Teaching About Asia: February 2011

Teaching About Asia Newsletter

February 2011

         This major USC US-China Institute conference examines the health and future of the Chinese economy and assesses China`s economic ties with the US and others. Teacher-Only Workshop (Feb. 26), Conference (Feb 25-26)

 Dear [[firstname]], 

          Our February Teaching About Asia Newsletter brings many opportunities to consider. Please share this information with colleagues. This spring the USC U.S.-China Institute is offering East Asia Seminars for Educators (one based in Los Angeles and the other in the South Bay). Virtually every day we see and read news about China’s rising economy and its importance to Americans. In just two weeks you have a chance to learn more about the structure, health, and future direction of the Chinese economy and to get ideas about ways to bring such information to your students. We invite you to sign up for the conference/workshop we’re hosting at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Feb. 25 and 26. Teacher participants are only required to attend on Feb. 26 but are welcome to attend on Feb. 25 if they can. The workshop is free, lunch and materials are provided. Details for these programs and others are below.

          Other Los Angeles institutions hosting teacher-oriented programs or offering special East Asia exhibits include the Pacific Asia Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Japanese American National Museum.

          Please share this newsletter with your colleagues and encourage them to subscribe by visiting the USCI website`s newsletter subscription page and selecting the "K-12 Education" subscriber category.

In this issue:

USCI/NCTA Teaching about Asia Seminars
USCI Events
City Events
Learning Opportunities  and Resources for Teachers
Museum Exhibitions on Asia
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USCI/NCTA Spring 2011 Teaching about Asia Seminar at UTLA & South Bay

⇒  USCI/NCTA Spring 2011 Seminar on"East Asia"- UTLA (March 1- June 7)            

             Professional development opportunity open to interested K-12 educators

Benefits: $500 stipend, free resource materials, Salary Points or USC Continuing Education Units
Application deadline: February 11, 2011 or Until Seminar is Full

Click here for additional detail and application form.

⇒  USCI/NCTA Spring 2011 Seminar on"East Asia"- South Bay (February 28- June 6)

Professional development opportunity open to interested K-12 educators

Benefits: $500 stipend, free resource materials, Salary Points or USC Continuing Education Units
Application deadline: February 11, 2011 or Until Seminar is Full

Click here for additional detail and application form.

  APPLY NOW!

The Chinese Economy and You
A conference and workshop for educators

Teachers may register for both Feb. 25 and Feb. 26 or only Feb. 26.

To register, please complete this form:
/sites/default/files/legacy/AppImages/usci-teacher-registration-form.pdf
and send it as an email attachment to uschina@usc.edu or fax it to 213-821-2382.

The registration deadline is Feb. 23. There are only 25 spots reserved for teachers, so act now if you wish to attend.

The conference website is: http://china.usc.edu/ShowEvent.aspx?EventID=1944 (includes speaker biographical notes and topics).
(The conference title is The State of the Chinese Economy: Implications for the US and the World.)

The Saturday afternoon workshop will focus on how to integrate some of the information and issues explored during the conference into world history, government, and economics courses. Participating teachers will receive materials including a short documentary film to use with students. Refreshments and lunch are included.

Questions? Please call 213-821-4382.
 

    ♦  USCI Events

⇒  Nixon in China

"All of my operas have dealt on deep psychological levels with our American mythology," says composer John Adams, who conducts the Met premiere of his most famous opera. "The meeting of Nixon and Mao is a mythological moment in world history, particularly American history." Acclaimed director and longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars makes his Met debut with this groundbreaking 1987 work, an exploration of the human truths beyond the headlines surrounding President Nixon`s 1972 encounter with Communist China. Baritone James Maddalena stars in the title role.

⇒  Tragedy in Crimson

BOOK SUMMARY:
Tragedy in Crimson is award-winning journalist Tim Johnson’s extraordinary account of the cat and mouse game embroiling China and the Tibetan exile community over Tibet. Johnson reports from the front lines, trekking to nomad resettlements to speak with the people who guard Tibet’s slowly vanishing culture; and he travels alongside the Dalai Lama in the campaigns for Tibetan sovereignty. Johnson unpacks how China is using its economic power around the globe to assail the Free Tibet movement. By encouraging massive Chinese migration and restricting Tibetan civil rights, the Chinese are also working to dilute Tibetan culture within the country itself. He also takes a sympathetic but unsentimental look at the Dalai Llama, a trendy figure in the West who is regarded as a failure to his own people. Staggering in scope, vivid and audacious in its narrative, Tragedy in Crimson tells the story of the country at the precipice of the world, teetering on the brink of cultural annihilation.
 
BIOGRAPHY:
Award-winning journalist Tim Johnson has spent the last twenty years as a foreign correspondent for the Miami Herald and the McClatchy Company. He currently serves as McClatchy’s Beijing bureau chief.

Contact: USC U.S. - China Institute
Phone: 213-821-4382
Email: uschina@usc.edu

⇒  Is China Becoming a Mafia State?

John Garnaut is the China correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age newspapers. He has written for other publications including Caijing magazine, Tempo (Indonesia), The Diplomat (Australia) and the International Herald Tribune.

Recently his coverage has been recognised with a Walkley award for `Scoop of the Year` for breaking the story that Rio Tinto`s Stern Hu had been arrested; the Citigroup award for business journalism ; and a finalist for the Graham Perkins Australian journalist of the year.

Before arriving in Beijing with his family in 2007 he was Economics Correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, based at Parliament House in Canberra. In an earlier life he was a commercial lawyer in Melbourne. As a child he spent stints in Papua New Guinea and China.

Contact: USC U.S.- China Institute
Phone: 213-821-4382
Email: uschina@usc.edu

    ♦  City Events

⇒  China-Central Asia Relations and the Role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

⇒ FCCEAS 2011 Japan study tour application

The Five College Center for East Asian Studies (the Center) is one of many programs administered by Five Colleges, Incorporated, a consortium of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The Center`s outreach efforts include a highly successful multi-year project, the National  Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA), funded by the Freeman Foundation.

For information on the 2011 JAPAN STUDY-TOUR PROGRAM, please download the Application form and the Assumption of Risk form in the desired format in:

http://www.smith.edu/fcceas/ncta/index.html

⇒  Los Angeles County Museum of Art - Artworks on View

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art website has undergone a major expansion. One outstanding feature is their “artworks on view” pages which provide photos and descriptions of works that you can see at the museum. Check out, for example, what’s on display at the Japanese pavilion: http://www.lacma.org/collection/japanese.html.

Additional information can be found here: http://www.lacma.org/collection/index.html

⇒  Teach in China

The Freeman Foundation funds a teacher exchange program which sends experienced k-12 teachers to teach English in a Chinese secondary school. The program is run by the National Committee on US-China Relations.  Applications are due by March 1, 2011. Write to tep@ncuscr.org for an application.

Learn more about the program at: http://www.ncuscr.org/programs/tep.

    ♦  Museum Exhibitions on Asia

 ⇒   Pacific Asia Museum: Through the Colonial Lens- Photographs of 19th and 20th Century India

Dates: February 3 - September 4, 2011
Location: 46 North Los Robles Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101
Admission: $9 for General Admission, $7 for Students and Seniors, Free for Children Ages 11 and Under

This exhibition will feature more than 70 images in 2 rotations selected for both their striking imagery and for what they reveal about the dynamism of India in this era. Through the Colonial Lens looks at the history of photography in India from its early adoption dating from the 1840s through the early 1900s. The exhibition will also explore themes of the subjective view, consumption of images and photography’s growing prominence over earlier forms of media.

  ⇒   Pacific Asia Museum: Authors on Asia

Dates: February 13, 2011
Time: 2:00pm-3:30pm
Location: 46 North Los Robles Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101
Admission: $9 for General Admission, $7 for Students and Seniors, Free for Children Ages 11 and Under

Awakening Kindness: Finding Joy Through Compassion for Others
An Afternoon with Nawang Khechog at Pacific Asia Museum

Join us for a rare opportunity to meet renowned musician and Tibetan Buddhist Nawang Khechog on Sunday, February 13, 2011 at Pacific Asia Museum. He will discuss his new book, Awakening Kindness: Finding Joy Through Compassion for Others and offer a short musical interlude. In Nawang Khechog`s view, one of the wonders and marvels of being human is that we can choose to nurture and cultivate kindness, compassion, and love. Based on his eleven years as a monk, studying Buddhist philosophy and meditation with the Dalai Lama, as well as his own highly regarded workshops, Awakening Kindness details the many ways we can enrich our lives by simply being kind to each other and ourselves. Nawang includes a range of simple meditations, mantras, and practices that are easy to incorporate into even the busiest modern life. Filled with the philosophy of many cultures and religions, Awakening Kindness takes the reader on a life-changing journey where we all can take part in creating a culture of kindness.

Books and CDs will be available for purchase and signing at the program. The program is part of the museum’s Authors on Asia series and is free for museum members and included in museum admission for non-members. Light refreshments. To RSVP, please call (626) 449-2742, ext. 20.

     ⇒   LACMA: In the Service of The Buddha-Tibetan Furniture from the Hayward Family Collection

Dates: Open until April 3, 2011
Location: 5905 Wilshire Blvd • Los Angeles California 90036
Admission: $9 for General Admission, $7 for Students and Seniors, Free for Children Ages 11 and Under

Tibetan furniture was primarily made for use in Buddhist monasteries and households. Typically painted with brilliant mineral pigments, it is often further adorned with rich gilding and designs made of applied gesso. Organized by LACMA and curated by Stephen Markel, South and Southeast Asian art, this exhibition features selections from the Hayward Family Collection, the premier assemblage of Tibetan furniture in the United States. Distinguished by its quality and depth, the collection includes masterpieces of virtually every important type of Tibetan furniture.

       ⇒  J.A.N.M: Zen Garage

Dates: Open until February 13, 2011
Location: 369 East First Street, Los Angeles, California 90012
Admission: Adults $9.00, Seniors (62 and over) $5.00, Students (with ID) and Youth (6-17) $5.00, Children 5 and under and Museum Members, Free.

*Free general admission every Thursday from 5 to 8 PM and every third Thursday of the month.

Giant Robot and the Japanese American National Museum continues its Salon Pop series with Zen Garage, a concept display developed in collaboration with Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot. The concept of Zen has been thwarted by popular culture in the form of awkward connotations and new “urban” meanings. Its basic meaning in our new world is essentially a “pure focus.” Likewise, a garage is no longer just a place where one parks their vehicle. Today’s garage can also function as a place of inspiration, development, and creation. With these words together, we bring you Zen Garage.

Zen Garage features three innovative creations illustrating various facets of contemporary aesthetics, lifestyles, and cultural backgrounds.

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 USC U.S. - China Institute
南加州大学美中学院
3535 S. Figueroa Street, FIG 202
Los Angeles, CA 90089-1262
United States of America
web: http://china.usc.edu/
e-mail: uschina@usc.edu
phone: 213-821-4382
fax: 213-821-2382