Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies, Dr. Michael Wood, attended the Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast’s 50th Annual Conference hosted by California State Northridge June 9-12, 2016, where he was elected as a board member of the organization and presented on two different panels.

During the conference he chaired a panel on the intersections of creative industries and cultural identity in post-WWII East Asia and presented recent critical ecology research titled, “Invasive Species Discourse in Japan: The case of Lake Biwa.” However, the highlight of the conference came on the following day, when he led a round-table discussion titled, “Japanese Literary Translation as Pedagogical Methodology.” The gathering consisted of Dr. Wood and four of his former students, three of whom recently graduated from Chapman University, discussing their own learning processes and how collaborative translation projects with Professor Wood allowed them to further develop reading and translation skills.

John Bunschuh, a BA and MA student of Wood’s at his previous institution and currently a doctoral candidate in Japanese linguistics at The Ohio State University joined David Krausman (MA, MFA Chapman 2016); Caitlin Dinunzio (BFA, Chapman 2015); and Samantha Tamura (BA Chapman 2015) to explore the benefits and challenges of engaging in collaborative translation projects through self-designed research projects offered by the Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (OURCA).

The panel was well attended and marked by significant audience participation.

“One of the joys of collaborative translation is that you are not only forced to engage in the closest form of reading possible, but you also open up a discussion with your collaborator(s), that inevitably leads to difficult questions of translation theory and a sharing of personal values and one’s relationship to multiple languages,” said Dr. Wood.

The round-table not only allowed recent Chapman graduates to participate in an important pedagogical debate in the world of second-language acquisition, but also allowed them to envision themselves as lifelong scholars of Japanese language and cultural studies.

(Pictured above: Professor Wood with former Chapman students Caitlin Dinunzio and Samantha Tamura, as well as his own mentor Steve Kohl and his wife Katie Kohl, and former student John Bunschuh (David Krausman not pictured).