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Earlham College has a long-standing tradition of involvement with Asia and Asian Studies. In the 1880s an Indiana Quaker and former Earlham student became the first Quaker missionary to Japan and was involved in the founding of Friends School in Tokyo. Chuzo Kaifu arrived at Earlham in 1890, as the first of a number of Japanese students to enroll at Earlham, many of them graduates of Tokyo Friends School. Likewise, throughout the early 20th C., Earlham students went to Japan as teachers and missionaries, including Bonner Fellers, who was to become an aide to Gen. MacArthur and who played a role in the humane definition of the post-war occupation of Japan.
In the 1950s, Jackson Bailey (Earlham Class of '50), studied under Edwin Reischauer at Harvard University. In 1959, he returned to Richmond and joined the faculty at Earlham, to begin building a program in East Asian Studies at Earlham, which became a model for cross-cultural studies at the undergraduate level. The program that grew from those initial efforts has developed into a broad program of national reputation, and it has come to involve many faculty members at Earlham, well beyond those who are specialists in Asian Studies. Earlham students today have a choice of three study programs in Japan, including the Japan Study Program at Waseda University, for which Earlham is the agent school for the GLCA and ACM consortia. A number of Japanese students study each year at Earlham, including students who are degree candidates and students who come as exchange students from Japanese universities.
Asian Studies at Earlham today includes faculty and course work in a number of Asian cultures and traditions, studied from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives across a broad spectrum of the curriculum.
Earlham's contribution to the IDEAS project builds on this long tradition of involvement in Asian Studies. Materials in the Earlham collection are drawn from a broad spectrum of Asian cultures and includes materials both historic and contemporary, drawn from collections of current and former Earlham faculty and students, and other friends and students of Asia. We invite anyone who has resources on Asia that they wish to share to contact us and to contribute to the building of this valuable project of resources for teaching and learning about Asia.
Earlham College is located in Richmond, Indiana.
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