On April 2, 2022, the 37th Conference of the Southeastern Association of Japanese (SEATJ) was held virtually. Clemson University was the host institution, and the Department of Languages sponsored the event. Dr. Jae DiBello Takeuchi, Assistant Professor of Japanese, has served as the president for SEATJ for the past academic year and was the conference organizer for this event.
The conference included twenty-three individual presentations on a range of topics, including Japanese linguistics and Japanese language pedagogy. The keynote address was given by Dr. Amy Snyder Ohta, Associate Professor and Japanese Program Coordinator at the University of Washington. Dr. Ohta’s talk was titled “Harnessing Individual Networks of Practice to Promote Japanese Language Learning through Social Interaction and Media Resources.” After the official conference events concluded, two informal Zoom sessions were held in the evening to give attendees a place to interact and network. Conference attendees included Japanese language educators and researchers from California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Japan.
Dr. Takeuchi said she was relieved that the conference went smoothly and that there were no technical troubles. The conference has been held annually since 1986, and the last time Clemson University hosted an SEATJ conference was in 2012. While this year’s and last year’s conferences were held virtually, plans are underway for an in-person conference next spring, to be hosted by Duke University.
