASAK’s lecture series “Dialogue between American Culture and Korean Culture.“ It was a great pleasure to see so many old friends in the audience—including Professor Sung-Kyu Cho, who had graciously helped host my last visit to Korea—and it was good to see Professor Bong Eun Kim, whom I had gotten to know when she gave presentations at the MLA under the auspices of the Mark Twain Circle when I was president of that organization, and during the year she spent at Berkeley. It was also a pleasure to see Professor Sangjun Jeong, who had been a graduate student in American Studies at the University of Texas when I first arrived there to teach, a student of the late Professor Robert Morse Crunden, who had been a mentor to me, as well. It was nice to see others from the Mark Twain Circle of Korea whom I had gotten to know a year ago—such as Prof. Jung Min Choi—as well. Professor Jae H. Roe introduced me, and I gave a talk on “Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American Studies”—a talk that blended my ASA Presidential Address with my “Asian Crossroads” talk (and incorporated what I had learned the day before from Prof. Kun Jong Lee about new and needed future work on Korean-American literature.)
The question period included some of the most challenging and interesting questions about American Studies that I’ve encountered. Prof. Patricia Cho asked about the prospect of there being departments of “Transnational American Studies.“ I noted that the University of California at Santa Cruz was trying to develop such a program, and the University of Birmingham in the U.K. already had one in place. But it was interesting to think about how to allow our teaching to be changed by many of the interesting new developments in our scholarship. Professor Sangjun Jeong asked whether critics of American Studies who argued that these days American Studies had become “Anti-American Studies” had a valid point. It was a question I had never been asked directly, although I had thought about it a lot. I noted that the field of American Studies as I recognize it was shaped at its core by critique and dissent , and by a careful consideration of the ways in which the United States does and does not live up to its promise. Taking America seriously—and taking its enormous potential seriously—was, in my view, not an anti-American stance. It connected me with all of the other American scholars and writers who were engaged by the challenge of understanding what the nation and its citizens and culture were about rather than championing a political ideology in a knee-jerk or jingoistic way. The foreign policy of the current administration is costing the U.S. large amounts of good will and friendship around the world. One can be against the nation’s current foreign policy without being anti-American, I noted—as I was myself.
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