Six professors this summer studied Asian influences across their various disciplines and are planning new courses that will challenge students to think globally and to view a subject through various perspectives.

“More than ever, we’re preparing students for the challenging world they’ll enter after college with a curriculum that is stronger in foreign languages and global citizenship,” says Provost and Dean of Faculty Tom Falkner.

Through a grant from the Tokyo Foundation, Assistant Professor of Communication Deborah Vance interviewed residents in Thailand, New Orleans and Guyana about how they prepared for and dealt with natural disasters. Associate Professor of Music Robin Armstrong, Associate Professor of Sociology Debra Lemke, and Associate Professor of Art History Susan Scott visited Japan through the University of Pennsylvania’s Japan seminar. They will team with Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Elizabeth van den Berg, who studied Japanese culture in Hawaii, to develop an interdisciplinary course that will examine the connections between artwork and its cultural context.

“We’re infusing not only a global theme, but there is also a focus on diversity both in the world and within the U.S.,” says van den Berg.

The course will be a part of a new curriculum that will be instituted in fall 2007. It will feature a Global Citizenship requirement, in which students are expected to take two courses with an international or cross-cultural focus, and a third course that focuses on an aspect of the cultures and experiences of diverse groups within the U.S. that have been historically subordinated or marginalized.

The professors who spent time studying Asia plan to incorporate their new knowledge into upcoming courses in a variety of ways:

• Armstrong for the first time will incorporate Japanese music into her course “World Music Survey.” “The Japanese take musical ingredients from all over the world and mix it up within their sense of aesthetics,” Armstrong says. While in Japan, she attended classical concerts and listened to popular music on the radio.
• Iglich studied traditional Chinese medicine in the town of Kuming, China, while on a grant from the SIT Freeman Foundation. Iglich will add to her course, “Botany,” what she learned about acupuncture, the 400 herbal compounds that are frequently made into bitter teas, and how doctors identify health problems through tongue reading and by taking a patient’s pulse three different ways.
• Lemke plans to compare and contrast the social interaction she witnessed in Japan in the areas of class and gender stratification in her course “Wealth, Power, and Prestige in American Society,” and in an upcoming course about gender roles.
• Scott took part in programs in both China and Japan. She studied ancient gardens and, at a conference held inside a classical garden in Weifang, China, presented her own paper “Chinoiserie and the Migration of the Chinese Garden Pavilion to the West.” Scott plans to develop a course about the history of world gardens, which, in addition to examining gardens in Asia, would study those in Egypt, Greece, Rome and Europe.
• Van den Berg, who traveled to Hawaii through the Freeman Institute for Infusing Japan Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, hopes to create a special topics course on Japanese theatre and culture.
• Vance considers her summer studies in crisis communication a launching pad for new research. In her course, “Mass Communication,” and in future courses dealing with intercultural communication, she will examine how different cultures prepare for disaster and communicate in a crisis.