A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Modern Languages and Literatures Adjunct Instructor Steve Rabson was featured in The Free Lance-Star for his new book, Training and Deployment of America’s Nuclear Cold Warriors in Asia: Keepers of Armageddon. Read more.
Japanese Minister of Public Affairs Takehiro Shimada (second from the left) and Takeshi Yoshida of the Japan Foundation (far right) visited UMW today to celebrate the announcement of the University’s new Japanese language program, funded by a grant from the Japan Foundation. Photo by Karen Pearlman.
Spending a semester in Japan, UMW senior Kaitlin Viloria was in a shop when a young woman asked her a question. The woman spoke no English and Viloria’s Japanese was limited, but they still managed to strike up a conversation.
Viloria wishes she was more proficient, she said, “but in that moment, I was proud of my ability to overcome the language barrier.”
Future Mary Washington students who travel to Japan will be able to communicate with confidence, thanks to the Japanese language courses UMW will offer starting this fall. Earlier today, College of Arts and Sciences Dean Keith Mellinger and Center for International Education Director Jose Sainz joined guests from the Japanese Embassy, faculty, administrators and city officials at the Jepson Alumni Executive Center to announce the new program. Japanese Minister of Public Affairs Takehiro Shimada gave a talk after the ceremony. Read more.
“The Transformation of hinomaru [Japanese national flag] in postwar Okinawa: from symbol of hope to object of contempt” appeared in the July issue of Critical Asian Studies. During the U.S. military occupation (1945-1972), Okinawans staged protests carrying the flag, which represented their hopes for reversion to Japanese sovereignty, defying a ban on its display by American occupation authorities. But after the Japanese government broke its promises for a reversion in 1972 with reduced U.S. bases and without nuclear weapons, the flag became a hated reminder of this betrayal.
Author Etsuko Takushi Crissey of Okinawa’s G.I. Brides: Their Lives in America (University of Hawaii Press, 2017) traveled throughout the United States conducting interviews and a questionnaire survey of the many Okinawan wives of former American servicemen. With 30,000 U.S. forces still stationed in Okinawa, about 200 marry women there every year. Her interviews of women who have come here from the late 1940s to the present include first-person accounts of their many hardships as soldiers’ wives, immigrants, and members of a racial minority, and how most managed to overcome them and lead fulfilling lives here.
Steve Rabson, Adjunct Instructor at the Leidecker Center for Asian Studies, has published Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa, co-edited with Davinder Bhowmik, from University of Hawaii Press. The anthology presents English translations of fiction, poetry and drama written from the perspectives of an oppressed minority in Japan.
On Jan. 29 the UMW Leidecker Center for Asian Studies was awarded a one-year $18,000 grant from the Japan Foundation for Japanese studies at the University. In 2014 it will fund a course in Japanese literature, nine visiting presentations, and $5,000 in books and films for the libraries. The presentations will include lectures on Japanese politics, society and culture, a performance of Japanese music, a tea ceremony demonstration, and a guided session of Zen meditation.