NBAS: "Teaching Asia during a Resurgence of Growing Anti-Asian Racism"

About the Event

How do we teach Asia when Asians in America are so often exoticized, peripheralized, and radically othered? This talk aims to help educators counter naïve cultural relativism through case studies of teaching about Chinese physicians who may withhold diagnosis from patients; Indian Ayurvedic healers’ prescription of mercury; and Japanese Buddhist priests bar owners who serve alcohol to patrons. It explores teaching strategies and a pedagogical framework to move students to more fully engage with human difference and to learn from Asian religious contexts and cultural values. This event is co-sponsored by the GW Department of English and the Asian American Studies Minor.

About the Author

Kin Cheung - Dr. Kin Cheung is an associate professor of East and South Asian Religions at Moravian University, and chair of the Global Religions and Philosophy Departments. He researches how contemporary agents use Buddhist doctrine and ritual practices in Chinese and American contexts as well as transnational networks. He has published on such subjects as Buddhists engaging with healing, meditation, ethical dilemmas, economics, capitalism, secularism, science, and technology. His work appears in The Journal of the American Academy of Religion; Religion, State and Society; The Journal of Buddhist Ethics; Miracles: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion; Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic; Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Sources; Studies in Chinese Religions; and Handbook of Ethical Foundations of Mindfulness.

Host or Publisher Sigur Center for Asian Studies at GW