ASIANetwork

Kenyon is an institutional member of ASIANetwork, a consortium of 150 colleges working to promote Asian Studies in undergraduate, private liberal arts settings. Kenyon has been a member of ASIANetwork since its beginning in 1992, and a former Kenyon faculty member, Rita Kipp, has served on its Board of Directors.

Asian Studies at Kenyon has benefited from a number of ASIANetwork programs. In 1997, 1998,. and 1999, two graduating seniors were selected to teach for a year in China through a program coordinated by ASIANetwork and the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia. Through this same institutional collaboration, Kenyon hosted a visiting scholar during the 1997-98 school year, Professor Wang Chunxiu of Fudan University in Shanghai.

Kenyon was also the host institution for a faculty development seminar on Southeast Asia. Co-directed by Professor Rita Kipp of Kenyon and Professor Leedom Lefferts of Drew University, the seminar drew nine college teachers to the campus for three weeks in the summer of 1998. In the summer of 1999 the group traveled together to Southeast Asia for three weeks. This two-year seminar was funded through ASIANetwork by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

Three Kenyon faculty were recipients of grants from the Freeman Foundation administered through ASIANetwork that allowed them to travel to Asia in the summer of 2000, each in the company of a student, and to engage in research together. Brian Dott, Visiting Assistant Professor of History 1999-00, went to China along with a student from Kalamazoo College; Professor Joseph Adler went to Taiwan in the company of Philip A. Davolos ('01) to study ancestor worship; Professor Miriam Dean-Otting worked in Calcutta in the summer of 2001 with Erin Saunders and Ronnie Saha. Most recently, Assistant Professor of Chinese Jie Zhang received a grant to take five Kenyon students to China in the summer of 2008 to pursue a collaborative project on various aspects of "China in Transition." The students were Alexander Gladstone, Jerry Stewart, Paige Markham, Andrew Stein, and Amanda Harris.

Finally, Kenyon representatives have attended each of ASIANetwork's annual conferences, where the program includes sessions on curriculum, program development, grantsmanship, and pedagogy as well as scholarship.