Tag: Japanese

On April 2, 2022, the 37^th 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.

Raquel Anido, assistant professor of Spanish, was promoted to associate professor with tenure.

Su-I Chen, senior lecturer of Chinese, presented at the Chinese Language Teachers’ Association (CLTA) Annual Conference in Seattle, April 5-7, 2019. She and her collaborators presented a roundtable session entitled “Understand Cultural Pluralism Through Differential Instructions on Movies.” They used three movies (Wolf Totem 狼图腾, On Happiness Road 幸福路上, and Our Shining Days 闪光少女) to share the teaching results/proposals for different levels and different classroom settings to introduce a diversity of cultures presented in the films. Chen shared her teaching of the cultures in Wolf Totem in her CHIN3060 class in the Spring 2019 semester at Clemson.

On January 14, together with Salvador Oropesa, Lee Ferrell, senior lecturer of German, presented the characteristics and nuances of the Clemson Language and International Trade program to students of the MA Seminar of Culture and Identity led by Professor Wilfried Dreyer at the Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule in Regensburg, state of Bavaria in Germany.

Harris King, lecturer of German, was promoted to senior lecturer.

Kumiko Saito, assistant professor of Japanese, presented her paper “Mapping the History of the Future: Politics of Enlightenment in Translated Works of Science Fiction in Meiji Era Japan” on January 20 at the Southeast Regional Conference of the Association for Asian Studies in Memphis, Tennessee.

Eric Touya, professor of French, published Simone de Beauvoir: le combat au féminin. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2019.

Faculty Bookshelf: http://www.clemson.edu/caah/departments/languages/academics/faculty-research.html

Kumiko Saito, assistant professor of Japanese, visited Kansai University’s International Plaza and Institute for Innovative Global Education (IIGE) on June 11, 2019 to discuss plans for Kansai and Clemson’s new collaborative endeavor in international virtual and physical exchange. Her trip was made possible thanks to a Global Learning Seed Grant awarded by Clemson’s Office of Global Engagement. Kansai University is a private university located in Osaka, Japan.

Saito will teach a new course on business and Japan starting in the Fall 2019 semester in which 6-8 weeks of virtual exchange, known as COIL (collaborative online international learning), will be embedded. During the COIL period, students will collaborate online with students at Kansai University to learn about Japanese business and management through hands-on experiences.

Students who wish to expand this virtual exchange to on-site experiential learning in Japan will be able to participate in “Clemson in Japan,” a new short-term summer program at Kansai University which Saito will start in Summer 2020. This summer program, open to all Clemson students, will include an intensive Japanese course and optional internship in Japan. Students who enroll in the COIL course in Fall 19 and participate in the summer program in 2020 will be awarded a JASSO scholarship, which pays approximately $800/month toward expenses in Japan thanks to IIGE’s support.

IIGE also reported the news on their website.

The following students were honored at the annual College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities (CAAH) awards ceremony on April 12 at the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts:

Joey Martinek, Award for Excellence in Spanish

Katrina Killinger, Japan-America Association of South Carolina (JAASC) Award for Excellence in Japanese

Harrison Kerr, Clemson Chinese Laoshi Award for Best Beginner

Matthew Hagan, Joan Bridgwood Award for Excellence in Russian

Destanee Douglas, Language and International Health Award for Excellence

Katie Ann L. Day, Jordan A. Dean, Sr. Annual Award in French Studies

Bennett Andrew Maeres, Draexlmaier Language Award for Excellence in German

Mari Lentini, Patricia Walker Wannamaker Language and International Trade Award for Highest Merit

Congratulations to our outstanding students!

Jody H. Cripps, assistant professor of ASL, served as editor-in-chief of the Society for American Sign Language Journal, which released its second volume. He presented his article from the journal “Stuttering-Like Behaviors in American Sign Language” at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention in Boston. Cripps published another article, “Exploring Signed Language Pathology: A Case Study of Professionals Working With Deaf Students Who Have Delay/Disorders in Signed Language Development,” in conjunction with his undergraduate student who was doing a research study at a residential school for the deaf on the topic of signed language pathology.

Stephen Fitzmaurice, assistant professor of Interpreting: ASL, published the chapter “Teaching to Self-Assess: Developing Critical Thinking Skills for Student Interpreters” in “The Next Generation of Research in Interpreter Education,” edited by Cynthia Roy and Elizabeth Winston (Gallaudet University Press). The South Carolina Educational Interpreting Center grant he received in 2016 was renewed and its funder has published the 2018 Annual Report. Fitzmaurice also presented “Reducing Your Grading Time: Student Self-Assessment Practices That Work” at the international Conference of Interpreter Trainers in Salt Lake City. He was elected to a four-year term as secretary on the board of directors for the Conference of Interpreter Trainers. He was also an invited presenter at the Southeastern Regional Symposium for College Educators of Teachers of the Deaf, and Educational Interpreters, in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he presented new empirical evidence regarding “Predicting Interpreter Performance.”

Joseph Mai, associate professor of French, published an extensive review of the Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh’s most recent film, “Graves Without a Name,” in The Mekong Review. This poetic documentary is an autobiographical exploration of mourning and reconciliation, 40 years after genocide during the Pol Pot regime.

Tiffany Creegan Miller, assistant professor of Spanish, gave the presentation “Uk’u’x kaj, uk’u’x ulew: Ecocritical and Ecofeminist Kaqchikel Maya Epistemologies in the Film ‘Ixcanul’ (2015)” at the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP/10) held Oct. 17-20 in New Orleans. Miller also gave a guest lecture by videoconference on Oct. 22 to a medical Spanish class at Brown University about her work with underserved Kaqchikel Maya patients in Guatemala.

Salvador Oropesa, professor of Spanish and Department Chair, participated in the roundtable discussion by language department chairs on October 15 at the Mountain Interstate Foreign Languages Conference at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Roberto Risso, assistant professor of Italian, published a book, “La penna è chiacchierona: Edmondo De Amicis e l’arte del narrare,” about Edmondo De Amicis (1846-1908), an Italian novelist, journalist, poet and writer of short stories. Risso’s book is the first to explore the entirety of De Amicis’s vast body of work.

Kumiko Saito, assistant professor of Japanese, appeared on “Writing Dystopia Now,” a radio program in The Cultural Frontline series on BBC World Service. On the Decemeber 9 broadcast, she spoke about cyberpunk and Japanese popular culture. The program is available on demand.

Daniel Smith, associate professor of Spanish, has been listed as an advisory board member on a European Research Council Advanced Grant application, “Cross-Community Bilingual Usage Patterns and Their Acquisition by Children.” His research on Spanish-English bilingualism in northeast Georgia is cited in the proposal for a potential project at the University of Cambridge. This will be the first major study of its kind to conduct a cross-community investigation of geographically separated groups of people who are nevertheless speakers of the same pair of languages, Spanish and English, in various locations in Europe and the Americas. He also presented “The Order of Morpheme Acquisition: Spanish and English in Contact” at the Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Jae Takeuchi, assistant professor of Japanese, was invited to give a lecture at the University of Washington in Seattle as part of their Japan Studies Program Lecture Series. The title of the talk was “Who Knew? How Japanese Language Learners Negotiate the Challenges of Dialect in Small-Town Japan.”

Graciela Tissera, associate professor of Spanish, published “‘The Appeared’ (2007) by Paco Cabezas: Redefining the Book of Hidden Memories and Cyclical Time” in “Terrifying Texts. Essays on Good and Evil in Horror Cinema,” edited by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper (McFarland & Company). She presented the research paper “Los castillos en la ficción cinematográfica: sobre los enigmas del espacio laberíntico” at the III Congreso Xàtiva: Historia, cultura e identidad. The conference on the theme of castles in history and fiction was held October 17-19 in Xàtiva, Spain, and was organized by the Universitat de València, Institució Alfons el Magnànim and city of Xàtiva. She also explored the historical memory of the civic-military dictatorship of Argentina (1976-1983) in her paper “Argentina ante la memoria de la última dictadura: percepciones fílmicas de la intrahistoria.” She presented her research at the conference “III Congreso Internacional Art-Kiné: estéticas de la memoria. Prácticas sociales del recuerdo: el cine, los medios de comunicación y la cultura,” which was held November 6-9 at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Eric Touya, professor of French, read a paper titled “Claudel dans/pour l’avenir: diplomatie, économie, éco-critique” at the Colloque International Paul Claudel Résolument Contemporain, sponsored by Sorbonne University, the National Library and the Comédie Française at the Université de Paris IV Sorbonne in Paris. He gave the presentation “Bonnefoy, Badiou, et l’avenir de la poésie: divergences et rapprochements” at the 2018 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Conference in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He also presented “Teaching Hélé Béji, Post-Colonialism, and the Arab Spring: Perspectives From Baudrillard, McClintock, Giroux” at the conference’s Teaching Women in French Roundtable. Touya published an article, “Le poète et le philosophe: Bonnefoy, Badiou, et l’avenir de la poésie,” in Revue européenne de recherches sur la poésie, No. 4. Paris: Classiques Garnier, and a book chapter titled “Teaching Hélé Béji, Post-Colonialism, and the Arab Spring: Perspectives From Baudrillard, McClintock, Giroux” in “Rethinking the French Classroom: New Approaches to Teaching Contemporary French and Francophone Women,” edited by E. Nicole Meyer and Joyce Johnston (Routledge, New York).

On October 27, 2018, the Department of Languages hosted the 46th Annual Declamation Contest. This poetry recitation contest brings together middle- and high-school students from the region, who come to the Clemson campus for the day to show off their language skills. This year, 485 students from 31 middle and high schools in South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina registered to compete in ASL, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian and Spanish. Clemson students also volunteered to set up, help with registration and parking, supervise contest rooms in Daniel Hall, and lead campus tours. The campus tours were a new offering this year, with approximately 80 contestants and their families participating.

Competitors recited two poems, a mandatory selection and a second selection. They were evaluated by 64 judges, who included Clemson faculty and staff and members of the community. After the judging was complete, students and their families attended an awards ceremony in Tillman Hall. The event also gave participants a chance to explore the campus, eat in a dining hall, and learn more about the school by joining a tour. Past Declamation participants have attended or are now attending Clemson to study foreign languages.

The contest’s continued success is due to the hard work of the Department’s faculty and staff, all of whom volunteer at the event, especially the Declamation Committee of Su-I Chen, Melva Persico, Doroles Martín, Anne Salces y Nedeo, Amy Sawyer, and Julia Schmidt. The Department is grateful for the continued support of donors Dr. Rob Roy McGregor, Jr. and Dr. Ralph Rynes; the volunteer judges; and the Dean’s Office of the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities.

The following faculty members were promoted to Senior Lecturer:

Kim Misener Dunn, ASL

Allison Hinds, Spanish

Ellory Schmucker, Spanish

Kenneth Widgren, French

The following faculty members were promoted to Full Professor (read more here):

Johannes Schmidt, German

Eric Touya, French

Other faculty news:

Joseph Mai, associate professor of French, had his essay “Site 2: Style and Encounter in Rithy Panh’s Cinéma-Monde” appear in the collection “Cinéma-Monde: Decentered Perspectives on Global Filmmaking in French,” edited by Michael Gott and Thibaut Schilt, (Edinburgh University Press). The essay examines how the great Cambodian documentary filmmaker Rithy Panh addresses representations of a post-Khmer Rouge refugee camp to a world cinema audience. He also published a chapter in the Modern Language Association book “Approaches to Teaching Hugo’s ‘Les Misérables,’” edited by Michal Ginsburg and Bradley Stephens (2018). His piece explores Hugo’s conception of the moral individual. Mai also published an essay in The Mekong Review about Anthony Bourdain’s experiences in Cambodia.

Tiffany Creegan Miller, assistant professor of Spanish, presented at the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) in Los Angeles March 27-29. Her presentation “Orality and Translation in Print and Digital Recordings of Humberto Ak’abal’s Sound Poetry” was part of a seminar on topographies of sound and music in Spanish and Latin American literature and film. While in California, Miller was also invited to discuss her work with Kaqchikel Maya communities in Guatemala on the Maya radio program “Contacto Ancestral,” which airs in Los Angeles on the community radio station KPFK. She also published an article, “Performing Transnational Maya Experiences in Florida and San Juan Chamula in Workers in the Other World by Sna Jtz’ibajom and Robert M. Laughlin,” in Hispanic Studies Review 3 (2018): pp. 46-62. This article draws from Maya storytelling techniques to examine the ways that Maya activists in Chiapas, Mexico, use theatre and performance to raise awareness about the challenges that Maya migrants and their families face, both in sending communities and the United States. Miller also presented at the annual congress hosted by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) May 23-26 in Barcelona, Spain. Her presentation “‘Xib’e pa El Norte’: Ethnographic Encounters With Kaqchikel Maya Transnational Migration From Lake Atitlán, Guatemala” was part of a seminar on the theoretical and methodological challenges in studying migrations. Miller was an NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Summer Scholar at the University of Georgia. The NEH Summer Institute June 17-29 focused on Digital Technologies in Theatre and Performance Studies. In July, Miller was invited to deliver a talk at Oxlajuj Aj, a Kaqchikel Mayan language field school, offered through Tulane University. This presentation – “Kojb’ixan pa qach’ab’äl!: El papel de las canciones infantiles en las aproximaciones pedagógicas a la revitalización cultural y lingüística en el idioma kaqchikel” – took place July 25 in San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala. Her presentation focused on Kaqchikel Maya children’s songs in bilingual classrooms in the context of contemporary Pan-Maya activism in Guatemala. Miller was also elected secretary of the Central America section advisory board of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).

Arelis Moore de Peralta, assistant professor of Spanish and Health, returned from a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic, along with her Creative Inquiry and “Tigers Building Healthier Communities Abroad (TBHCA)” students. Moore and six students conducted research in an effort to develop sustainable, collaborative interventions to improve health and well-being in a low-resource community. This was the third TBHCA trip to the Dominican community of Las Malvinas II. This time, Moore and her group collaborated with a colleague from Boston University’s School of Social Work and their local partner university, Universidad Iberoamericana (UNIBE). Together they conducted two focus groups and a “photovoice” project with the youth of Las Malvinas II to identify effective ways to engage them in local health improvement efforts.

Salvador A. Oropesa, professor of Spanish and chair, read the paper “Fantasías Neoliberales en la Serie Procedimental de Eva Sáenz de Urturi” at the XIV Congreso de Novela y Cine Negro: Clásicos y Contemporaneos at the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain. His article “Mitología y terrorismo en la Trilogía del Baztán de Dolores Redondo” appeared in the collection “Clásicos y Contemporáneos en el Género Negro,” edited by Álex Martín Escribà and Javier Sánchez Zapatero (Santiago de Compostela: Andavira, 2018, pp.121-27).

George Palacios, assistant professor of Spanish, was a visiting professor in the school of history at the Universidad Industrial de Santander in Bucaramanga, Colombia, where he taught the literature, culture and history of the African diaspora in Colombia and the Caribbean. Palacios lectured on “Reflexiones en torno a la diaspora Africana en Colombia” and “Literature and History through the Prism of the Haitian Revolution.” He also gave the inaugural lecture for the master in education program of the faculty of social sciences and humanities at the Universidad de Medellín in Colombia: “Una reflexión sobre el currículo: procesos y crítica para el contexto Latinoamericano.” Palacios presented the paper “Resistencias Afrodiaspóricas frente al destierro en la novela Colombiana hacia mediados de siglo XX” at the VI International Conference on Afro-Hispanic, Luso-Brazilian and Latin American Studies, held Aug. 7-10 in Accra, Ghana.

Kelly Peebles, associate professor of French, published “Renée de France’s and Clément Marot’s Voyages: Political Exile to Spiritual Liberation” in a special issue of the journal Women in French, “Les femmes et le voyage (Women and Traveling),” edited by Catherine R. Montfort and Christine McCall Probes. She also published “Embodied Devotion: The Dynastic and Religious Loyalty of Renée de France (1510-1575)” in “Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), edited by Caroline Dunn and Professor Emerita Elizabeth Carney (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 123-137). She also presented the paper “From Mother to Daughter and Bride to Widow: Transforming the Gender Roles of Renée de France and Anne d’Este” at the Royal Studies Network Kings & Queens 7 conference, held July 9-12 in Winchester, England.

Johannes Schmidt, professor of German, presented (in German) on the differences in Johann Gottfried Herder’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies of history at the meeting of the International Herder Society in Turku, Finland. He also chaired two panels and gave the laudation honoring Karl Menges of University of California, Davis, the recipient of the 2018 Herder Medal. He was one of several scholars interviewed for a German radio feature on Johann Gottfried Herder, titled “Herder: a Grandniece Discovers the Poet.” The feature was recently released as a podcast.

Daniel J. Smith, associate professor of Spanish, presented “Spanish and English Contact and the Order of Morpheme Acquisition” April 5 at the 2018 SouthEast Coastal Conference on Languages and Literatures (SECCLL) in Savannah, Georgia. While referencing a “natural order” of the acquisition of morphemes in first and second language acquisition, the presentation highlighted how two languages can influence each other and make changes in the order of acquisition. Implications were made regarding teaching English and Spanish as second languages and for children learning both languages simultaneously.

Gabriela Stoicea, assistant professor of German, published the chapter “When History Meets Literature: Jonathan Israel, Sophie von La Roche, and the Problem of Gender” in a collection edited by Carl Niekerk, “The Radical Enlightenment in Germany: A Cultural Perspective” (Brill/Rodopi, 2018), pp. 211-37.

Jae Takeuchi, assistant professor of Japanese, was awarded the Hamako Ito Chaplin Memorial Award for excellence in Japanese language teaching. The national award is given out to only one or two instructors of Japanese each year. Takeuchi also presented her research “Our Language”– an autoethnographic analysis of Japanese Dialect Use in L1/L2 Interaction” at the annual American Association of Teachers of Japanese annual conference in Washington. She was also invited to be a panelist for a discussion “On Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions Expected of Future Japanese Language Educators” at the 27th meeting of the Central Association of Teachers of Japanese Conference, held at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She also presented her research at the same conference, in a talk titled “‘His Japanese Makes No Sense’ – Native Speaker Bias and Depictions of L2 Japanese Competence.”

Pauline de Tholozany, assistant professor of French, gave the keynote address at “Equinoxes,” the French Studies Graduate Conference on March 17 at Brown University. Her paper was titled “‘Sophie, avec impatience’: of Impatient Children, Broken Stuff, and Irritated Adults in 19th-Century France.” She also presented a paper at the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association, along with two Clemson Students, Surabhi Poola and Kaitlin Samuels. Their panel was titled “Of Plots, Readers, and Change: Norms and Transgressions in 19th-Century French Literature.” She also published a chapter in the Modern Language Association book “Approaches to Teaching Hugo’s ‘Les Misérables,’” edited by Michal Ginsburg and Bradley Stephens (2018). Her piece describes teaching the novel in the context of an interdisciplinary course on childhood.

On March 14, Graciela Tissera, associate professor of Spanish, presented her research at the Congreso Internacional Interdisciplinario “La ciudad: imágenes e imaginarios,” which was organized by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. Her paper entitled “La ciudad a través del cine: visión del individuo y los sistemas” focused on the portrayal of the cities of Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, and Barcelona in the following movies: “Secuestro Express,” by Jonathan Jakubowicz (Venezuela, 2005); “Cidade de Deus,” by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund (Brazil, 2002); and “Biutiful,” by Alejandro González Iñárritu (Spain, 2010). The analysis explored the profile of the cities as structured systems and their influence on the individual from social, cultural, economic and philosophical perspectives. She presented her research April 6 at the SouthEast Coastal Conference on Languages and Literatures, which was organized by Georgia Southern University. Her paper “‘Box 507’ (2002) by Enrique Urbizu: Crossroads of Human Spirit and Economic Systems” focused on the unforeseen outcomes of confrontations between companies investing in real estate. She also organized and chaired a session at the conference, “Individuals vs. Systems in Cinema,” to discuss the complex relationships portrayed inside and outside systems in multicultural environments and in relation to psychoanalysis, metaphysics, ethics, technology, health, business and gender. Tissera’s students, Jesse Bynum (Modern Languages-Spanish major with an English minor) and Hannah Cheeks (Psychology and Modern Languages-Spanish major) participated in the session. Bynum’s research paper “Systematic Defensive Memory and Psychological Trauma in David Carreras’ ‘Hipnos‘ (2004)” discussed dissociative identity disorders as coping mechanisms and experimental treatments for severely emotionally disturbed patients. Cheeks’ research paper “Exploring the Treacherous Systems of the Mind: Sergi Vizcaíno’s ‘Paranormal Xperience’ (2011),” centered on altered perceptions and symbols created by the unconscious mind as representations of systems influencing human behavior. The professional presentations were made possible through the Creative Inquiry program and Department of Languages travel grants.

Eric Touya, professor of French, and Col. Lance Young led a group of Clemson students to Paris and Normandy in France during the summer. The aim of the course was to revisit the journey of the American soldiers during World War II from a French perspective. Through this journey, the students analyzed and reflected on the meaning and purpose of the GIs’ actions and experiences, and the current place and role of France and the United States in the world.

From the Summer 2018 issue of Clemson World:

While the Japan Alumni group is not yet an official Clemson Club, some of the more than 50 Clemson alumni and friends in Japan have been getting together for events a few times a year. They are exploring ways to support the University including providing support and guidance to students studying abroad in Japan or alumni moving to Japan for work, as well as finding internship opportunities for students. They are hoping to be the first international chartered alumni club. They gathered in November when Yuki Kihara Horose, study-abroad coordinator for Clemson Abroad, and Carolyn Crist, a student adviser with the College of Architecture, Art and Humanities Global Engagement, were visiting partner institutions in Japan. The group joined emeritus professors Yuji Kishimoto and Toshiko Kishimoto in Tokyo, their hometown, where they received the Japanese national medal of distinction in 2017.

Two Japanese majors in the Department of Languages were recipients of a scholarship awarded by Chukyo University in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Katrina Killinger (double major, Japanese and English) and Alan Wright (Japanese major, computer science minor) are finishing their year-long study abroad program at the university and received the award for being the exchange students with the highest GPAs.

At the award ceremony, Katrina gave a thank-you speech in Japanese. More information about the ceremony is available in Japanese here.

Jae Takeuchi, assistant professor of Japanese, said, “I have taught both of these students in different classes and they are very much deserving of this award!”

Jae Takeuchi, assistant professor of Japanese, who has been awarded the Hamako Ito Chaplin Memorial Award for excellence in Japanese language teaching at the college level. The national award, administered through the Association for Asian Studies, is given to only one or two instructors of Japanese each year.