CFP: "National Image Management in Asia"

Got this in my e-mail the other day.

Place Branding and Public Diplomacy

Call for Papers for Special Issue
National Image Management in Asia

Guest Editor
Dr. Jian “Jay” Wang
Department of Communication
Purdue University, USA

Asia looms large in our global imagination. Today, it is home to the world’s second largest economy, and the world’s two most populous nations and fastest-growing markets. It has diverse cultural heritage, distinct political traditions, and varying levels of development. With their growing role and impact in global politics and economy, countries in Asia are increasingly aware of the importance of their image and reputation as an integral part of their development strategies.

This special issue of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy seeks to advance our understanding of national, regional and city image management in East, Central, South, and Southeast Asia. Topics may include but are certainly not limited to the following:

• Perceptions and images of these countries/regions/cities in the international arena, and their sources and outcome (intended or unintentional);
• Production, distribution, reception, and impact of image management and communication efforts undertaken;
• Structure, process, and policy for place image management;
• Goals and priorities embodied in these efforts, e.g., policy communication, promotion of ideals and values, mutual understanding and relationship development;
• Actors/players in the process, e.g., nation-state and local governments, civic/nongovernmental organizations, business, media, citizens, diasporas, cultural institutions, and celebrities and pop culture figures;
• Communication platforms, e.g., media-oriented programs, cultural communication tools, new media technologies, advertising, public relations, and other communication tactics.
  

We welcome empirical research (with no preferences for methods or approaches) and concept papers that genuinely advance the field of place branding and public diplomacy. We are also interested in case studies that detail all or some of the key aspects in problem definition, objectives, actions taken, program organization, results/impact, and lessons learned/recommendations.

Manuscripts will be double-blind peer reviewed. All submissions must follow the author guidelines, available at http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pb/author_instructions.html. The deadline for submission is January 15, 2008. Papers should be emailed as Word files to Dr. Jay Wang at jianwang@purdue.edu.

Hmmm... seems to me I was gonna say something here...

Been doing a lot of waiting recently. Yesterday the former native Chinese speaker and I went to a certain unnamed teahouse (that claims it's the inventor of bubble/pearl milk tea) and waited an hour for my lunch to show up. (The fnCs got hers relatively quickly.) But the guy who delivered my meal apologized all over the place and gave us some coupons for free tea the text time we have a spare afternoon to wait for it.

Then this morning we went to the New! Improved! Mini-story of Foreign Affairs office in Fengyuan to get the address on my Alien Residence Card changed. (You gotta do that within 15 days of moving, or they'll fine you NT$5000.) Used to be you could go to the Foreign Affairs Police in the Fengyuan Police Station, wait a few minutes, get yelled at by the officer because you didn't bring the right documents, and be on your way pretty quickly.

Now you go to the New! Improved! MoFA office across the street--look for the banner that says, "Taiwan for UN--Peace Forever!" (or is it "UN for Taiwan--Peace Forever"?). We waited in the office for close to two hours, got nagged by the officer because we didn't bring the right documents (Can anyone tell me why they insist you bring a 戶籍謄本 instead of a 戶口名簿? Don't you need the latter to get the former?), and were out in a minute and a half.

But at least the fnCs and I had some nice conversations while we waited, so I can't really complain...

Looks like this will be a typhoon weekend

Typhoon Krosa is on its way and looks like it'll be a big one. So I imagine we won't be going out much this weekend. It's just as well. We're exhausted. We finally finished getting all the stuff out of the old apartment, but now our new place is a mess. I keep expecting to come home and find Jupiter Jones setting up shop in the living room. (I probably referenced myself out of an audience with that.)

Well, at least perhaps I can make use of the time by trying to un-muddle chapter four, which is currently 15,000 stream-of-unconsciousness words with no end in sight. Either that or un-muddle the living room. Whatever I end up doing, though, it might have be done by candlelight. And in either case, organization seems to be the biggest challenge. That, and "knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep." (Ha ha! Now you won't get that song out of your heads for weeks!)

Oops...

During our recent move, we unpacked a box of books that contained the Ohio cookbook that ERG's mother had given us five years ago when we were leaving the U.S. to return to Taiwan. Inside the front cover, a nice note from her and an unsigned, un-mailed thank you card....

Never too old to learn...

The former native speaker's four-year-old nephew (we'll call him "the not-yet-native speaker," or nyns, for short) just explained to me why he's not yet bathing himself:

Because little children can't wash behind themselves, they need their mothers to help them wash their backs.

Hmmm... made sense when he said it.

Current events (or why I'm not blogging)

• Health "events" in the family
• Moving and redecorating "events" (and sometimes redecorating "un-events" that should have been "events")
• Dissertation/IRB-related "events"
• An eventful publication process for an article that will come out soon
• Beginning of the semester events
• Recommendation-writing requests from all over (I'm happy to write 'em, but they're still an "event")

More later...

Amen.

A coupla IRB-related links (mostly for my benefit)

Been doing work to apply for IRB review of my research (again--but it's my fault since my 5-year renewable approved whatchamajiggit is expiring soon). In the midst of all that, I've seen two posts that represent different views of the process:

• Using informed consent forms in fieldwork (at Savage Minds)
• To the Historian All Men are Dead (at the Institutional Review Blog)

No time to comment now on them, though. Gotta get back to IRB-ing...

Checking in

Just a note to say that I'm still alive. If you imagine that I have spent the summer thus far productively writing my dissertation, well, you're partly right. It's been an eventful summer, though. (I hasten to add that the events have been mostly good. Or, rather, that most of the events have been good.)

Anyway, I'll check back in again at some point in the future. Meanwhile, you can read this post from Stewgad.

Eric Gardner on contingent faculty

My Ohio University grad. school classmate Eric has an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about part-time labor in U.S. colleges and universities (and in particular, Ohio). It's an issue that probably a lot of people in academia are aware of (particularly in English departments or writing programs), but perhaps people outside of academia aren't as aware. Hopefully Eric's article will open a few eyes.

No wonder hardly anyone reads this blog

Mingle² - Online Dating

Isn't a G rating the kiss of death for a movie? Maybe I need to throw in a few gratuitous expletives, like "Daggone it!" or "Great day in the morning!"

via

Another idea for RSA: Rhetorical Agency for the "Orphan of Asia"

Here's another timely topic for the upcoming Rhetoric Society conference. It's another one I am interested in, but don't have time right now to explore.

Earlier this month, Michael Turton wrote a post about the U.S. government's response to a teleconference between Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian and members of the National Press Club. This teleconference was (predictably) denounced by the PRC, and U.S. government officials avoided the event. According to a Taipei Times article that Turton quotes, "at least one [U.S. State Department] official charg[ed] that Chen's appearance violated the US ban on Taiwanese presidents visiting Washington". Turton comments,

In other words, officials within the US State Department -- thankfully not the whole State Department -- decided to take the exact position that Beijing had advanced: that pixels containing Chen Shui-bian's image should not be allowed to re-assemble themselves on digital screens inside the territory of the United States, especially when accompanied by audio.

The Taipei Times article also notes that no one from the State Department attended the teleconference.

This made me think of a question that Cheryl Geisler noted was raised by Joshua Gunn in a discussion of rhetorical agency at a meeting of the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies: "Under the impact of digital technologies, we have the ability to be in virtual places beyond our physical reach--how does this affect agency?"

The answer in this case seems to be "not a whole lot", but I'd be interested in hearing the views of those who have studied rhetorical agency (particularly in digital environments) in more depth than I have.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it

I was recently reminded that Robert Oliver, author of Communication in Ancient China and India (1971), worked as a publicizer of and ghostwriter for Syngman Rhee, Korea's first (through third) post-WWII president. Oliver wrote quite a few pamphlets and books about Korea and Rhee (Korea's Fight for Freedom, Why War Came in Korea, The Truth about Korea, Syngman Rhee: The Man Behind the Myth, etc.). He also gave a lot of speeches about Korea that have been published in various issues of Vital Speeches of the Day. Rhee, a strong anti-Communist, left office in 1960 after protests regarding the 1960 election and was exiled in Hawai'i.

This got me to thinking about the possible relationships between Oliver's work as a scholar of rhetoric (particularly intercultural rhetoric) and his Cold War-era rhetorical work for Rhee. I haven't seen anyone in the field of rhetoric write about Oliver's work on Korea--no dissertations, book chapters, or even articles. Goodwin Berquist has a little to say about Oliver's Korea period in "The Rhetorical Travels of Robert T. Oliver", but it's not a critical article. Oliver himself mentions his work with Rhee in his memoir The Way It Was--All the Way, but it doesn't appear that anyone else has taken up this topic.

But I don't really have time to work on this topic. So I'm passing it out to whoever wants to work on it, assuming no one has thought of this topic before. If anyone picks it up, I'd be grateful to hear about it. It might make a good paper for the RSA 2008 conference that's focusing on the responsibilities of rhetoric. Might even make a good dissertation topic.

[Update, 6/21/07: There's an article about ghostwriting from the Journal of Business Ethics that mentions Oliver and cites a 1991 book chapter in which Oliver is interviewed. Surprisingly, our library has that book...]

[Korea] [rhetoric] [Robert Oliver] [Syngman Rhee]

CFP: Rhetoric Society of America, 2008

RSA 2008: Call for Proposals

The Responsibilities of Rhetoric

Seattle, the location of RSA 2008, by virtue of its identity and its imagery compels us to meditate together on the macroforces that are currently shaping our discipline and our democracy.

Seattle means coffee and Boeing and the Port--all of them symbols of the international, globalized market economy and its attendant perils. Seattle means Microsoft and Amazon.com --megacorporations produced by and producing new (and sometimes vexing) communications technologies and practices. Seattle means "metronatural" life: REI (Recreation Equipment Inc.) and bicycles, eco-consciousness and the just-launched Puget Sound Partnership, urban spaces surrounded by Elliott Bay and Mt. Rainier--all of it a reminder of ecological challenges that must be negotiated through rhetoric. And Seattle means multiculturalism: the polyglot citizens who gather at Pike Place Market or Starbucks are African American and native American, Anglo and Asian, Latino and mestizo, native and immigrant.

Let us come together in Seattle, therefore, to consider The Responsibilities of Rhetoric. How can the study and practice of rhetoric contribute to social progress? What does rhetoric offer as means of understanding and coping with globalization, particularly at a time when "global" is associated with "terror" and "exploitation"? What do rhetorical studies have to offer in a presidential election year when political discourses and popular fundamentalisms are polarizing, confrontational, divisive? How do new media affect civic participation and the conduct of argument half a century after The New Rhetoric, The Uses of Argument, and The Rhetoric of Motives? How can rhetorical studies contribute to scientific exchange, technology transfer, and risk management--all in the interest of public and disciplinary good, and particularly on environmental issues? In a nation suspicious of difference, concerned with security, and newly armed with snooping technologies, can rhetorical pedagogies nevertheless protect civil liberties, sustain civic cooperation, and promote understanding and identification? And how can our professional society be sure that our scholarly methodologies and assumptions are themselves highly ethical?

While participants are invited to present their current research on all the topics that fall within the domain of rhetorical studies, the Program Committee will especially appreciate proposals that engage with The Responsibilities of Rhetoric.

Proposals for sessions and individual presentations – due by September 15, 2007 – must be submitted electronically: directions will be posted here shortly. There you will also find information (and regular updates) on housing, registration, special features, and other aspects of RSA 2008.

I should probably try to go--my first RSA presentation was in 1998 and my most recent one was in 2002...

Kang-i Sun Chang's new book on living through the White Terror

A while back I reviewed Kang-i Sun Chang's (孫康宜) book 走出白色恐怖 (Farewell to the White Terror). At least one commenter mentioned interest in an English version of the book.

Now I see that the author has published an English version of this book--Journey Through the White Terror: A Daughter's Memoir, published by National Taiwan University Press.

She also has a new edition of the Chinese book out. Unfortunately, neither book appears to be available through Amazon.

The end of an era?

Got this in my e-mail today:

二、停止電話撥接上網服務(計中)
由於本校電話撥接上網（Remote Dial In Service）使用率極低，而且此項上網設備維護及零件更新不易，故2007年6月1日起計中停止電話撥接上網服務，原使用者請改以學校寬頻、無線（WiFi）、或各網路ISP公司ADSL上網，不便之處敬請見諒。

It's basically saying that they're shutting down Tunghai's dial-in Internet service because it's not being used very much.

A reminder to myself not to count on e-mail for communicating with students

This showed up in my inbox yesterday:

您的信件
收件者: s94xxxx@thu.edu.tw
主旨: FENM Reminder
傳送時間: 06/09/06 06:55:05 PM

在 05/20/07 10:59:11 PM 被讀取。

It basically means that the e-mail I sent out to a student last June was just read by that student yesterday. Hmmm...

My boring dream & Susan's exciting defense

I dreamt that I was at a literature conference in England and that the whole Q & A part of one session was devoted to someone reading a list of the bookstores where a new up-and-coming scholar would be having book-signings. I got up and started walking to the door, muttering to myself, "I gotta get out of this dream! It's so boring!"

On a completely different note, I am 100% sure that Susan's diss. defense will be illuminating, exciting, and just generally wonderful. I wish I could be there. I know I wouldn't want to leave!

[Update: HRH Dr Susan informs us that her defense was indeed a success. As I predicted. (Ahem.) Congratulations! Can I call you "HRH" for short?]

Machine-translated student writing

I mentioned a while back what appeared to be the beginnings of a trend in using translation software to complete English writing assignments. More and more, I'm (literally) having to translate students' writing into Chinese to be able to understand what they're talking about. I've been grading student-written plays the last few days (for a first-year English program-wide student play assignment that I find of dubious value in the first place). I keep coming across sentences like this (credit for those of you who can figure out the correct Mandarin or Taiwanese meaning):

• "Eat smoke."
• "(Disguises shy)" (stage direction)
  
• "Usually work overtime and all do not go home, the daughter-in-law comes after him to also eat a few bitter."
• "Lazy have to say with you."
• "If you go the speech..." (this last one is tricky)

I'm thinking about how I can combat deal with this apparent increase in the use of machine translation. I'm thinking that one possible approach is to try to work with students to help them use the translators to get meaningful English sentences (rather than trying to think of ways to stop students from using them). But I don't know... Ideas?

[Update: I talked to my students about this situation. They laughed at the examples (the "If you go the speech" one was hard to figure out even for them). Some of them expressed frustration at the idea of starting out by writing in English rather than writing in Chinese and translating. They said they felt they wouldn't be able to say anything if they started out using English. (I don't think that's true, but I admit it would probably take them longer to work out their ideas in English.) On the other hand, when I was working with them and I pointed out particular sentences, they were able to come up with decent-sounding English sentences that more-or-less conveyed their meaning (like, "I don't want to talk to you!" instead of "Lazy have to say with you"). So it's not like they're not capable of putting together a script in English. It's more a matter of how they go about this process.]

Not again...

I remember checking CNN's website 8 years ago (almost to the day) and feeling sick when I read about the shootings at Columbine. Now this happens at Virginia Tech...