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by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Editor, Journal of Asian Studies
Dear Colleagues,
A year ago, I worked with Robert Buswell (then President of the Association and currently Past President) on a jointly authored letter—“Not Your Father’s (or Mother’s) AAS!” Our goal was to draw attention to some recent experiments—from adding Keynote speakers to the Annual Meeting to including short topical essays in the Journal of Asian Studies—which the Association had launched in an effort to expand still further our membership base and serve even more effectively than before our core constituency. Those experiments continue, as does the spirit of building on strength while moving in new directions that inspired them, but this year, Robert Hefner (the current AAS President) and I are writing separate letters. This will allow us to each focus on things about which we are especially enthusiastic—or simply especially knowledgeable.
The main thing I am eager to spread the word about here is that, starting with this year’s annual meeting, we will be trying to find ways to “road test” JAS features in the making in live settings. Inaugurating this effort will be a uniquely formatted roundtable session, held from 1:00 to 2:30 on Saturday March 27 in Grand Ballroom Salon L, that will center on discussion of a forthcoming JAS article by Prasenjit Duara (those planning to attend are encouraged to read the excerpts in advance). The roundtable will be moderated by JAS Managing Editor Jennifer Munger, an anthropologist specializing in Southeast Asia, and is entitled “What Makes a Region an Asia?”
The event will begin with Duara saying a few words about his essay, which examines different ways that Asia has been envisioned and discussed by varying Asian intellectuals in the last century or so. Following this, we’ll hear remarks from a stellar and diverse set of discussants, some or all of whom will eventually also contribute written comments to the November issue of JAS in which Duara’s essay will appear. Duara’s interlocutors will be (in alphabetical order): Barbara Watson Andaya (a former president of the AAS and a specialist in Southeast Asian History); Howard French (former Shanghai bureau chief of the New York Times, author of an important book on Africa, and now a professor of journalism); Rudolf Mzárek (author of Engineers of Happy Land and other innovative works on Indonesia); Tansen Sen (who has published widely on early Sino-Indian relations and the spread of Buddhism); Wang Hui (a leading Chinese public intellectual who will be giving a Keynote address later that same day titled “Reflections on Chinese Modernity”); and Kären Wigen (whose specialty is historical geography and has contributed to debates in both Japanese and world history).
A second thing I want to draw attention to about the JAS is the way the “Asia Beyond the Headlines” feature is evolving—and the attention it is getting. Last year’s contributors to this new genre of JAS article came from disciplines ranging from anthropology to economics, and they turned their attention to developments in Thailand, China, India, and Sri Lanka. What they had to say was blogged about and discussed in many settings. In addition, one contributor, political scientist Stanley Rosen, was asked to rework his piece for republication in a general interest magazine, while another, anthropologist Christine Yano, found her essay on Japan’s “pink globalization” the subject of a story in the Winter 2010 issue of the Wilson Quarterly (where they gave it the clever headline: “Land of the Rising Fun”). This year’s first two “Asia Beyond the Headlines” articles explore the meaning of the recent Japanese elections (the February issue) and the declining use of the death penalty in many parts of Asia (the May issue). Then, in August, we will be running our first forum made up of short topical pieces of this sort, mixed in with commentaries. The theme will be what hosting large-scale events, like the upcoming Shanghai World Expo and the Commonwealth Games coming to New Delhi this year, means for the countries overseeing them, the cities where they take place, or both of these types of polities. Without giving too much away, the forum will also expand still further the range of kinds of authors who contribute to this new JAS genre.
Finally, I want to mention that readers should be on the look out for further contributions to the “Trends in Research” genre developed by my predecessor Kenneth George. On a smaller scale than some of the state-of-the-field essays of the past that ran in JAS, these are think pieces that draw attention to new kinds of work being done on a specific topic. And often, in keeping with trends toward crossing borders that has shaped and continues to shape much innovative recent explorations in Asian studies, these “Trends” pieces will often explore connections between publications that focus on different countries and regions within Asia.
Undertakings such as those described above make this an exciting time to be editing the JAS, especially when it involves working with so many talented and energetic individuals (on the Editorial Board, in widely varied parts of the Association, and locally in the journal’s office at UC Irvine). I just hope that developments like those alluded to here help make this a particularly interesting period in which to be a reader of the publication as well.
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