Most of you have suggested topics on which there's plenty to work with, so the next step is for you to do enough background investigation to make a sensible limitation, or focus, for your tentative topic. Please keep in mind that the project will take you beyond the simply descriptive, though you'll certainly begin with information-gathering to build up a factual basis and get a sense of what others have done. As you read and search and find out more about what others have said, you'll find that there are interesting open questions that you can address. A really successful project will identify an interesting question and then present an analysis of evidence that gets the reader to something new.People with closely-related interests might want to negotiate collaboration, though it may be easier to take different and separate tacks in the same general subject areas. Don't hesitate to change your suggested topic entirely if something else occurs, or if you're not pleased by the resources you find in preliminary library explorations --just put your thinking into log file entries. I really want you to be working on something you CARE about!
Catherine: I am interested in the science of acupuncture in East Asia. I worked at a vet in high school and a vet from China was working at the practice and preformed acupuncture on the animals, which proved to be very effective in many cases. I am intrigued by the possibility that sticking a needle in one part of the body can cure an ailment in another. I don't know much more about it, I just think it is interesting...
annie kw acupuncture n=18
Plenty there. If you want to look into veterinary acupuncture (which is probably a North American adaptation?) that's fine with me. I don't know how much literature there is on that, but there are certainly lots of people interested.
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Belcher-san: the effect of Japanese culture on management techniques
annie kw japanese and management n=202
The work of one Jonathan Belcher is almost certainly involved, but what's really the approach here? IS it the US management flirtation with Japanese methods (which I think was an 80s thing?, OR the consequences of experiments with Japanese-style organization in American factories, OR the much more difficult question of connecting Japanese culture, as you've said?
Can't recall if you collected this one:
AUTHOR Chen, Min, 1957- TITLE Asian management systems : Chinese, Japanese and Korean styles of business / Min Chen. IMPRINT London ; New York : Routledge, c1995. CALL NO. HD70.E22 C48 1995.
or this (some specific chapters seem to apply directly):
AUTHOR Redding, S. G. TITLE International cultural differences / edited by Gordon Redding. IMPRINT Aldershot, England ; Brookfield, Vt., USA : Dartmouth, c1995. CALL NO. HD38 .R358 1995.
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Sarah Beth: history of religion in East Asia. I am especially excited to learn about the role that Christian missionaries have played in shaping the culture and society of East Asia. I would like to know the various reactions of different governments towards different religions. I would also like to know about the socio-economic situations in the various countries of East Asia--how wealth is distributed and how this affects lifestyles. Finally, I am also interested in the history of karate and religious connections with this art form.
annie kw missionaries and china n=66
Lots of books and articles in this realm, certainly, and full of interesting stories, successful and otherwise. You might want to limit to a particular era, or a specific denomination, or a region of China...
take a look at http://stufs.wlu.edu/~campbellca/anth/project.html
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Park: Chinese cooking and its culture
annie SU cookery, Chinese n=15 or so
Always interesting, BUT you have to limit, focus, refine. Have you seen
TITLE Eat drink man woman [videorecording] ; an Ang Lee film. IMPRINT Los Angeles : Hallmark Home Entertainment, 1995. CALL NO. PN1997 .E36 1995.
see also
TITLE The globalization of Chinese food / edited by David Y.H. Wu and Sidney C.H. Cheung. IMPRINT Honolulu : University of Hawai`i Press, c2002. CALL NO. GT2853.C6 G56 2002.
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Andrew: Some ideas that I had for my project are: music in japan or china, opium wars, effects of Korean war, demilitarized zone/ implications, real chinese food ( its my favorite!), night life in Japan, sake
annie SU cookery, Chinese n=15 or so
Always interesting, BUT you have to limit, focus, refine. Have you seen
TITLE Eat drink man woman [videorecording] ; an Ang Lee film. IMPRINT Los Angeles : Hallmark Home Entertainment, 1995. CALL NO. PN1997 .E36 1995.
see also
TITLE The globalization of Chinese food / edited by David Y.H. Wu and Sidney C.H. Cheung. IMPRINT Honolulu : University of Hawai`i Press, c2002. CALL NO. GT2853.C6 G56 2002.
(you might want to search the other possibilities for yourself in Annie)
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Charlotte Marie: feng shui: what exactly it is, how it originated, etc. I have also been thinking about researching the different types of East Asian religions and perhaps focusing on one to explore in-depth. On a more historical note, I thought an interesting topic would be to research the U.S. atomic bombings in Japan at the end of WWII and discuss the aftermath of the bombings on Japanese society.
annie kw 'feng shui' n=11; annie kw geomancy n=9
A dip into the intersection of philosophy and science. Take a look at
http://stufs.wlu.edu/~hinklel/anth/FSintro.html
and
http://www.fengshuiseminars.com/articles/lopan.html
and
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln270/fengshui.htm
...and you'll also find a LOT in Joseph Needham's MAGNIFICENT Science and civilisation in China (DS721 .N39)
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Drew: the history and current situation of the true Japanese natives. Although I know very little about the situation, I do know that the people the world considers Japanese are in fact probably descendants of Koreans and that the true Japanese natives are a dark-skinned people with unusual amounts of bodyhair, who after hundreds of years of persecution are confined mainly to the northernmost island of Hokkaido. I also understand that the entire history is something the Japanese find deeply embarassing and consequently are very reluctant to talk about. As parallels can immediately be drawn to the foundation of the U.S. I find this overlooked episode in history particularly appealing.
annie kw ainu n=21Yup. Lots there, and take a look at
http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/easia/ainu.html
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John H.: the connection between Asian Art and the people and culture. I am also interested in learning more about sports in Asia.
I need more to go on here --too broad for me to make useful suggestions. What kind(s) of art? China? Japan? Korea? What sorts of "connection"?
This one might give some places to start for the latter topic:TITLE Sport in Asian society : past and present / editors, J.A. Mangan, Fan Hong. IMPRINT London ; Portland, OR : F. Cass, 2003. CALL NO. GV649 .S69 2003.and you might find this one interesting (there's also a film):AUTHOR Salzman, Mark. TITLE Iron & silk = [T`ieh yü ssu] / Mark Salzman. IMPRINT New York : Random House, c1986. CALL NO. DS712 .S245 1986.
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Christina: Korea: 1. I plan to make some pages that include information on pop culture. This is a broad topic, but some of the areas I plan to choose from include media, music, film and television- adolescence, college students...
2. I think my focus question will be how does Western pop culture effect [you mean affect] and impact Korean culture and pop culture? What are some of the effects [and here you've got it right] on progress, and how is the growing influence of American and Western culture effecting [affect again!] Korean culture?
I'm sure you're well placed to undertake this, though some of what you'll need will have to come from afar... but I'm sure you have interesting sources.
Two that might be helpful:AUTHOR Stout, Mira. TITLE One thousand chestnut trees : a novel of Korea / Mira Stout. IMPRINT New York : Riverhead Books, 1998. CALL NO. PS3569.T6595 O64 1998. TITLE Under construction : the gendering of modernity, class, and consumption in the Republic of Korea / edited by Laurel Kendall. IMPRINT Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, c2002. CALL NO. HQ1075.5.K6 U53 2002....and this just added: I listen to pansori and I can feel the han
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Mike L.: it would be cool to look at similarities and differences in Asian baseball and American baseball. Not just in the game, but attitudes, attendances, inspiration, heroes of the game and so on. Also, I would like to find out why the "All-American Past time" ['pastime' is what you mean] made the move to Asia. Was it purely profits, or was it a love that had spread and created a desire to emulate and embraces the game and its culture. Maybe discuss Mr. Baseball, a movie about an American player sent to a Japanese league to play out his tenure.
annie kw baseball and japan n=11
There's plenty of material fort Japan, but you need to go beyond the fairly obvious sources (like You Gotta Have Wa). And there's the Taiwan Little League phenomenon...
take a look at http://stufs.wlu.edu/~mendralaa/anth/projectA.html
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Jenny: I have been thinking about two possible topics for the project. The first one is the night markets in Taiwan. Anybody who has been in Taiwan will know what I mean by night markets. These markets are a very big part of socializing in Taiwan. Many people go to the markets for different purposes. There are little shops (stands) in the markets, which is a source of income for many people. Also, these markets are a place where people hang out, especially the youth.
The second topic is the returning East Asian people to their home countries after being in the US (or other parts of the world). We actually talked briefly about this in today's class. But I had been thinking about this topic because I was talking with some of my American-Asian friends, and they have been through some really unpleasant experiences for "being different".
Both nice topics. I really like the second --alas, the first would probably be difficult to find material on, beyond the many Web pages. Here are a couple that you might find useful for the latter topic:
TITLE Cultural curiosity : thirteen stories about the search for Chinese roots / edited by Josephine M.T. Khu. IMPRINT Berkeley : University of California Press, c2001. CALL NO. DS732 .C9 2001. TITLE Cosmopolitan capitalists : Hong Kong and the Chinese diaspora at the end of the 20th century / edited by Gary G. Hamilton. IMPRINT Seattle : University of Washington Press, c1999. CALL NO. HC470.3 .C67 1999....and look at Rachel's Fujian find...
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Mike M.: the dialectical diversity of mainland China.
(presuming that you mean dialectal [dialectical is something else altogether...], one source we have in the library isAUTHOR Ramsey, S. Robert, 1941- TITLE The languages of China / S. Robert Ramsey. IMPRINT Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1987. CALL NO. PL1071 .R34 1987.and I have Jerry Norman's Chinese (in the Cambridge Language Surveys series). But we need to be clear about what it is you really want to look at. Is it really linguistics (which can get pretty specialized pretty fast... but is certainly fascinating if it's what you want to look into)? Is it really getting an understanding of the dialects of Chinese (including maybe their geographical distribution and correlates), or does it include the languages spoken by NON-Han peoples in China (which might include issues like lexical borrowing)?
Another you might consider, for a different approach to the subject area:
AUTHOR Liu, Dilin. TITLE Metaphor, culture, and worldview : the case of American English and the Chinese language / Dilin Liu. IMPRINT Lanham, Md. : University Press of America, c2002. CALL NO. PE2827 .L58 2002.
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Aubrey: Japan's Gucci/Coach/Louis Vuitton/Chanel obsession phenomenon. While in Japan, the number of people I saw who carried designer items and wore designer clothes amazed me. Advertisements were gigantic and everywhere. OR Tension between the Ainu (Japan's original inhabitants) and the larger portion of Japan's populous. OR Sexual boundaries/taboos in Asia (China or Japan).
annie kw popular culture and japan n=35
The general subject area is 'fads' I suppose, and there should be quite a lot of interesting material to work with
take a look at http://stufs.wlu.edu/~taylorjc/anth/
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Paige: interested in comparing Japanese Pop Culture and American Pop Culture, including the developing of trends as well the types of things that a popular in each culture.
annie kw popular culture and japan n=35
Getting real clarity on what "popular culture" is (its boundaries, contents...) would be an interesting challenge --look at the results of annie TI search 'popular culture' n=97 for a general orientation...
and take a look at http://stufs.wlu.edu/~taylorjc/anth/
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Meg: Reading an article today about secret societies piqued my interest in stuff like that... or maybe in some religious area... a religion in a certain area. Or maybe I'll investigate something that deals with myths/legends from some time period or some area in East Asia. I will probably brainstorm or leaf through books or do more searches, and I'm sure something more specific that I can research will catch my eye.
For a jump-start, take a look at the last chapter in
AUTHOR Eastman, Lloyd E. TITLE Family, fields, and ancestors : constancy and change in China's social and economic history, 1550-1949 / Lloyd E. Eastman. IMPRINT New York : Oxford University Press, 1988. CALL NO. HN733 .E25 1988.
Some of these from annie kw 'secret societies' n=42 will be useful
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Rachel: I would be interested in further exploring East Asian literature. I enjoy the literature aspect more than the cinema, and I believe that the study of a particular culture's literature is a very valid and valuable way to understand that people. I'm not sure that this is exactly what an anthropology project entails, but I do think that if I am trying to "immerse myself in a culture" and attempt to understand something a a people foreign to myself, this could be a good start. I am also uncertain as to what specific region, language, or time period at which I would like to focus. Perhaps some suggestions into fictional literature or the history or summary of how literature has developed in East Asia.
annie kw east asia and literature n=22
One possible focus would be the American-Asian novels of intergenerational relations, the most obvious authors being Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston ..and Gish Jen, but there are many more who are less well known.
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Kate: gender roles in Chinese society, or possibly an analysis of “feudal” villages that have been excavated. For example the human and animal sacrifices that have been uncovered at grave sites are interesting along with burial objects and the orientation of the tombs themselves. Two other areas I might consider are Asian approaches towards death, or the nature of Shinto religion’s effect on Japan today.
annie kw gender and china n=144
'Gender roles' can cover quite a lot of territory, so figuring out a sensible way to focus/limit would be the first problem.
If the archaeology possibility really interests you, there's a great potential project in looking at archaeology in service to national identity. Take a look at
http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/easia/koreanarch.html
for one example, but there are also Chinese and Japanese analogs