Research Groups

The Triangle East Asia Consortium currently supports several cross-institutional research groups, including the Relocating Empires in the Asia-Pacific Project and the East Asian Religions working group. These groups, made up of both faculty and graduate students, meet regularly to discuss publications and developments in their fields of interest, listen to invited speakers, and organize public events. TEAC welcomes proposals for new research groups that unite faculty and students from across the Triangle.

Relocating Empires in the Asia-Pacific

The collaborative project “Relocating Empires in the Asia-Pacific” (REAP) brings studies on the Japanese empire into long overdue conversations with ongoing debates in colonial and postcolonial studies. By associatively thinking together and collaboratively inquiring into a cluster of comparable and interlocking topics such as modernities, visual cultures, religion, tourism, the Cold War, race relations, and so forth, members hope to address significant gaps and the unevenness extant within the current terrain of empire studies. By bringing together conversations that have been sequestered into separate camps, we plan to open a new chapter in studies of colonialism, empires, and postcoloniality. The group aims to build a network of scholars in the Triangle and beyond.
Contact: Nayoung Aimee Kwon

East Asian Religions

This research group meets monthly to read the work of a scholar in East Asian religious studies. Wherever possible, the group invites the author to join the discussion group. Once a semester, the group sponsors a special lecture on East Asian religions. Current membership includes faculty members from Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro, East Carolina University, Wake Forest University, Davidson College, UNC-Charlotte, NC State University, and Elon College. The group also includes a number of graduate students from area universities. More than half of the participants are Japan specialists. The group maintains a mailing list for the purpose of planning events. Anyone with an interest in East Asian religions is welcome to participate.

Triangle East Asia Colloquium (TEAC)

TEAC was established in 1972 to improve contact between East Asian faculty at Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. TEAC has since expanded to include East Asian specialists and other interested scholars from across North Carolina and throughout the Southeast. TEAC chooses a coordinator each year from one of the three institutions to organize its annual conference and to manage the affairs of TEAC.

Trans-Asian Media Cultures

The scope of this group includes both the arts of the moving image and also text-based “screen” media such as blogs, wiki-style sites, cell texting, twitter, etc. The group is especially interested in how these hybrid visual and textual media help create virtual spaces within which individuals may negotiate their relationship with larger communities, with various corporate and political institutions, and with the State itself. The group consists of Duke faculty working in fields related to modern Asian cultural studies, and based in AMES, Cultural Anthropology, English, Theatre Studies, Art History, and Literature. Activities include approximately six group meetings during the academic year, which typically center around a discussion of select readings or cultural texts. In some cases, other area studies faculty, graduate students, and outside scholars and artists are invited to join these conversations.
Contact: Carlos Rojas

East Asian Language Pedagogy

The language pedagogy program actively promotes interaction and cooperation on research, pedagogic, and administrative issues among the East Asian language instructors at Duke and across the Triangle.
Contact: Hitomi Endo