Dr. Mary Hanneman
Congratulations to PPPA Associate Professor and Acting Director of UWT’s Asia Center, Dr. Mary Hanneman, on receiving a Fulbright Research Grant!
Dr. Hanneman previously received a teaching Fulbright in 2010, spending five months at a small college in north Bengal. This time she will be conducting research at a larger university, North Bengal University, in a neighboring city. Continue reading
Professor Will McGuire will be joining an academic delegation to Taiwan this summer organized by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Will’s participation in this high-level delegation is the result of an invitation from the Director General of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Seattle. The trip brings American scholars of Taiwan or Mainland China together with Taiwanese government officials and scholars. This year’s delegation includes American academics from Harvard University, UCLA, Emory University, Brigham Young University, the US Air Force Academy, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the Jamestown Foundation. It begins July 15th and ends July 21st.
Professor McGuire will be sharing his experiences in Taiwan during an upcoming Travel Talk organized by World Affairs Council Tacoma on November 15th. The event will at held at Tacoma Community College from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm.
Turan Kayaoglu, Associate Professor of International Relations, PPPA
On March 18, 2016, I chaired a side-event panel in New York during CSW60—the 60th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. The panel’s title was “Women’s Social Lives and Changing Values in the Middle East: Beyond the Framework of Religion, Culture, and Tradition.” Organized by the Tokyo-based Turkey-Japan Cultural Dialog Society and the New York-based Peace Islands Institute, the panel featured three ethnically Japanese scholars affiliated with Japanese universities. These scholars had much insight to offer about the Middle East; they also had many astute observations about the process of studying the Middle East.
The dominant view in the US public sphere is that, grounded in Islam, Middle Eastern values are fairly stable and uniformly hostile on the subject of women’s lives and rights. This view both neglects how the socio-economic and politics status of Middle Eastern women has experienced dramatic changes and ignores the voice and agency of women in these changes. Focusing on women’s voices and agency, the panelists discussed examples from three issue areas and countries across the Middle East: religious reinterpretation in Egypt, reconstruction of the notion of honor (namus) in Turkey, and political participation during and after the Arab Spring in Tunisia. Continue reading
Beef noodles, Buddhist temples, busy streets, and boats on the Yellow River. Sixteen students experienced all of these things on the UWT summer study abroad in China last summer, led by UWT’s Dr. Mary Hanneman and Tacoma Community College’s Dr. Yi Li. For the past eight years, UWT students have had the opportunity to gain (or hone) Mandarin skills while studying Chinese history and culture in China. The 2014 program took students to the city of Lanzhou, in China’s northwestern region, for three weeks of language study at Lanzhou University and one week of travel to Dunhuang, a site on the ancient Silk Road, finishing up with three days in China’s vibrant capital of Beijing. Continue reading
Planning is already underway for the 2015 China Study Abroad, which will include a special focus on the Chinese economy in a course taught by PPPA economics professor Will McGuire. The one-month program will be housed at Renmin University in Beijing, where students will study Mandarin for three weeks in addition to studying Chinese history and economics. The economics study will include field excursions to Chinese businesses and state-run industries. The study abroad will also include a week-long excursion to Tianjin and cultural field trips in the Beijing environs.
The 15 credit academic program for the study abroad includes: TCHIN (Mandarin Chinese) 101-203, depending on entrance and exit exams (the exact course number is determined by where a student tests in and out) TINTL 480, Chinese History and Culture; TECON 461, Current Issues in Chinese Economy.
Course descriptions:
TECON 461- This course will provide a brief introduction to the creation and reform of China’s socialist economic system, and then focus on the biggest economic challenges facing the country today. The topics covered will include, among others, economic inequality, macroeconomic stability, and environmental sustainability. We will combine academic study with firsthand knowledge by combining lectures with site visits and interactions with local business leaders and/or policymakers.
TIAS 480 – This course will examine the history, culture, language, and politics of China. Classes will be held at a cooperating university in People’s Republic of China.
Dates for the study abroad are June 21- July 18, 2015. The cost for the program is $4900, (which includes the 15 credits, three weeks’ lodging in Beijing, coursework, one week travel to QIngdao and Jinan, and all food, lodging and travel during the one week travel portion). For more information about the 2015 trip, please consult the International Programs website http://www.tacoma.uw.edu/international-programs/china-west-east or http://www.tacoma.uw.edu/international-programs/china-past-present. You can also contact Dr. Mary Hanneman (hanneman@uw.edu), Dr. Will McGuire (mcguire@uw.edu) or Dr. Yi Li (yli@tacomacc.edu).
In April PPPA hosted political analyst and essayist Mr. Faisal Roble (below center) of the Institute for Horn of Africa Studies and Affairs. His lecture, entitled “Post Civil War 
Somalia: Challenges and Opportunities,” was well attended, and kicked off the first of several meetings and engagements he held with the UWT and Somali communities over a three-day period. His visit was jointly sponsored by UW Tacoma Arts & Lectures Committee and the Somali Student Association at UW Tacoma. As part of the same series, Dr. Nader Hashemi, Associate Professor Of Middle East and Islamic Studies and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, visited UWT in May to discuss current events in Iran and the Geneva Nuclear Deal. His presentation can be accessed via this link: Dr. Nader Hashemi at UW Tacoma
Students often think of professors as people with no life outside of the classroom, living only to teach—or possibly to compose scores of journal articles. However, for Mary Hanneman, Associate Professor in PPPA and Acting Director of the Asia Pacific Center, there are other scores that hold her interest.
Hanneman’s interest in East Asia began during her childhood experiences as the daughter of a Lutheran missionary in Tokyo where she lived for 3 ½ years, attending grades K-2. Even after returning to the States, she continued to pu
rsue her interest in Asia; during her high school, she studied Japanese — an unusual language to study in those days. She continued to study Japanese while earning her BA in East Asian Studies at WWU. After receiving her MA (also in East Asian Studies) from Yale, she returned home to Washington to pursue her PhD in Japanese History at UW Seattle, before finally settling here at UW Tacoma where she taught Asian History.
It was while living in Tokyo, though, that she discovered her second passion in life: music. Hanneman began playing the violin at age six before moving to the viola a few years later. While at WWU, she minored in music; while working on her Masters degree she joined the orchestra at Yale, and during Ph.D. work at the UW, she played in a string quartet. After that, she gave up music until about 10 years ago; when both of her parents died, she found that music gave her a way to deal with grief. “Playing got me into a different mental and emotional space,” she remembered. Hanneman currently is a member of the Olympia Symphony. The last concert of the 2013-14 season included a presentation of Brahms Symphony #2—a piece that she played years ago. Remarking on the idea of music and muscle memory, she commented, “It’s amazing how much of it was just under my fingers.”
This summer Hanneman will be taking a group of 16 students on a study abroad trip to China. Hanneman can’t wait – but she’ll miss her viola while she’s away.
Faculty members Jeff Begun and Cynthia Howson (below) recently published an article in the magazine Alternative Emerging Investor focusing on China’s rapidly growing (and improving) 
wine industry. This issue also includes contributions from Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence and American economist Nouriel Roubini–who among other things, predicted the collapse of the United States housing market and the worldwide recession which began in 2008. On May 30th the two presented their research in the Carwein Auditorium as part of the PPPA China Seminar. The talk was followed by a lively reception and complimentary wine tasting at Anthem Beverage and Bistro, where those present were introduced to a sampling of wines from China’s top vineyards.
PPPA’s seminar series focusing on the Middle East and Africa continues this Spring with a keynote
address by Professor Nader Hashemi (right) of the University of Denver (UD). Prof. Hashemi is an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies at UD’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He is also Director of UD’s Center for Middle East Studies, and the author of several books on politics and the Middle East. As a frequent guest on national television and radio shows, and with opinion pieces in places such as the New York Times, Prof. Hashemi has quickly become one of the most sought after experts on the Middle East. His address is titled “Is Hassan an Iranian Gorbachev? An Assessment of the Islamic Republic after the Geneva Nuclear Deal.” This talk will take place May 7th at 4 pm in the Tacoma Room.
Also on tap spring quarter: The distinguished Mr. Faisal Roble of the Institute for 
the Horn of Africa Studies will be visiting the UW Tacoma campus. Mr. Roble (left) is a well-respected intellectual, political analyst, and essayist with extensive experience in Africa’s Horn region. He will be delivering a lecture entitled “Post Civil War Somalia: Challenges and Opportunities,” on April 10th at 4 pm in the Carwein Auditorium. UW Seattle’s James Long (below), Assistant Professor of Political Science and an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, will follow this up with a talk on 
“Electoral Fraud and Political Violence in Africa.” Prof. Long’s research focuses on elections in fragile and developing countries, the dynamics of electoral fraud, the causes of electoral violence, and the effects of civil war and insurgency on state-building and development. Long studies these issues in both sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan, and will be speaking on campus April 23rd, 12:30 pm in CP 103. Rounding out the spring schedule will be our own Michael Wotherspoon, a senior in Law and Policy, who will discuss “The Press, Ethnicity and Free Speech in Kyrgyzstan”. His talk will be based on his experiences in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan where he’s been working for Spektator Magazine. May 29th, 12:30 pm in the Tacoma Room. Thanks to both IAS and UW Tacoma’s Arts and Lecturer Committee for making these events possible. Continue reading
This month Professor Turan Kayaoğlu published an oped in The News Tribune where he analyzes an array of current political developments in Turkey. In “The Rise and Fall of Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan, in Three Acts,” Prof. Kayaoğlu criticizes the Turkish government for its abuse of power and turn toward authoritarianism.