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Asian studies course inspires student research in Japan

By Kari VanDerVeen
February 17, 2009

Assistant Professor of Political Science Kathy Tegtmeyer Pak and four St. Olaf students will travel to Japan this summer to perform research funded by a grant they recently received from the ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellowship Program.

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The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 detonated almost directly above the Genbaku Dome. The structure is part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, one of the sites students visited last Interim that inspired their research project.
The group will be working on a project titled "National Memories in Action: Peace and Nationalist Museums in Japan." The students will visit multiple peace and national history museums to research how the exhibits contribute to discussions of Japanese national identity. "They will use ethnographic observations and textual analysis along the way, paying attention to how history is framed, what kinds of terms are used in exhibits and other museum materials, what events are discussed, which are ignored, who comes to which sites, and so on," Tegtmeyer Pak says.

This research project grew directly from an Asian Conversations Interim course Tegtmeyer Pak taught last year titled "National Identity in China and Japan." During their time in Japan, class members visited sites such as the Kyoto Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University and the Yushukan war museum at the Yasukuni Shrine. Some students, including Kelsey Menninga '10, also visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. One of the many differences Menninga noticed is that while the museum in Hiroshima translated most displays into three or four languages, many displays at the Yushukan war museum did not include translations. "The contrasts between the two museums were what really caught my eye," says Menninga, a music and Asian studies major with a concentration in Japan studies.

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Tegtmeyer Pak
With Tegtmeyer Pak's support and guidance, Menninga and three other students -- Amanda Wright '09, Ben McNeill '09 and Katherine Abell '11 -- successfully applied for an ASIANetwork grant to explore the differences in the narratives of war and peace museums in Japan. Their research will take them to a number of cities in Japan, including Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Hiroshima, for three weeks in August.

Wright, a mathematics and Asian studies major with a concentration in Japan studies, says she's particularly interested in examining how the Japanese government frames the Asia-Pacific War (World War II) in a historical narrative. "I believe that the way the war narrative is constructed in Japan can tell us something about the way nation-states in general construct their war narratives," she says. "For example, I'd like to examine why certain events are chosen to be remembered and why others are forgotten."

Tegtmeyer Pak says the Asian Conversations course that inspired this research project required students to use their language skills while studying in Asia and prepared them to develop a proposal to perform original research. "I think the project demonstrates the great things that can come from combining language study with our international Interim classes," she says.

When the students have completed their research, they will present it at the 2010 ASIANetwork Conference and submit their write-up for publication.

The ASIANetwork and Freeman Foundation provide these student-faculty fellowships in an effort to support student research in Asia under the close supervision of a faculty mentor. ASIANetwork is a consortium of more than 170 North American colleges that aims to strengthen the role of Asian studies within the framework of a liberal arts education.

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.