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ASA-JAAS
ASA-JAAS Report 2004
ASA-JAAS PROJECT ADVISORY COMMITTEE REPORT
The purpose of this committee is to coordinate the participation of two delegates from the ASA in the annual conference of the Japanese Association for American Studies (JAAS), under a grant from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission (JUSFC). The committee collaborates with the JAAS to name and frame the themes of the project and the two workshops in which the ASA delegates present their papers. Coordination of the project also includes the selection of delegates, through a call for applications from the ASA membership, and the promotion of long-term benefits to scholars and the organizations on both sides of the exchange.
The annual JAAS conference took place on 4 and 5 June 2004 at the Japan Women’s University, Tokyo. The ASA delegates were Professors Marita Sturken and Jonathan Auerbach, who respectively presented papers in workshops titled “Gateless or Gated? New Social Stratification in American Society” and “Transmission of Culture(s).” Our ASA colleagues also participated in the American Studies Seminar in Kyoto, held this year at Doshisha University, and, like the ASA President, had other speaking engagements where they interacted with Japanese scholars and students.
Under arrangements not with the JUSFC but with the United States Embassy, Tokyo, the ASA President, Professor Amy Kaplan, participated in the conference by delivering a plenary address. In the Mid-Year Report (April 2004) of this committee, I reported that changes seemed to be underway in the annual support that the Embassy had been granting to the ASA President in order to speak in Japan at the time of the JAAS conference, an arrangement that was in place since 1989-1990, when the ASA-JAAS Project sent the first delegation to Japan. In the interim since April, however, officers of the JAAS have worked successfully to get assurances of continuing support for the ASA President’s visit.
Overall, the practice in the ASA-JAAS Project of selecting and sending only two delegates, joined by the ASA President, to the JAAS has resulted in strengthening the goal of the project for achieving long-term, collegial relations among scholars on both sides of the exchange. Reports on this year’s JAAS conference and the ASA participation in it indicate that the project continues to promote this goal.
In July 2004 the project coordinators, enabled by the patience and yet the furiously hard work by John Stephens to meet the deadline, crafted the grant proposal to the JUSFC for the next three-year cycle of funding. Every three years a new proposal must be submitted; every year within those three, funding must be reconfirmed on the basis of annual reports and the proposal of two workshop themes for the next year’s JAAS conference. This year we proposed a three-year project theme of “Bridging the World(s).” The two workshop themes we proposed, for which ASA members were invited to apply, are “Negotiating the National and the International in the American Experience” and “Hip-hopping America: Dimensions of Mainstreaming Subcultures.” We are grateful that the JUSFC has chosen to fund the project again. The highest number of applications to this project ever received from ASA members is now being considered; the two delegates will be selected at the meeting of the ASA-JAAS Project Advisory Committee at the Atlanta conference of the ASA.
Members of the ASA-JAAS Project Advisory Committee responsible for making the selection of delegates for 2005 are Professors Amy Kaplan (as the ASA President at this year’s JAAS conference), Marita Sturken and Jonathan Auerbach (as the most recent ASA delegates), Shelley Fisher Fishkin (the ASA President to address the 2005 JAAS conference), Gary Okihiro, Gail Nomura, and myself (committee chair). In nearly all our work and deliberations, we collaborate with our colleagues on the JAAS International Liaison Committee: Professors Naoki Onishi, Masako Iino, Hisako Yanaka, Noriko Shimada, and Juri Abe. Professor Masako Notoji has for years been crucial to the success of our project. She has rotated off the role of being in charge of the project, on the JAAS side, but she continues to join us at conferences and in generously offering highly useful advice and ideas. On the JAAS end of the project she is succeeded by Professor Onishi. We thank Professor Notoji for her productive, intelligent leadership, and in doing so we remember and thank her predecessors, among them Professors Hiroko Sato and Fumiko Fujita.
Closure: I am sorry to report that our official friend of the project in the US Embassy, Tokyo, Mr. Yoshitsugu Nakamura, the Cultural Affairs specialist who coordinated Embassy-sponsored speaking tours for the majority of our ASA delegations over the years, passed away on 15 August 2004, from a sudden and swift illness.
Respectfully submitted,
Stephen H. Sumida
ASA-JAAS Project Advisory Committee Chair
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