Two finished books in the former native speaker's library!

I just finished reading Anru Lee's Haunted Modernities, which was a fascinating study of the intersections of memory, feminism, women's lives (and deaths), modernization, industrialization, post-industrialization, and local traditional religious beliefs and practices in Taiwan. I'd love to use it in a class, but I'm not sure that I'm ever going to teach a class in which I can teach it...

Here's a podcast interview with Anru Lee about her book.

I had put Lee's book aside briefly, partly due to work and partly because I wanted to finish Kim Liao's book Where Every Ghost Has a Name before she comes to Northeastern this coming Wednesday. I enjoyed this book, too. It gave me a new perspective on Thomas Liao, an historical figure I've read about mostly through the lens of his correspondence with George H. Kerr. It also ties in to my honors course text, Mira Shimabukuro's Relocating Authority, in interesting ways, particularly in terms of how they're both investigating histories that were suppressed both by unsympathetic governments and by the survivors of past trauma who sometimes just wanted to forget about the past. 

Here's an interview with Kim Liao about her book.

Rebecca Nedostup talk, “War Being” in Mid-Twentieth Century China and Taiwan

Need to watch this video sometime.

I don't know if it's my computer or their set-up, but the audio is terrible.

'Tis the season (evidently) to buy books, even if I don't have time to read them

Just picked up (well, was sent) a new book from the University of Washington Press on the CIA and the Asia Foundation, a Cold War-era nonprofit/CIA front (that is now evidently not funded by the CIA, I guess). The book is Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA, by David H. Price. 

One thing I'll be reading this book for is how it extends or differs from Emma North-Best's long article on the CIA and the Asia Foundation on the MuckRock website. I remember reading that article a few years ago after I came across a 1951 letter from Philip Horton, assistant editor of The Reporter, to Allen Dulles, who was "Deputy Director for Plans" at the CIA at the time (if Wikipedia is correct). 

In the letter, Horton quotes a letter he had received from Kerr (who was at the Hoover Library at the time), in which Kerr criticized the Committee for a Free Asia (the precursor to the Asia Foundation). Kerr reported on a visit to Hoover by CFA president George H. Greene, Jr.* (not sure what his first name was). Kerr continued, 

Either the management is extraordinarily naive, or they assume us to be so. The line will be almost unmodified extension of the Voice of America or U.S.I.S. propaganda. "Tell the Asians how wonderful life is in America, how good our institutions are, and how very very wicked and dangerous the Communists are." There is heavy emphasis on the latter approach, with  little ready response to our questions concerning positive content. It was freely admitted that China is the primary concern. Chiang is to be neither praised nor condemned. "Counterpart Committees" will be set up overseas, operating under guarantees that the local government will not influence nor affect the content of propaganda. It was asserted that such a condition was expected to obtain in Formosa, which is to be a principal base of operations. 

It has been pointed out to the representatives of the Committee that (1) most Asians are tired of hearing how good we are, and the history of our representative institutions has little bearing on their problems, for the conditions surrounding their evolution cannot be duplicated in Asia; (2) most non-Chinese Asians fear a strong China, whatever its political orientation, and will hardly respond with enthusiasm to a rally in support of "anti-Communist government" for China, especially if it means support for the Nationalists; (3) Formosa cited as an example of "Free Asia" would be damaging nonsense. 

Those of us who talked with Greene have a troubled sense that the Administration may have decided to switch to all-out support for the Nationalists, hopefully trusting that Chiang may be thrust aside, and that the Committee not only has the State Department's blessing in this attempt to sweeten the picture, but is most actively setting it up. Each of us asks the other if at any point the [China] Lobby may be putting up funds. Odd to conceive, but not impossible in Washington. 

Actually, if the thing were worked out on a realistic appraisal of the American position in Asian eyes, it could do an enormously important job, unhampered by red tape.

Wonder if this letter helped get Kerr in any trouble with the government... 

*All you had to do was look in the index of the book you just bought, Jon... 🙄

Another new (new new new!) book in the former native speaker's library

I just got my copy of Kim Liao's Where Every Ghost Has a Name: A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence, which came into print (or "dropped," as the youngsters say) a few days ago. I read a little of it on the Amazon website (as much as I could) while I waited for the hardback copy, and I can't wait to read it. I'm going to put it next on my list after finishing Anru Lee's Haunted Modernities. (Interestingly, Lee has a blurb on the back of Liao's book.) 

I'm especially interested in seeing how Kim Liao treats the relationship between Thomas Liao and his family and George H. Kerr. I realize that, as K. Liao says, this is a work of creative nonfiction, so some of the conversations between the characters are reimagined, but I want to see how her perspective on Kerr compares to my own perspective.

Kim Liao is coming to Northeastern in October, so I guess I'd better get going on reading her book!

Update on new (academic) year's resolutions

I'm happy to announce that I've chosen the first book that I'll be reading on the train to school, starting on Tuesday (I'm sure all of my reader was dying to know): Haunted Modernities: Gender, Memory, and Placemaking in Postindustrial Taiwan, by Anru Lee. 

I mentioned back in May that I had started to read the book shortly after I received it, but then, between teaching two summer courses and getting a book review and some other writing projects done during the summer, plus preparing for my honors course, I just didn't have time to get back to it. I really have enjoyed it so far, though, and I'm looking forward to getting back to it. Maybe I'll write a few notes about it once I finish. 

"Rhetorics in Contact" and August mushroom hunts

We're just a few days away from the beginning of the semester, and I've been feverishly working at getting my new "Rhetorics in Contact" course together. Right now it's a pretty small group of students (it's a freshman-level course in the Honors Program), but a few more people might trickle in before classes start next Wednesday, I hope.

My course description asks, 

What happens when people try to communicate persuasively with each other across cultural boundaries? How do participants’ histories, traditions, and communication patterns shape cross-cultural encounters, and how do those encounters shape future communication within and across cultures? 

In this course, we’ll be looking at different examples of how rhetorical traditions or legacies affect communication across cultural boundaries and how cross-cultural encounters are represented differently by the participants. Through the course readings, we’ll be developing a specialized vocabulary for talking about intercultural rhetoric and thinking about methods for studying it. We’ll go on to apply some of these methods to documents in the Special Collections of the Northeastern Archives, analyzing the discourses of social organizations and movements in Boston, such as the Chinese Progressive Association and the movement to desegregate Boston’s public schools. We’ll also reflect on how rhetoric across cultures affects (or should affect) advocacy in the complex global and local contexts that we currently face.

Because we're going to be working with the archives a lot, I'm not having us read a lot of different articles. Our reading list for the semester is as follows (links to relevant blog posts):

• Pratt, Mary Louise. "Arts of the Contact Zone." Profession, 1991, pp. 33-40. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25595469. (Although this isn't technically a rhetoric article, many of the concepts that Pratt discusses--like contact zones, autoethnography, transculturation, etc.--are very relevant to intercultural rhetorical studies.)
• Garrett, Mary, and Xiaosui Xiao. "The Rhetorical Situation Revisited." Rhetoric Society Quarterly,  vol. 23, no. 2, 1993, pp. 30–40. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3885923. (See my discussion of the article in this post.)
• Gaillet, Lynée Lewis. "Archival Survival: Navigating Historical Research." Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition, edited by Alexis E. Ramsey, et al., Southern Illinois University Press, 2010, pp. 28-39. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/4176. (Although this chapter is more aimed at graduate students and PhD-level scholars in rhetoric and composition, I think much of the discussion can be useful for undergraduate honors students, as well. For instance, when Gaillet discusses grant applications, I ask students (in Perusall) to consider what kinds of undergraduate research grants are offered at Northeastern. I think this could be useful to them in their future work.)
• Shimabukuro, Mira. Relocating Authority: Japanese Americans Writing to Redress Mass Incarceration, University Press of Colorado, 2015. (This will be interesting because I have to admit, rereading the book to annotate it on Perusall, it's pretty challenging in places. But see my discussion of the book here for my reasons for using this fascinating study.)

Other than these readings, students will be focusing a lot on exploring NU's Special Collections and settling on a collection or collections to focus on. One thing I'm trying to do with this assignment is stretch their ideas of what academic research is. Gaillet quotes the late compositionist Robert Connors as saying, "[A]rchival reading is ... a kind of directed ramble, something like an August mushroom hunt" (qtd. in Gaillet 38). Although the topics we'll be covering (and uncovering) in the course are serious (sometimes deadly serious), I also want students to experience archival research as a joyful (but sometimes depressing!) and exciting (but sometimes tedious!) process.

New year's resolutions for the 2024-2025 academic year

I haven't done this for a few years (I think the last time was 2021), but it's not necessarily a bad idea to write down a few things I'm going to try to do this year (or at least this semester). 

One is to try to get up earlier in the morning. I can use the time to do a little writing and get my Duolingo done. I used to do the Duolingo on the train into school, but this semester, I want to use my commute time to read. As my reader(s) know, I've got a stack of books that I should get started on!

Another thing I need to do is make time for writing. I have to do revisions on a paper that has been accepted (my first journal article about GHK!), and then I need to get to work on a collaboratively written biography of Kerr. I also have a rhetoric paper to work on that I have been ignoring for months.

I guess that's a good start--as I've said in the past, when it comes to resolutions, less is more!