Language Difference and Way of Thinking

An efficient way to teach a foreign language, especially to adults, is to compare it to their native language. A study of the linguistic differences between them will help locate the difficulties in the learning process, thus increasing the predictability and purposefulness in teaching. This contrastive analysis is also the basis for translation studies and … Read more

Hunting Chinggis Khan’s Skull and Soul: Inner Asian Frontiers of Historical Ideology and Racial Imaginations

Since the early 20th century, Chinggis Khan has become an object of desire and repulsion to many nations and individuals in the world. He has been identified by the Japanese as the 13th-century tragic hero Minamoto Yoshitsune, and recognized by the Chinese as ‘the only Chinese who has ever defeated the Europeans’. His virtue and … Read more

Chinese America: The Untold Story of America’s Oldest New Community

Prof. Kwong will focus his presentation on the current issues affecting Asian American studies, and the need for a new civil rights agenda in the United States. Here is the definitive portrait of Chinese America, charting 150 years of American history from the Chinese frontiersmen of the Wild West to the high-tech transnationals of today’s … Read more

Globalization and Japanese Creativity: Adaptation of Japanese Language to Rap

As a musical form without the distraction of a melody but a well-defined beat, rap offers an opportunity to explore the rhythmic and musical aspects of a language. An interesting case study is rap in Japanese, which has completely different syntax, vocabulary, accent patterns, and phonemes from English. Several pioneers of Japanese rap initially thought … Read more

The Other Side of the Model Minority Story: The Psychological and Social Adjustment of Chinese American Adolescents

Research on Asian origin children and adolescents in the U.S. has focused predominantly on their educational achievement. This emphasis, however, ignores not only the diversity of Asian students’ educational experiences but also their psychological and social well-being. A small but growing body of research suggests that while Asian American students may be doing well in … Read more

Silent Illumination: Studies on Meditation & Music Performance

Musical performance anxiety represents a relatively unexamined but seriously debilitating problem that functionally impairs large numbers of musicians. In the past two decades, there has been considerable interest in meditation as an approach to reduce emotional distress among a large community of clinicians and empirical psychologists. Meditation research is a young but vigorous field. More … Read more