final essays for the rise of east asia seminar

[Jonathan Tam]

The fact that I didn’t have that much of an East Asian focus in my upbringing made this seminar all the more insightful. While I don’t explicitly teach a content area involving East Asia, where I can bring in topics discuss throughout all seminars is in my school’s social justice focus. At the School of Social Justice, topics like this are regularly discussed through councils, service learning projects, and socratic seminars among other things. And issues such as labor, gender roles, equity, and economic justice are very salient to the lives of my students.

An aspect that I found helpful to the course was the documentary shown in Seminar 7. Especially because we learned about the role of Mao after, to see how far labor has come from that starting point was very startling to see. I think that there is much to be said about how similar the labor history of America is to what is now in China with the layer of alliances towards the communist party. Much of China’s history has neglected the rights of humans at the cost of genocide, just as how the rights of many of my students are being tested as well. I would definitely like to have my students look in to Han Dongfang and the leaders of the chinese movement.

I would definitely like to thank the class for provide such depth on top of so much breathe. There is much that I can say now about each country in East Asia, about their customs, cultures, and identities. I can speak more ot the history of footbinding and the legacy of leaders like Syngman Rhee. I’m definitely interested in engaging with my colleagues on how more interdisciplinary our school can be in its approach to social justice.

[Matthew Wong]

When I first applied to enroll in this professional development opportunity, I knew that I would be learning more about East Asia, specifically about China. What I did not expect was that I would deepen knowledge and interest in the countries of Korea and Japan. I am grateful for the opportunity to broaden my understanding of modern China, Japan, and Korea. The opportunities to hear from a diversity of experts in their fields, coupled with substance-rich primary and secondary source documents have resulted in newfound knowledge and ideas for my social science courses.

 

The greatest impact of this seminar on my teaching will likely focus on my Modern US History courses. The lectures and historical materials will directly influence my lesson designing of East Asia before and after World War II. Now in World History, there is a focus on Japan’s Meiji Restoration, or Industrial Revolution. There is a brief focus on the U.S. in the Asia Pacific region during and after World War II. There is a focus on China’s communist revolution and its Cold War events such as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.

 

I would like to broaden my students understanding of East Asia by incorporating Korea’s role in East Asia. Specifically, what political, economic, and social structures existed prior to Japanese colonialism? How did the end of World War II affect Korea’s developing as two states, both of which remained non-democratic and authoritarian for many years? How has South Korea evolved into the democratic society we know today? Why does China play an outsize role in North Korea, if at all?

 

Another example I would like to explore is what was life like in Japan during the pre-World War II years? How did the Japanese live during the war, comparing the Japanese experience with the American experience? What was the role of “comfort women” and to what extent can we compare their experiences with other tragedies during World War II? How did Japan “reconstruct” after World War II? Why have relations between Japan and its East Asian neighbors remained “cold?”

 

Of course, I would like to deepen my students’ knowledge of China today. How has today’s China evolved from its imperial dynasties to a greater China of mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. To what extent did foreign actors contribute to today’s China? Why did the Nationalists lose the Chinese civil war? As many of my students are ethnically Chinese, I would argue that they will be highly interested in this particular topic.

 

I am grateful for the opportunity to attend the seminar, and more importantly, interact with experts and colleagues. I feel like I am growing professionally through the deepening of my knowledge of World History, which will have a direct influence on the high school students I work with. The knowledge and materials I have access to will, I believe, enrich my World History curriculum. 

[Alejandra Jimenez]

When I first signed up for this particular PD, I thought, this class will be helpful for my up coming trip to China. Little did I know I receiev more than what I had signed up for. I learned about the actual history about different countries like Japan, Korea, and China. Some of the information was a little overwhelming due to the complexity of the long history.

On the professional level I has broaden my perspective and undeerstand more about Asian culture, music, politics, geography. We needed to come to class with an open mind and try to understand the perspective from other's point of view based on the assigned reading such as silent voices, talk and become informed about topics in history that people are still uncomtable to talk about in the open such as "Women of Comfort", we got to hear from a Korean perspective and Japanese perspectives. I felt that in between these two cultures there is still a lot of resentment about such astrocities, but the dialogue between historians is open and people like me get to learn about.

I found that the process of new ideas, new people, and new data is extremely for historians and future historians due to the continuous research, data, and sources is still re-writting history, this idea I would defenately share with my students because history should be revised from multiple perspectives due to its complexity and be objective based on data found. I thought that our speakers are extremely knowledgable about the presented topics. The filmed that we got to watch based on working conditions had a profound impact due to the working conditions in such an important country that most of us take for granted our daily products that are produced in China. It is important for American consuers to be informed about such working practices during the manufacturing process of our products.

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