Campus reports 2023

Campus Reports (2023)

Claremont Colleges

Asian Studies at the Claremont Colleges since 2021:

·       Asian Studies Program at Pomona College started a Christopher Rand Post-doctoral Fellowship in Pre-Modern China. Dr. Maddalena Poli was hired as the inaugural fellowship holder in September 2022.

·       In June 2022, Dr. Jun Lang was hired as the tenure track assistant professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Pomona College.

·       In June 2023, Dr. Yuanshuo Zhang was hired as the tenure track assistant professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Pomona College.

·       In Fall 2022, Ahona Panda was hired as a tenure track assistant professor of South Asian History.

 

Asian Library updates:

 

Operations

·       In collaboration with Pomona College Advancement Office, an Asian Library Innovation Fund was set up in 2021 to support priority areas of Asian Library work: cataloging rare book and medium rare book backlogs to enhance the discovery and access; rare book conservation and reservation; public programs to increase awareness of our resources and services. The fund has received generous donations since then.

·       A regular technical services staff position was established in Asian Library in May 2022 and Hunter Xizhen Huang was hired as the East Asian Language Cataloger thereafter.

·       In July 2023 Chunxiao Zhang was hired as a part-time East Asian Language Project Cataloger, under the Asian Library Innovation Fund.

 

Collections

 

·       Funded by Pomona College alumna Dr. Christopher Rand, the Asian Library collaborated with the Claremont Center for Engagement with Primary Sources (CCEPS) to complete the archival collection of Prof. Shou-yi Chen, who founded the Asian Studies Program at Pomona College and the Claremont Colleges. A finding aid is to be published on OAC in the coming fall. For more information about highlights in the collection, visit the blog postings by the CCEPS fellow hired to process the collection.

·       Newly completed digitization projects include the digital archive of the “Norman Gan-chao and Anne Lee Yao Papers”, an archival and photographical collection on Hong Kong and Claremont.

·       Gift books from faculty and community members received and cataloged, 2021-2023

o   Retired Pomona College professor Lynne Miyake donated her collection of Japanese manga and literary works, including over 300 volumes Japanese manga in various genres.

o   Retired Scripps College professor Bruce Coats donated his collection of Japanese art and art history works, including over 200 volumes finely illustrated large folios on Japanese gardens and landscape designs.

o   Pomona College professor Samuel Yamashita donated his collection of Japanese intellectual thoughts, over 200 volumes.

o   Two community members donated the Chan Nai-man collection of pre-1911 Chinese classics on Chinese literatures and traditional Chinese medicines, over 200 volumes.

 

Public Programs

 

·       To support Asian studies curriculum and programs, the Asian Library curated the following exhibitions.

o   2022 May-July, “Art and Voices”, featuring artist books by Asian American book artists to celebrate the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Heritage Month.

o    2022 Aug-Sept., “Enlightenment In Ink: The Art of Buddhist Prints”

o   2022 Oct-Dec. “Our History, Our Legacy”, celebrating the Filippino American History Month

o   2023 Jan-Feb. “Yangliuqing New Year Woodblock Prints”, celebrating the East Asian Lunar New Year

o   2023 March-July, extended to December, “In Search of a New Home”, celebrating one of the earliest Chinese American family’s immigration story.

o   2023 May-September, “War and Gender in East Asia During WWII: Historical Reality and Contemporary Recollection”, about issues related “comfort women in East Asian during the WWII era.

·       In collaboration with Asian Studies Program and academic departments across the Colleges, the Asian Library organized the following public programs

o   April 2022, as part of the Scripps College Press Goudy Lecture, a public talk by Colette Fu, Asian American book artist

o   September 2022, a public talk by Susan Huang, Professor of East Asian art history at Rice University, on the art of Buddhist prints and text.

o   March 2023, “Envisioning Hong Kong: Archive, Image and Comparative Perspectives”, a panel discussion on Hong Kong’s border, in comparison to the US-Mexico border.

o   May 2023, “Feminist Encounters with Historical Trauma: Conversations Across Historical Times and Geographical Space”, a panel discussion on historical trauma and productive ways of expression, using “comfort women” issues as a case study.


(Submitted by Xiuying Zou)

 

Getty Research Institute 


Resources on East Asia

 

New Acquisitions (2021-2022)

 

Recent publications were acquired mostly through three approval plans (China, Japan, and Korea) and cataloged by a contract cataloging agency.  Expensive monographic sets were firm ordered and cataloged in house, for example:

歐洲馮氏藏中國古代版畫叢刊 = The von der Burg collection of ancient Chinese printing

 

Antiquarian/rare resources were firm ordered and cataloged in house, and some were digitized, for examples:

古今畫林 Kokon garin 1-4

https://archive.org/details/kokongarin1189unse/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/kokongarin2189unse/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/kokongarin3189unse/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/kokongarin4189unse/mode/2up

(Also available at https://portal.getty.edu/)

 

Chinese e-books (approximately 50 titles/year) were firm ordered and cataloged title-by-title.

 

Gifts of materials were acquired mostly through participation in the Korea Foundation’s Support Program for Korean Studies Resources, the Library of Congress Surplus Books Program, and the National Library of Korea’s International Materials Exchange Program.  (Getty Library reciprocated by offering Getty publications to the National Library of Korea.)

 

 (Submitted by Susan Chow)


San Diego State University 


Stanford University 

EA studies program since 2021:

Two new research scholars joining Stanford Center for China economy and institutes: Guoguang Wu (political science), Chenggang Xu (economics)


EAL updates:

General

Stanford EAL open hours for the 2023-2024 year will be M-Th: 9 am - 10 pm; F: 9 am - 5 pm; Sun: 12 pm - 8 pm. All EAL staff will return to a four-day on-campus hybrid work schedule starting September 2023.


Outreach & Collections

The current exhibit curated by Prof. Xiaoze Xie, "Flammable Ideas, Fragile Objects," which focuses on the history of banned books in China, will end in mid-September.

Several titles from the EAL’s special collections will be on display in Green Library in the autumn as part of the exhibit, Embodied Knowledge: Women and Science before Silicon Valley. A new online exhibit was recently completed: https://exhibits.stanford.edu/chinavisit 

Digitization of a selection of Chinese rare books in a collaboration with the National Central Library of Taiwan (NCL). In this six month long project, a selection of 210 volumes from 26 titles in the holdings of the East Asia Library and the Bowes Art & Architecture Library were digitized by Digital Production Group (DPG) and then delivered to NCL in November to complete the project. Current digitized Chinese rare books are just a small representation of a unique collection at the Stanford libraries. The project will continue to digitize more titles.

TRCCS established at Stanford East Asia Library in fall of 2022.

Several online resources acquisitions, including a subscription to the Wind, an important resource for Chinese financial and economic data.


Personnel

Kyungmi Chun, Korean Studies Librarian, retired in December 2022.

Li Hui started as Chinese Technical Services Librarian in 2021.

Regan Murphy Kao was appointed Director of the East Asia Library in February 2023.

Stanford is currently conducting a search for a Japanese Studies Librarian.


Other

The East Asia Library has a new website, as part of a comprehensive redesign of the Stanford Libraries website. The Library has moved to FOLIO. AEON has been implemented for managing Special Collections.


(Submitted by Regan Murphy Kao)


UC Berkeley

1. Developments in academic programs

New faculty hires since 2019:

Jun Hu, Chinese Art History

Puck Engman, History of Contemporary China

Hidetaka Hirota, 19th century U. S. immigration law and policy

Kevin Michael Smith, modern Korean literature and culture, poetry, and poetics

Retired faculty members:

Thomas Gold (Sociology, 2018)

Dana Buntrock (Architecture 2022)

Lowell Dittmer (Political Science, 2023)

The Institute of East Asian Studies is currently searching for a new director. Prof. Robert Sharf is the current interim director of the Institute.

2. Developments in the East Asian Library

· The Korean Collection received a one million dollar gift for its collection acquisitions this year.

· A donation agreement has been signed by Chancellor Carrol Christ and Dr. James Soong 宋楚瑜 to receive his entire personal archive reflecting on the democratic transformation of Taiwan in the past 4 decades.

· The East Asian Library has received a gift donation of Mr. Ōe Kenzaburō 大江 健三郎, recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature. This is Mr. Ōe’s handwritten draft of “Maruyama Masao no gengo sayō”

· The following new staff members have recently joined the East Asian Library:

Xiaoli Xu, Chinese acquisitions assistant

Setsuko Katsuki, Japanese Acquisitions Assistant

Naoko Ohgama, Japanese Cataloging Assistant

· EAL now has a new Facebook page.

· The East Asian Library received an archive collection in over 30 boxes, originally put together by David W. Conde (1906-1981), who worked on Allied propaganda operations within the U. S. Office of War Information’s Psychological Warfare Branch during the World War II, and for a short time worked as director of the

Motion Picture Department of the Civil Information and Education Section of GHQ immediately after the WWII in Japan.

· The East Asian Library also received Joseph Bailie (1860-1935) collection: Joseph Bailie was an American missionary, who founded the College of Agriculture and Forestry at Nanjing University and was its first dean. The gift contains19 volumes of The Missionaries’ Anglo-Chinese Diary, in Joseph Bailie’s hand, for the years 1912–26, 1928–29, 1935. There are 24 small bundles and numerous loose notebook sheets & index cards, handwritten & typed, containing records of various sorts & addresses, dating between 1924 & 1929.

(Submitted by Peter Zhou)

UC Davis

UC Irvine 

Faculty and graduate students

Two new EA studies faculty members joined UCI in the past two years. They are Art History Professor Seungyeon Gabrielle Jung and Japanese Literature Professor Jon Pitt. Professor June came to us from Stanford, where she was a postdoc; and her research interests are politics and aesthetics of modern design with a focus on South Korean. Professor Pitt received her Ph.D. from Berkeley. He was hired as a scholar on Japanese environmental humanities. The two positions are funded by Korea Foundation and Japan Foundation respectively. Meanwhile, the Department of East Asian Studies finally succeeded in hiring a faculty member of Chinese classics literature to fill the vacancy due to the retirement of Professor Michael Fuller. Professor Xiao Rao is scheduled be on board in 2024. Meanwhile, Japanese culture and religion Professor Elizabeth Tinsley resigned in early July 2023, and is moving on to a position in Nara, Japan.

For the graduate program, we currently have 46 doctoral students (24 Chinese studies, 16 Korean, & 6 Japanese).

EA Studies Program

The Center for Critical Korean Studies received continuing funding from Academy of Korean studies and has been actively sponsoring talks and events. See https://www.humanities.uci.edu/criticalkorean/

Library Budget

UCI Libraries is anticipating a 2.8% cut to the overall collections budget, along with various other allocation adjustments.

Collection

The East Asian Collection has been undergoing a major shift to (1) interfile current periodicals alongside their bound counterparts, (2) move most used call# ranges (e.g., DSs & PLs) to a location that is more easily accessed, (3) make new titles more prominent and convenient to browse (proximity to nice seating area in the Korea Corner), and (4) provide a similar call number flow to the other floors.

Personnel

There were several retirements and hence new hires in Technical Services. We have hired two new staff members to process EA material acquisitions, including a clean-up of old EA orders that were originally ordered one year ago. We are expecting our 2023 Korea Foundation intern who will join us in late September until late July 2024. We are currently hosting another MLIS student from San Jose State University who is helping with the preparation for the digitization of the Shūkan Shōnen Magajin, a unique manga source at EAC, by creating article-level inventory, examining physical condition (incl. missing/damaged pages), developing metadata structure, as well as carrying out other early phase project plans. Our 2021 KF intern has successfully landed in an archivisit position in her hometown, Jeju Island.

Public Service

UCI Libraries have permanently closed Reference Desk and replaced it with drop-in hours staffed by LAs on weekdays in one of library classrooms. The Librarian has started her 24/7 and now UC Co-Op online chat coverage, one or two hours per week. Meanwhile, general library instructions for lower-division writing have been changed from one-session for all to different modules each with an emphasis.

(Submitted by Ying Zhang)

UCLA

East Asian Studies Program

The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures welcomes three new faculty members in Asian Languages and Cultures/History. They are Mai Huijun of Premodern Chinese literature and culture, Stephanie Balkwill of Buddhist studies, Associate Director of the Center for Buddhist Studies, and Diego Loukota of Buddhist studies.

UCLA Library

Three AULs have retired as of June 30, 2023 that including AUL for Distinctive Collections, AUL for Bio-Med, Science & Technology and Financial & Facilities, and AUL for Collections & Scholarly Communication who retired a year ago. The only remaining AUL is for Digital Initiatives & Information Technology.

The UL announced that she will retire by the end of 2023. The recruitment of new UL has started, there are three library staff in the search committee.

Starting August 1st 2023, the Distinctive Collections that consists of Library Special Collections, East Asian Library and International & Area Studies report to Judy Consales, AUL for Bio-Med, Science & Technology then and now Administrative Services, who has returned on recall.

UCLA Library lost Rare Book and Printing History Librarian Devin Fitzgerald to Yale University library. A recruitment for new Rare Book librarian is in the progress. At the moment, there is no one in LSC who is able to teach with East Asian primary sources to classes needed.

East Asian Library

Staffing. In the fall, EAL will welcome three new temporary staff, they are EAL Project Manager on Tule Lake Library, ACLS Buddhism Public Scholar for one year with a possibility to renew for another 12 months, and a Korea Foundation Visiting Librarian.

Projects. EAL has digitized a group of 129 titles of rarely seen Chinese literary works from Qing Dynasty. Tomoko Bialock and her student assistant have been working on Tule Lake Japanese Language Library since May 2023 and are now working hard to further explore the collection and to engage scholarly and local communities with it.

Collection budget. Annual allocation stays the same as last FY. Hopefully this FY there will be one-time funding for big ticket e-resources.

SRLF allocation reduced. The SRLF space became scarce in short three years. For current FY2023-24, the allocation for EAL is 5,100 items, which was reduced from 7,000 items for FY2022-23, and which further reduced from 14,400 items for FY2021-22.

Staff office. EAL staff is moving to a larger office space on the 2nd floor of Young Research Library. The current EAL office space will continue to be used by the EAL, mainly for processing materials.

(Submitted by Su Chen)

UC Merced


UC Riverside

UC San Diego

Personnel Changes:


Digital Collections:


Public Events


Acquisition and Cataloging


Endowment/Donor Support

(submitted by Xi Chen)


UC Santa Barbara 

(submitted by Chizu Morihara)

UC Santa Cruz

 

University of Southern California

East Asian Studies Program

New faculty member

● Mengxiao Wang (Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures) specializing in traditional Chinese literature and culture, with a primary focus on the interplay between literary production and religious practice.

New initiative

● East Asian Studies Center (EASC) Landscape and Sustainability Studies Initiative, a three-year pilot program in partnership with the Center for East Asian Garden Studies at The Huntington to promote teaching and research related to landscape and ecology, garden design and history, conservation of built and natural heritage, sustainability, environmental humanities, and East Asian cultural studies. Rebecca Corbett is teaching a class for the History Department in Fall 2023 which is supported by this initiative, “Tea Culture in Premodern East Asia: Art, Politics, and Trade.”

EAL Updates

Collections

● EAL began inventorying all unprocessed archives in 2021 in preparation for History Associates’ work to begin in 2022. USC Libraries entered into a 2-year agreement with History Associates to process and create collection-level finding aids for greater access and discovery. The inventory project was completed in Spring 2023, and the bulk of unprocessed EAL archives now have finding aids.

● New collections and resources 

○ Bill Einreinhofer China Archive featuring nearly 1000 digital video, image, audio, and text files used by Einreinhofer to create a series of public television documentaries spanning modern China and Japan from 1910 to 2022.

○ Collection on Democracy Wall featuring pamphlets, handwritten notes, and newspaper clippings relating to Democracy Wall in Beijing and the final years of the Cultural Revolution. 

○ The discovery of an English version of Eileen Chang’s short story 相見歡 (She said smiling) in the Ailing Zhang (Eileen Chang) papers. ○ Sang Joon Park Korean Science Fiction Collection, a unique collection of rare historic books, magazines, fanzines, pamphlets and leaflets showcasing the history and fandom of Korean science and fantasy fiction.

Outreach activities

● Exhibits

 ○ Dr. Theodore Hsi-en Chen (1902-1991): Chinese American Education Pioneer and Founder of East Asian Studies at USC, a physical and online exhibit celebrating Dr. Chen’s academic achievements, educational reforms, and legacy to both USC and communities across the Pacific. 

○ Exploring Republican China in the USC Digital Library: An Experimental Metadata Analysis, an exploratory study analyzing the metadata of over 1,500 items from digital collections related to Republican China (1911-1949) in the USC Digital Library. 

○ Science Fiction in Korea: Between History, Genre, and Politics, an online exhibit highlighting the USC libraries’ unique collection of Korean printed science fiction and fantasy, which includes about five hundred (and growing) items of books, magazines, pamphlets, and other materials. 

○ The Silk Roads: Connecting Communities, Markets, and Minds Since Antiquity, a USC Libraries-wide physical and online exhibit focusing on written artifacts that linked up different Silk Road communities.

● Public programs 

○ 2023 Peace Corps Korea Southern California Reunion, an opportunity to learn about recent research in Korean academia, participate in oral history interviews for the USC Peace Corps Korea digital archives, and share volunteer experiences in Korea. 

○ Encountering Alice in Japan, a two-day conference on Japanese adaptations of and interactions with the world of Alice in Wonderland. ○ Ku’er Worlds: Art and Filmmaking Workshop, a USC Visions and Voices workshop with acclaimed Chinese American filmmakers on storytelling, LGBTQ and AAPI identities, and cross-cultural exchange. 

○ Ku’er Worlds: Queering Chinese American Identities in Art and Film, a USC Visions and Voices program featuring public screenings of short films and video art by Chinese American artists, as well as a panel discussion with the artists. 

○ The Nak Chung Thun (전낙청) Archive and Global Korean Literature: 2nd International Symposium featuring the recent publication of two Korean-language volumes of selected writings from the archive and the presentation of plans for the first English translation of Thun's works. 

○ Theodore Chen panel discussion featuring a scholarly discussion about Dr. Chen’s scholarship, contributions, and legacy to the USC and the community. 

○ Uta Awase: A Modern Take on the Traditional Japanese Poetry Contest, a USC Visions and Voices event featuring a poetry contest modeled after the kind that was popular in eighth-century Japan.

Personnel changes

● Rebecca Corbett was the Co-Head of EAL from July 2021 to June 2022. She assumed a new role of Director of Special Projects in July 2022 as a 50% appointment, and remains in her role of the Japanese Studies Librarian.

● Jungjiro Nakatomi, Japanese Cataloging Librarian, began taking on Japanese Studies collection development responsibilities in July 2022.

● Tang Li was appointed as the Acting Head of EAL in October 2022 and re-appointed as the Head of EAL in July 2023.

● Joy Kim began a six-month research leave in April 2023.

● Jungeun Hong was hired in March 2023 to backfill Joy during her research leave.

USC Libraries updates 

● USC appoints alumna Melissa Just as new dean of libraries. Dr. Just will start her position on November 27. Until then, the Libraries is led by an Interim Dean.

● Dean Catherine Quinlan stepped down from her Deanship at the end of June 2022. A search for the next Dean began in Fall 2022. Final candidates were identified and interviewed in Spring 2023.

● Axiell, a fine arts collection management platform, is being piloted with departments within USC. In the future, the system will offer a chance to inventory and catalog fine art and objects within the East Asian Library.

● The USC Digital Library continues to make improvements in their content management system, OrangeLogic, which benefits digitized East Asian collections related to discoverability for a greater number of user

(Submitted by Tang Li)


University of the West