Hobart and William Smith Colleges - asian languages

Ketchum ’08 Recalls Tsunami

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Matthew Ketchum '08 had been teaching English in two high schools on the Northeast coast of Japan for two years when the earthquake and tsunami hit the country last March. The tsunami stranded him and others in the fishing village of Miyako, Iwate, where they were fortunate to have found high ground at a monastery. Ketchum returned home for the first time in two and a half years recently and his ...

Conger ’06 in Huffington Post

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Seth Conger '06, of Charlotte, N.C., was recently featured in an article in the Huffington Post about why men of the Millennial and Gen-X generations are hesitant to get married. Conger and Daryl Motte, coauthors of a blog on the topic, have an upcoming book titled, "We're Just Not There Yet." They started blogging on March 1, 2010 and the book is due out this year. The article notes Conger and M...

Drums for Japan

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT

After the earthquake and tsunami that left Japan devastated a month ago, the HWS community has banded together in an effort to help the torn nation. Fundraising will continue on Sunday, April 17 with "Drums for Japan," a musical performance to support the city of Asahi in the Chiba Prefecture, at 2 p.m. at the Smith Opera House. The invigorating show will feature the musical talents of drumming g...

South Asia Speaker Series Announced

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Professor Amna Imam, of the SUNY Brockport Department of Public Administration, will kick off the next three South Asia Speaker Series (SASS) lectures of the semester with a discussion, "Pakistan: Governance Reform in a Nascent Democracy Plagued by Extremist Violence," on Thursday, March 24. The South Asia Speaker Series was conceived in the fall of 2009 by Assistant Professor of Religious Stu...

Discussing Water Issues in India

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Since her semester abroad in India in the fall of 2009, Lisa Philippone '11 has been working hard to research and explore the issues in Northern India concerning water and notions of purity and pollution in Indian society and religion. As a guest of the South Asia Speaker Series, she will give a talk about her research on Wednesday, Feb. 23 at 5:30 p.m. in the Blackwell Room located in Demarest H...

Colleges Receive Grant from Luce

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Hobart and William Smith Colleges have been awarded a $400,000 grant by the Henry Luce Foundation as part of the Luce Foundation's Asia Program, which seeks to foster cultural and intellectual exchange between the United States and East and Southeast Asia. The primary goal of the grant is to bring more content about Asia into the environmental studies program at the Colleges. The grant will be u...

Celebrate Diwali

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The South Asian Culture Club (SACC) will celebrate Diwali, commonly known as the festival of lights, on Friday, Nov. 12 in the Barn. Diwali is a five- day celebration and one of the biggest festivals of Hindus. Traditionally, family members and friends gather to light small clay lamps filled with oil to signify the triumph of good over evil. From 5 -7 p.m., students and faculty are invited to ...

Three Join Language Departments

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Three of the Colleges language departments have welcomed new teaching assistants this year, all recipients of competitive international grants aimed at promoting high quality language programs. Christine Pichler of Kärnten, Austria, the teaching assistant for the German Language Department, and Kamel Tabeche of Alger, Algeria, teaching assistant for Arabic language, are both recipients of the Ful...

Teaching Chinese

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Unscrambling Mandarin Chinese sentences into correct ones is not necessarily an early afternoon brainteaser many students would call a good time. But the eight HWS students working in pairs in teaching Associate Yi-Tung Wu's Beginning Chinese 101 language lab this semester, were fully engaged in the exercise, and enjoying the challenge. Not surprising. Their Taiwanese teaching associate -- who lik...

Not Your Average Cup of Tea

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

If you look at mended Japanese ceramics, many of their repairs seem "instantly obvious," says Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures James-Henry Holland. But the intricacies of this art form and the ceremonies in which they are involved are anything but plain to the untrained eye. Which is why Holland, a venerated scholar of Japanese language and culture, was one of three experts ask...