ASIANetwork Embodied Learning About Asia: Awarded Projects

Academic Year 2025-26 Awards

Washington & Jefferson College

Asian Perspectives on Music, Movement, Language, and the Environment
Host: Mark D. Swift
Residents: Made Mantle Hood and Koming Somawati (Tainan, Taiwan) 

Washington and Jefferson College will host two artist-scholars from Taiwan who will bring an assortment of multi-cultural experiences to campus for a two-week residency.  While on campus, they will conduct workshops in movement, meditation, drumming, and ensemble performance rooted in Indonesia and Taiwanese traditions. Additionally, they will lead discussions around ways the arts can respond to issues of climate change and the ethical sharing of culture without succumbing to cultural appropriation. Focus will be given to the intangible elements of performance arts and culture and how they might be accessed by American students

Quinnipiac University

Kimchi Across Continents: Embodied Learning about Culture, Cooking, and Sustainable Agriculture
Host: Larissa Pitts
Residents: Ji Young Kim and Madalyn Warren (Roxbury, New York)

Quinnipiac University has invited Ji Young Kim and Madalyn Warren for a two-week residency as part of a program on Korean and Asian American culture through the lenses of kimchi production, preparation, and consumption. Ms. Kim and Ms. Warren are a Korean-American mother-daughter team who grow vegetables and ferment kimchi on their organic farm in upstate New York. They will use Quinnipiac’s demonstration kitchen to instruct small groups of students in preparing and cooking with kimchi. They will also lead a student group in planning a community garden. Through public talks and a screening of the 2020 film Minari, the residents will contribute to broader campus conversations regarding Asian culture, Asian American experiences, gender, food studies, and farming. They will also participate in discussions on scholarly readings on these topics in classroom visits.

Academic Year 2024-25 Awards

Oberlin College

Adivasi Youth Art: Indigenous Embodied Learning from South India to Oberlin
Hosts: Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway and Jennifer Fraser
Residents: Four Artists from the Thidambu Arts Collective (Kerala, India)  

The Thidambu Arts Collective is a South Indian indigenous people’s organization dedicated to
performing and revitalizing Adivasi music and dance art forms. This program invites four young artists from the Collective to northeast Ohio for a residency of lecture-demonstrations, workshops, and performances
serving the campus and surrounding communities. This program is a joint effort of Oberlin College and Conservatory; Oberlin Shansi, an independent non-profit closely linked with Oberlin College; and Keystone Foundation, an eco-development organization in Kotagiri, India.

Roanoke College

Embodied Learning of Korean Arts and Culture through Crafting Hanji Paper and Artifacts
Host: Stella Xu
Residents: Jang Eung-yul and Jang Yoon-ah (Wonju, South Korea)

This project brings two Hanji or Korean paper masters to Roanoke College for a two-week residency in the fall of 2024. The residency program is carefully designed to introduce students to Korean arts through specialized papermaking techniques, offering hands-on experiences that provide insights into the distinctive qualities of Hanji, traditional Korean handmade paper made from mulberry tree bark

Scripps College

Residency of Malaysian Artist-Activists at Claremont Consortium Colleges
Host: Anne Dorothy Harley
Residents: Members of the Pangrok Sulap Collective (Sabah, Malaysia)

Founded in Ranau in 2010, Pangrok Sulap is a Sabahan collective of artists, musicians and social and
environmental activists with a mission to empower rural communities and the marginalized through art. (“Pangrok” is the local pronunciation of “punk rock”, and “Sulap” is a hut or a resting place usually used by farmers in Sabah, Borneo.) For our project proposed for Scripps, two members of the artist collective will spend two weeks in spring 2025 in residence at Scripps College, creating art with students and faculty that distills our community concerns, following the same process that they use to create the activist carved woodblock printed panels in communities around Kota Kinabalu.

Academic Year 2023-24 Awards

Carleton College

Experiential Learning Through Looking and Making: The Japanese Tea Ceremony
Hosts: Kathleen Ryor, Art History & Asian Studies; Kelly Connole, Art
Residents: Hitomi and Takuro Shibata, Studio Touya in North Carolina 

This project will bring Japanese ceramicists Hitomi and Takuro Shibata to Carleton College for a two-week residency in fall 2023, during which they will contribute to a pair of courses on chanoyu, the Japanese tea ceremony. In this dyad, 15 Carleton undergraduates will concurrently enroll in Arts of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, taught by Kathleen Ryor, the Tanaka Memorial Professor of International Understanding and Art History and Director of Asian Studies, and Ceramics: Vessels for Tea, taught by Kelly Connole, Professor of Art. By taking the courses simultaneously, students will dramatically expand their knowledge and skills about both art history and art making. The Shibatas’ residency will strengthen Asian studies at Carleton by expanding the interdisciplinary program’s range to include arts practices such as making the implements for the tea ceremony and conducting the ceremony itself. In addition, the residency will foster connections between ceramics communities in the Upper Midwest, including the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, and North Carolina.

 

Colgate University

Chanoyu “The Way of Tea”: Embodied Learning and its Significance 
Host: Yukari Hirata, Japanese 
Resident: Soryu Yamakawa (Kumamoto, Japan) 

“The way of tea,” chanoyu or chado/sado, was formalized by Sen no Rikyu in the 16th century in Japan, with “harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility” as its principles. It is one of the most direct practice of Zen Buddhism tradition in Japan. Many chanoyu demonstrations by certified tea masters have taken place in the U.S. in the past decades, but many parts of this intricate art stay mysterious or hidden to many people.   This proposed program will invite a Tea Master, Soryu Yamamkawa, from Kumamoto, Japan, to Colgate University campus, and will provide lectures and embodied learning sessions to students and faculty of various departments from both Humanities and Science. Participants are drawn from not only Japanese, Chinese, and Asian Studies major programs, but also from Departments of Art, Religion, Psychology, and Neuroscience, the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum, and the Mind, Body, and Behavior Initiative of Colgate University, as well as those from nearby universities.   Participants will engage in embodied learning by sitting together with Master Yamakawa on the tatami floor in a small Japanese room, following her instructions, and practicing parts or whole of the tea ceremony. The embodied learning will be coupled with lecture/discussion sessions. What do you uniquely obtain by concrete embodiment of chanoyu as opposed to just reading or hearing about it? What do you gain from slowing down in the modern world and receiving a bowl of tea as once-in-a-lifetime experience as Tea Masters would say? What are the effects of learning by seeing, touching, hearing, and smelling — but not talking? What may be the cognitive effects of embodied learning, and what kind of scientific research we might develop? Coupled with their embodied experience, participants will reflect, discuss, and write essays on these topics, and discuss ideas for possible interdisciplinary research.  

 

Luther College

Embodied Learning and Daoist Cultivation: Martial Arts, Calligraphy, Music, and Medicine 
Hosts: Gereon Kopf, Religion; Scott Hurley, Religion 
Resident: Zhongxian Wu (QinJian Akademin, Stockholm, Sweden)

Luther College will host a three-week residency through ASIANetwork’s Embodied Learning about Asia Program that highlights the work of Zhongxian Wu, a Daoist teacher and a lineage holder in a number of qigong and martial arts systems as well as an accomplished Chinese calligrapher and guqin player. Along with Luther faculty members in Art, Dance, Religion, Identity Studies, and Global Health, Zhongxian Wu will involve Luther students in embodied learning activities derived from Chinese cultural contexts, providing opportunities during class visits, workshops, and campus lectures to learn about and, more importantly, experience Chinese martial arts, qigong, classical Chinese music, and Chinese calligraphy. In doing so, he will introduce faculty, staff, and students to traditional Chinese culture, classical Chinese medicine theory, and Daoist practice and teachings. He will also work with students one-on-one, helping them integrate what they learn about embodiment practices in Chinese culture, religion, and art into class projects, performances, and senior papers. Notably, the proposed project will contribute to Luther College’s plans to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Asian Students and Allies Association (ASAA).  This celebration will take place throughout the 2023-24 academic year and intends to center not only on the life experiences of ASAA students and alumni, but also the work of Asian and Asian American scholars and artists.  

 

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tibetan Contemplative Practices: Intersection of Mindfulness, Culture, and Science 
Host: Timothy Grose, China Studies 
Residents: Geshe Kunga and Tenpa Phuntsok (Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center) 

This project proposes an immersive exploration of the intersection between Tibetan Buddhist contemplative practices (e.g., meditation and yoga) and cognitive psychology. Specifically, the funds will facilitate a two-week residency of two senior monks from the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center (TMBCC) in Bloomington, Indiana to lead members of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s (RHIT) campus community in introductory meditation and yoga practices. In line with the His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso’s commitment to reforming monastic curriculum through modern science education (Tenzin 2019), the project will present participants with two epistemically distinct yet complementary perspectives of the mind: Indo-Tibetan introspection and “Western” empirical reductionist frameworks (Koch 2013). Supplemented by directed readings, lectures, journaling exercises, and self-inventories, the meditation and yoga practices will deepen participants’ understanding of the mind while equipping them with lifelong techniques for achieving mindfulness. Throughout the two-week program, the activities and lectures also seek to demystify, de-exotify, and decolonize Tibetan Buddhist cultures: to this end, it will delink these worldviews from colonial hierarchies of “modernity” and elevate them to centers of epistemic authority (Avalos et al., 2019).

 

University of Findlay

Embodied Learning about Japanese Culture through Pottery: Artwork and Reflection with Mr. Hiroshige Kato 
Host: Hiroaki Kawamura, Japanese 
Resident: Hiroshige Kato (Aichi prefecture, Japan)

This project will create opportunities for participants to learn about Asian and Japanese culture through first-person engagement with a professional pottery artist from Japan. The artist is Mr. Hiroshige Kato, the 12th head of the Akazu Kitagama kiln from Aichi prefecture, Japan. The project will be collaborative at three levels. First, this will be a collaborative project between the Art and Japanese programs of the University of Findlay. Second, this will be a partnership between the Findlay Art League and the University. And, lastly, the University of Findlay will work with other educational institutions in northwest Ohio to promote Asian and Japanese culture. Through these partnerships, the project aims to achieve two goals. First, the project will provide deeply reflective and experiential learning opportunities for students. Second, the project will serve as build capacity to continue promoting Asian and Japanese culture through pottery in northwest Ohio. The duration of Mr. Kato’s stay will be 2.5 weeks. During his stay, he will engage in Japanese pottery making from making clay, working with clay on pottery wheels, to glazing and firing ceramics, together side-by-side with students. We envision that participants’ experiences will be not only intellectual but also sensory. Mr. Kato will engage with people even outside of the Ceramic House. He will go to an art museum with students, exhibit his work on campus and in the community, and interact with the public at receptions and a public lecture. Through first-person engagement, this project will promote Asian and Japanese studies in northwest Ohio.