Providing grants for hosting a short-term residency in Asian Studies

This program focuses on Asian pedagogy that embraces the ways knowledge is gained through active practice and performance, creating opportunities for students to learn about Asia through immersive involvement and embodied participation.

Fall 2024 Competition for AY 2025-26 Embodied Learning About Asia Projects
ASIANetwork is pleased to announce this year’s competition for grants to support the invitation of an experienced practitioner of an Asian art or cultural practice to one or more ASIANetwork campuses for a period of residency. The residency will directly connect participants from ASIANetwork member institutions with a form of practice developed within an Asian cultural context, affording access that goes beyond reading texts, listening to lectures, or viewing demonstrations. Emphasizing performative, first-person experience facilitated by the visiting resident(s), the program aims to create opportunities for student self-reflection, for dialogue and mentoring, and for enhancing knowledge about Asia at the host college(s).

Applicants must be current ASIANetwork institutional members. For more information, see the Embodied Learning About Asia Program (ELAAP) Application Guidelines.

Program Overview
ASIANetwork will provide up to $10,000 each to institutions selected for the program. Institutions may apply individually or collaboratively to support the proposed residency. The residency will take place over a minimum of two weeks; may involve an individual or a small number of qualified persons; and will engage curricular, co-curricular, and community resources under the direction of a faculty host or hosts. The faculty host(s) will assume primary responsibility for working with the resident(s) to arrange appropriate programming consistent with program objectives. (See Application Guidelines for more information.)

The program aims to make Asian Studies more visible and to foster cultural understanding and inclusive, participatory learning by enabling students to engage first-person (experiential and reflective), second person (dialogical), and third-person (academic and scholarly) perspectives. Relevant activities would include contextual observation, participatory practicums and tutorials, and experiential guidance from the resident(s), to be complemented by dialogue, reading and discussion with mentoring faculty, and reflective writing about the learning process and the knowledge gained.

Examples of previously awarded projects may be found here, and fundable proposals might center upon any of the following endeavors, among other possibilities:

• Performing in classical or popular music, arts, dance, or theatrical activities
• Engaging in contemplative practices, including yoga, meditation, tai chi, tea ceremony, flower arranging, and calligraphy
• Practicing culinary arts and engaging food culture in contexts ranging from restaurants to temples, on holiday occasions, or as part of social service
• Participating in traditional forms of Asian medicine and healing arts
• Celebrating folk and/or ethnic festivals and making crafts, tools, or material artifacts associated with particular traditions and communities
• Partaking in distinctively Asian approaches to agriculture, animal husbandry, or the environment
• Exploring and utilizing particular new technologies shaping contemporary cultural life in Asia

Application Process and Timeline
Application (LOI) deadline:  December 1, 2024
Full proposals due for selected applicants: January 1, 2025
Award notification by January 31, 2025

Program Director
Bill Gorvine, Hendrix College;  gorvine@hendrix.edu

The ASIANetwork Embodied Learning about Asia Program is funded by an anonymous grant in recognition of Donald N. Clark, professor of history, emeritus, Trinity University, and former board chairperson of ASIANetwork, for his contributions to the field of Asian Studies.