Letter from the Director
August 31, 2009
Dear friends and supporters of the Chao Center,
January 1, 2009 I assumed Directorship of the Chao Center for Asian Studies and in the months that followed worked closely with Rice faculty, administrators, development offices, donors and students to establish a groundwork that will take us to the next level of progress this year. What do I mean by groundwork? During the first intense months of activity we have set in place our Center's staffing and administrative structure; facilitated interdisciplinary dialogue among Rice faculty; fostered collaborative relations with analogous research centers locally, nationally and internationally; won an prestigious prize for our journal; held our first international workshop and established on-going programming which includes the “New Scholarship on Transnational Asia” (NSTA) lecture series and a project called "Seminar in Transnationalism." Working closely with Rice's Development Office we have also written and submitted a number of foundation grant proposals seeking to support faculty and undergraduate research agendas. My central objective is to establish the Chao Center for Asian Studies locally, nationally and internationally as a significant research center with a recognizable intellectual profile.
The Chao Center’s journal, positions: east asia cultures critique, earned national and international recognition this year. In January the journal won the coveted Council of Editors of Learned Journals’ Best Special Issue Award of the Modern Language Association for the spring 2008 issue “War Capital Trauma.” Recent special issues include “Philosophy and the Political in Wartime Japan” (spring, 2009) and “The Cultural 'State' of Contemporary Taiwan” (fall, 2009).
In May 2009 the Chao Center hosted an international workshop titled “The University in the World, The World in Asia,” aimed at debating the role of the university in the contemporary world through Asian regional politics and interregional concerns. This workshop, consisting of formal paper presentations and informal meetings with collaborators in international projects that resemble our own, was attended by scholars from China, India, Italy, Japan and U.S. institutions. All participants agreed that the workshop was a wonderful success, and we were pleased to have far ranging involvement from Rice faculty. The scholars are now collaborating to publish an edited volume of the presented papers.
The Chao Center's fall program is equally engaging. We will continue our NSTA lecture series when Prof. Boreth Ly, from the University of California, Santa Cruz, speaks on ancient and contemporary arts of Southeast Asia and its diaspora on October 29, 2009. In November, Prof. Tarek Elhaik will analyze mestizaje and sinophobia through a reflection on Sergio de la Torre's video 'Nuevo Dragaon City' (2008). Complementing this lecture series is our multi-year Transnational Symposium, a forum for mid-career and senior scholars to speak about what constitutes the national and the transnational in their own research and disciplines. In this series, starting in November 2009 Prof. Deepa Reddy, an anthropologist at the University of Houston, Clear Lake, will talk about transnational Hinduism, and Prof. Mark Metzler from University of Texas at Austin will speak on international relations, business, and economic history of East Asia.
In the spirit of building toward the future at the Chao Center I would like to invite you to come to an exquisite and calming tea ceremony with the masters of Higashi-Aberyu School of Tea on September 16, 2009. The demonstration will begin at 5 p.m. and will be held in the Kyle Morrow room on the second floor of Fondren Library. Please email assistant director, Michele Verma, at chaoctr@rice.edu if you would like to be our special guest.
For complete information on all of our scheduled activities, please go to the Chao Center website, http://www.asia.rice.edu/, and click on Events.
In closing, I wish to extend my personal thanks to all in the Rice and Houston communities who have welcomed me so warmly. It is evident that there is wide support for and interest in the Chao Center, and I am thrilled to play an active role in establishing the Center as a world-class, internationally-renowned research center.
Sincerely,
Tani Barlow
Director, T. T. and W. F. Chao Center for Asian Studies
T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Asian History
