Inter-area/Border Crossing

Roundtable Session

Teaching about Ethnic, Racial, and Religious Conflict in Asia

This panel will address the complex issues in teaching about conflict in Asia.

Kelly Anne Hammond focuses attention on the interrelations of religion and ethnicity and how both relate to state-guided policy, ideology, gender, and class in conflicts.   She will present the Uyghurs as a case study from both a statist and ethno-nationalist perspective as well and show its broader, transnational connections. 

Duncan McCargo will discuss the challenges of teaching a class on four Southeast Asian insurgencies – Aceh, Mindanao, Pattani and Rakhine – in three different countries and continents: China, the United States, and the United Kingdom.  How is it possible to cover such a wide range of material without losing focus? How to respond to the very divergent perspectives of students bringing different cultural and geographical lenses to bear?

Tara Mayer will report on her ongoing work on teaching about, and through, historical controversy.  Her study focuses on the Partition of India in 1947.  She asks whether a particular pedagogical approach drives different groups of students to a greater engagement with the controversy or instead it leaves them only with a sense of unresolved disagreement.

Michael Jerryson draws upon Michael Herzfeld’s pedagogy of “productive discomfort” in his courses: “Religion and Violence” and “Religion and Race.”  He leads students into a delicate balance of sensitivity towards the material with probing questions and exercises to elicit “metacognitive reflection.”  Among topics covered are the Japanese Buddhist and Shinto roles in WWII, the 26-year Sri Lankan Civil War, and the contemporary Buddhist-Muslim clashes in Myanmar. 

Sue Gronewold has played a central role in creating, administering, and teaching in the Masters Program at Kean University in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Certificate Program on Teaching the Holocaust.  She lectures widely in Asia and the US on genocide, the Holocaust, tribunals, and history and memory related to atrocities and their aftermath.

Organizer(s)

• KK

  Karen Kane

  Columbia University

Chair(s)

• SG

  Sue Gronewold

  Kean University

Discussant(s)

• TM

  Tara Mayer

  University of British Columbia, Canada
• MJ

  Michael Jerryson

  Youngstown State University
• KH

  Kelly Anne Hammond

  University of Arkansas
• DM

  Duncan McCargo

  University of Leeds