Job Opening: Japanese Transcriptionist -Translator Position at Verbal Ink

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Paula

Location: Telecommuting
Salary: Competitive
Date Open: Now

About Us:

Founded in 2003, Verbal Ink is one of the industry’s leading providers of transcription services. With thousands of happy clients worldwide, we’ve quickly become synonymous with providing highly accurate transcripts at an affordable price. As the need for multi-lingual products and services continues to grow, we’ve responded by developing Japanese transcription and translation services. That’s where you come in: We are looking for bilingual (English and Japanese) transcriptionists-translators to join our team!

All of our transcriptionist-translators must have the required authorization to legally work in the US. This is a freelance position where you would be working from home. To learn more about our culture and services, visit us at http://www.verbalink.com. Requirements for This Position: • Native level fluency of both English and Japanese language • Able to translate from English to Japanese and Japanese to English • At least 2 years of translation experience • Transcription experience and typing speed of at least 55 wpm. • Eligible to legally work in the US

How to Apply for This Position:

If you’re interested in applying to work for us, please email us at jobs@verbalink.com and tell us why you’d be a great asset to our organization. Please attach your resume in Microsoft Word or PDF format and include “Japanese Transcriptionist” in the subject line of your email. We’re eager to hear from you and may not be able to respond right away, but we do keep all resume submissions on file.

No phone calls, please – thanks!

Posted in announcements, job openings, jobs | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Book Announcement: Australia, Japan and their relations with Asia

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Paula

edited by Stephen Alomes, Peter Eckersall, Ross Mouer and Alison Tokita. Available through the Custom Book Centre at Melbourne University.

http://www.bookshop.unimelb.edu.au/cbc/?9781921775819

Cover note:

The essays in Outside Australia: Japanese and Australian Encounters & Identities in Flux originated when the authors gathered in Broome to discuss this theme in December 2006, the Australia-Japan Year of Friendship. Broome was chosen because of its special place in the history of Australia-Japan relations, and for its liminal character on the edge of both Australia and Asia.

This book explores from diverse angles how the outsider experience conditions cultural encounters between Australia and Japan. A sense of being on the fringe of Asia and consequent anxieties about the region impinge on identity, history, politics, society, culture and the arts in each country. The intercultural relations between Australia and Japan are deeply embedded in the self-identity of each nation, and the sense of being “outside Asia” continues to inform social, cultural and political life in contemporary Japan and Australia. This continuing cultural narrative is important. It remains extraordinarily significant even as both nations are engaged in complex multilateral relations with others, while participating as ‘allies’ in the broader cultural, political, economic and strategic flows that constitute globalisation. Those processes, links and flows influence many larger and smaller nations in the multi-polar era of today.

Table of contents:

John Romeril:
My Favourite Broome Story

Mark Lincicome:
Centering the Periphery: National Identity and the Problem of Asian Regionalism in Australia and Japan

Yoko Harada:
Australia, Japan, Inferiority Complex and Orientalism: Examining common symptoms of “natural partners”

Narrelle Morris:
From ‘Japan-bashing’ to ‘Japan-surpassing’? – Australia, Japan and the Rise of China in the Early Twenty-First Century

Beatrice Trefalt:
Australia, the War, Japan, and the absence of Asia

Pauline Kent:
Peripheral and Asymmetric Approaches to Japan: The case of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

Alison Tokita:
Intimate Encounters: Marriage and the Australia-Japan Relationship

Stephen Alomes:
Margins to Mainstream: The Impact of Contemporary Populism in Australia and Japan

Robin Gerster:
CONTACT! Cultural Impacts of the Australian Post-War Occupation of Japan

Tetsuo Mizukami:
Japanese Migrants and their Major Organisations in Metropolitan Australia

Pam Oliver:
The Japanese and Broome to 1942

Ross Mouer and Jun Tsutsumi:
Australia’s sister city relations with Japan

Vera Mackie:
Japan, Australia and a Somatic Reading of Globalization

Leith Morton:
The Poetics of War: Japanese Poetry and World War II

Keiji Sawada:
Hybridity and Interculturalism in Australia-Japan Theatrical Exchanges

Peter Eckersall:
Hirata Oriza’s “Tokyo Notes” in Melbourne: conflicting expectations for theatrical Naturalism

Nanette Gottlieb:
Japanese Studies in the Internet Age

Posted in announcements | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Visual Culture and Social Upheaval: Imaging Change in Late Edo Period Japan

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Paula

Upcoming program open to the public at the Freer Gallery in conjunction with two ongoing exhibits at the Freer-Sackler: Visual Culture and Social Upheaval: Imaging Change in Late Edo Period Japan

Saturday, May 5, 2 pm
Freer Gallery, Meyer Auditorium

Explore the intersection of pop culture and spiritual concerns in late Edo society with leading scholars in the field. In turn, discover the reasons behind the acclaim for Kano Kazunobu’s phantasmagoric paintings of Buddha’s legendary disciples and Katsushika Hokusai’s famous print series of Mount Fuji. Learn how the popularity of these iconic images endures in contemporary Japan. The panel includes James C. Dobbins, Fairchild Professor of Religion at Oberlin College; Patricia Graham, independent art historian; Constantine N. Vaporis, professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and Freer|Sackler curators James Ulak and Ann Yonemura.

LINKS TO EXHIBITION DESCRIPTIONS:

http://asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/masters-of-mercy/
http://asia.si.edu/exhibitions/future.asp#hokusai

Posted in announcements, culture | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fun Link(s) Friday: Kenketsu-chan

Posted on April 6, 2012 by LM

Like its US counterpart, the Japan Red Cross Society (日本赤十字社) also collects blood donations. Unlike in the US, each prefecture in Japan has its very own regional Kenketsu-chan (けんけつちゃん), a blood-donation (献血) mascot!

Image from Ishikawa Red Cross.

Today I received a notice from the Ishikawa blood center than I am now eligible for another donation; the postcard was decorated with our own Kenketsu-chans, Lord Maeda Toshiie and his wife Matsu.

Kaga Yuzen silk-dyeing (Ishikawa pref) Kenketsu-chan represents one of Ishikawa's many artisanal crafts.

Today’s fun link is “Kenketsu-chan Dress-Up” on the Hyogo-ken Red Cross site. Click the description to change Kenketsu-chan’s outfit to something regional, like a sarubobo doll from Hida-Takayama, a Chiba peanut, or an Alpine adventurer from Nagano-ken. The order seems to be by prefecture from a Hokkaido to Okinawa (plus a few extra); the older prefectural Kenketsu-chan mascots are here.

For more Kenketsu-tachi, see the Japan Red Cross Kenketsu-chan page.

To give blood in Japan, see the guidelines here and find a donation center here.

-Leah (O+)

Posted in culture, fun links | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Job Opening: Japanese Studies, University of Hong Kong

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Paula

Institution:   University of Hong Kong
Location:   Hong Kong
Position:   Professor/Associate Professor in Japanese Studies

Founded in 1911, The University of Hong Kong is committed to the highest international standards of excellence in teaching and research, and has been at the international forefront of academic scholarship for many years.  The University has a comprehensive range of study programmes and research disciplines spread across 10 faculties and about 100 sub-divisions of studies and learning.  There are over 23,400 undergraduate and postgraduate students coming from 50 countries, and more than 1,800 members of academic and academic-related staff, many of whom are internationally renowned.

Professor/Associate Professor in Japanese Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures
(Ref.: 201200267)

Applications are invited for appointment as Professor/Associate Professor in Japanese Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC), tenable from September 1, 2012 or as soon as possible thereafter.  Those specializing in literature, film, translation, linguistics, business culture, anthropology, and/or religion are especially encouraged to apply.  The appointment will initially be made on a three-year fixed-term basis, with the possibility of renewal and tenure consideration for exceptionally outstanding candidates.

The department of Japanese Studies is an energetic and growing program in the SMLC within the Faculty of Arts.  Inspired by an interdisciplinary approach to research and teaching, the SMLC is home to several area studies programs in American Studies, European Studies, Japanese Studies and Modern China Studies, as well as programs in language and culture, including Arabic, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Thai.  Further information about the School can be obtained at http://www.hku.hk/smlc/.

Applicants should have a Ph.D. degree and a high international standing in a relevant field, with an exceptional record of high-quality research and scholarly publications. Responsibilities will include teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels, mentoring students, and contributing to building the curriculum.  The appointee must exhibit promise of leadership and vision, possess an excellent research agenda, and have engaging ideas for propelling the program to the next level of excellence.  The SMLC, the University, and the Hong Kong Research Grants Council provide substantial competitive funding for research projects of all kinds.

Applicants who have responded to the previous advertisements (Ref.: RF-2009/2010-16 and 20100011) need not re-apply.

A globally competitive remuneration package commensurate with the appointees qualifications and experience will be offered.  The appointment will attract a contract-end gratuity and University contribution to a retirement benefits scheme, totalling up to 15% of basic salary, as well as leave, and medical benefits.  Housing benefits will be provided as applicable.  At current rates, salaries tax does not exceed 15% of gross income.

Contact: Applicants should send a completed application form, a letter of application, CV, a writing sample of scholarly work, an abstract of a current research project, evidence of teaching ability (e.g. sample syllabi, student teaching evaluations), and three reference letters (one of which must explicitly address the candidates teaching ability) to smlcsena@hku.hk.  Inquiries about the position may be directed to: Dr. Kendall Johnson, Head of the School of SMLC (e-mail: kjohnson@hku.hk).

Application forms (341/1111) can be obtained at http://www.hku.hk/apptunit/form-ext.doc.  Further particulars can be obtained at http://jobs.hku.hk/.  Closes June 15, 2012.  The
University thanks applicants for their interest, but advises that only shortlisted applicants will be notified of the application result.

The University is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to a No-Smoking Policy

Website: http://www.hku.hk

Posted in announcements, job openings, jobs | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Job Opening: Politics (Southeast Asia or Japan)

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Paula

Institution:   University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Politics
Location:   United Kingdom
Position:   Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Southeast Asia or Japan

School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London – Department of Politics and International Studies
Lecturer (Assistant Professor) salary: 32,256-46,300 p.a inclusive of London Allowance
Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) salary: 47,620-54,840 p.a inclusive of London Allowance
Vacancy No:  000375

The Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS seeks to make a full-time appointment in the comparative and/or international politics of Southeast Asia or Japan. The successful candidate will have expertise knowledge in one or more countries of the region, including relevant language skills, and a proven ability to produce research of international quality. Strong research methods and evidence of scholarship that informs disciplinary debates in politics are desirable.

You will be expected to contribute to the teaching, administration and research/publication profile of the Department. Evidence of an active research agenda, ability to mentor students (including the supervision of MA dissertations and PhD theses), and ability to work with a diverse group of students are also essential.

To apply for this vacancy or download a job description/further
information, please visit www.soas.ac.uk/jobs.

Closing date:  19 April 2012
Interviews are scheduled for week commencing:  28 May 2012

Contact: Dr Lawrence Saez, Department of Politics.
Email: ls4@soas.ac.uk

Website: www.soas.ac.uk/jobs

Posted in announcements, job openings, jobs | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Call for Papers: Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Paula

Submissions are invited from graduate students for a special issue of the Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies: The mobilities, networks, circulation and proliferation of things.

Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies is calling for papers that examine the mobilities, networks and circulation and proliferation of things in the Asia-Pacific region. By things we mean stuff in its broadest meaning and highlight that these may be both human and/or non-human. When things move they produce and have associated affects and effects. We encourage empirical and/or theoretical contributions that relate to, but not limited to any of the following topics:

Transnational/national policy formation and transfer
Higher education e.g. the transfer of knowledge and expertise
The constitution of markets and economies, commodity/supply chains
Brand making, place making
Migration of bodies, ideas and practices.
Exhibitions, performances and events
Movement of water, animals, plants, insects etc.

We also encourage methodological contributions including but not limited to:

Assemblages, networks and translation
Situated knowledge
Performativity
Materiality
Affect
Commodity chains, following etc.
Ethnography
Vitality

Contributions are welcome from all fields of the arts, social sciences, and humanities: including anthropology, literature, art history and visual culture, film and media, cultural studies, gender studies, geography, queer theory, history, linguistics, political studies, psychology, and sociology.

GJAPS interprets the designation “Asia-Pacific” in the broadest possible sense, to encompass East, Northeast and Southeast Asia, the Malay Archipelago, Australasia, Polynesia and Oceania, the West Coast of the Americas, including California, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, British Columbia, Central and South America.

Email submissions to the Editor, Stephen FitzHerbert at gjaps@auckland.ac.nz, as attachments using Word Template for GJAPS Authors (more information on Notes for Contributors). Submissions should be received by 30 May 2012.

We are also seeking book reviews. For a list of current titles available for book review, please contact the review editor, Elinor Harris at ehar053@aucklanduni.ac.nz

Visit the website at http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/gjaps

Posted in announcements, graduate school | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Call for Papers – Embodying Urban Asia

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Paula

http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/printfriendly_event.asp?categoryid=6&eventid=1276

Workshop at the National University of Singapore, 29 to 30 November 2012

Deadline for submissions 23 July 2012

Further information
http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/events_categorydetails.asp?categoryid=6&eventid=1276

Asian cities have attracted significant scholarly attention in recent years. Existing academic literature includes examination of the spatial effects of transforming economies, such as infrastructural challenges, projects of gentrification and new forms of social deprivation and segregation. This workshop provides a fresh perspective for discussing urban change in Asia through the specific focus on bodies and their sensorial experiences and indulgences. We hope to move beyond dichotomies of inclusion and exclusion, desired and undesired bodies.
Instead, we explore how bodies experience and contribute to transforming urban cultures, practices and spaces. We investigate bodily habits as well as ideas and imaginations of bodies and how these create sensorially experienced realities and physicalities.

By engaging with ways of being in the city, we hope to unpack the many distinct, diverse and overlapping materialities, histories and realities that shape contentious urban negotiations. Some of the guiding questions
are: How are Asian cities enlivened by bodies? How do the aspirations of Asian cities to become ‘world-class’ impact on bodily performances and emerging spaces? What are the performative spaces and cultural contexts that shape bodies, and re-create notions of region, religion, class, caste and gender?

We welcome thick descriptions of negotiations of the lived, desired and imagined bodies and their transforming effect. Papers will provide nuanced understandings of processes of embodiment in Asian cities and theorise urbanisation from the perspective of physical entanglement and sensual appropriation. Scholars across disciplines are invited to contribute to these debates theoretically, methodologically and poetically. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, works which:

– Bring bodily performances in and sensual experiences of urban spaces to the centre stage

– Engage with processes through which spaces and bodies are urbanized in Asia

– Discuss the impact of urban growth on bodily practices beyond the discourse of other and othering to further complicate the reckonings of urban transformations in Asia.

– Explores the manner in which different bodies, individually and collectively, claim, disturb or disrupt the disciplining agendas of the new urbanities

Posted in announcements, conferences | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

General Fellowship Award Announcement: School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Paula

2013-2014 Fellowship Award Announcement

Location: Princeton, NJ

Each year, the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, invites about twenty scholars to be in residence for the full academic year to pursue their own research. The School welcomes applications in economics, political science, law, psychology, sociology and anthropology. It encourages social scientific work with an historical and humanistic bent and also entertains applications in history, philosophy, literary criticism, literature and linguistics. Applicants must have a Ph.D. at time of application. Each year there is a general thematic focus that provides common ground for roughly half the scholars; for 2013-2014 the focus will be The Environmental Turn and the Human Sciences. The application deadline is November 1, 2012. Applications must be submitted through the Institute’s online application system, which can be found, along with more information about the theme, at www.sss.ias.edu/applications.

Visit the website at http://www.sss.ias.edu/applications

Posted in announcements, funding, graduate school | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Book announcement: Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Paula

JAPAN AND THE CULTURE OF THE FOUR SEASONS
Nature, Literature, and the Arts
HARUO SHIRANE

“Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons provides a compelling account of how Japan has appropriated, interpreted, and valued nature over the centuries. Shirane’s wide-ranging study tracks the culture of nature in Japan, and especially waka’s central role in constructing a vision of nature that impacted all the arts. In its breadth, depth, and accessibility, the book is of great value not only to scholars and students of Japan, but anyone interested in the intersections of art and nature.”

—Andrew M. Watsky, Princeton University

“A tour de force. Shirane synthesizes the long and complicated encoding of flora, fauna, toponyms and annual events of the Japanese landscape and calendar, untangling not only their synchronic connections, but also their historical development from the 8th to 19th century, from the nightingale (hototogisu) as a harbinger of summer in the Kokinshû to cats’ love-making as a topic for comic haikai verse in the Edo period. This book will be essential for anyone interested at all in virtually any genre of the traditional Japanese arts: poetry, costume, painting, noh theater, architecture, tea ceremony, flower arranging—or Japanese sweets (wagashi)!”

—Joshua Mostow, University of British Columbia

Elegant representations of nature, explicitly the four seasons, fill a wide range of Japanese genres and media—from poetry and screen painting to tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and annual observances. Haruo Shirane shows, for the first time, how, when, and why this occurred and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings these representations embodied.

Refuting the long held belief that this phenomenon reflects agrarian origins, this book demonstrates how elegant representations of the four seasons first emerged in an urban environment among nobility in the eight century. They became highly codified and then spread to different social classes, eventually settling in popular culture and the pleasure quarters. Shirane accounts for all types of manifestations: textual (poetry, chronicles, tales), cultivated (gardens, flower arrangement), material (kimonos, screens), performative (noh drama, festivals), and gastronomic (tea ceremony, food rituals). He reveals how this kind of “secondary nature,” which flourished in Japan’s urban architecture and gardens, frequently fostered a sense of harmony with the natural world—just at the point at which it was receding. Eventually, alternative representations of nature derived from farm villages and elsewhere began to intersect with these elegant representations in the capital, creating a complex web of competing associations.

HARUO SHIRANE is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at Columbia University. He is the author and editor of numerous books on Japanese literature, including, Envisioning The Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production; Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600; Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900; Classical Japanese: A Grammar; Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho; and Bridge of Dreams: Poetics of the Tale of Genji.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS MARCH 2012  336 pages, 33 illus.

Order online: http://cup.columbia.edu/

Enter code: JAPSH for 30% discount

cloth 978-0-231-15280-8 regular price $29.50 now $20.65

Regular shipping and handling costs apply.

Posted in announcements | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment