Diversity Statement

Include a diversity statement in Tenure and Promotion materials that demonstrate how individuals are advancing such goals in their Teaching, Research and Scholarship based on training and self-reflection of faculty’s growth and development in relation to implicit and systemic bias beginning in fall of 2021.

As our faculty work towards pre-tenure, tenure, and promotion, each member will include a reflection of their work engaging diversity issues and systemic racism in teaching and scholarship and governance. As our work focuses on the peoples of East Asia, all our courses are “diversity” courses for the Gettysburg College curriculum. As we move forward, we will try to place more emphasis on underrepresented groups within East Asia. Broader inclusivity can include works/events created by or including those who represent LGBTQ members, any gender including those who are non-binary, are differently abled, elderly, young, poor, or are ethnic and/or religious minorities, and/ or living as refugees or in the diaspora.

Create and/or revise departmental diversity statements and submit these to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion by March 1, 2021.

East Asian Studies courses include Chinese and Japanese language and as well as those primarily about China and Japan, but at times includes other countries such as Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan, and offers comparison to the United States. We expressly examine and study the lives, culture, literature, religion, politics, and histories of the peoples of East Asia. Moreover, our courses in anthropology, culture, film, folklore, literature, and tourism specifically demonstrate that these lives and cultures matter on a global scale. Our department supports current worldwide movements for social justice reform and resists the notion of essentialism with regard to any group of people in any country.

Students in all our courses reflect on issues of racial-ethno-sexual-religious prejudice, class/gender hierarchy, and cultural supremacism in various regions and contexts, particularly in China and Japan but also in all the countries studied, including the United States and East Asian diaspora. Students will develop “a sense of the inter-relatedness of all knowledge, sensitivity to the human condition, and a global perspective, all necessary to enable students to realize their full potential for responsible citizenship.” This will enable students to understand “the worth and dignity of all people and the limitless value of their intellectual potential” and “the value of ethical leadership that is inclusive, collaborative, and directed toward effecting change for the greater good.” [https://www.gettysburg.edu/about-the-college/mission-statement]

Department Plan:

At our end of the year retreat/workshop, we will include a diversity discussion and reflection which will include the following:
1. Review courses to make sure they include discussion of diversity, ethnicity, gender, disability, economic status, religion, and more and address different forms and manifestations of social justice biases in specific political and cultural contexts as related to course content.
  
  We’ve already done this verbally, so during the retreat, or before, each member can write a one paragraph summary or bullet point list for each course they taught the previous year denoting how diversity is represented. Each year we can submit an updated one summary if there are changes. Moreover, we can also discuss our courses for the next year to help each other with inclusion of these issues, like a workshop.
Training
1. Bystander training: how to identify instances where a response is necessary, and how to take action (indirect, redirect, confront)
  Ask Jeanne when this may be available. It is not offered for students during covid times.
2. We plan to work with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion so all department members complete all parts of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) by the end of the fall semester 2021.
Future
1. We may consider including a new course within our department or within our major programs that focuses on diversity within East Asia and experiences of East Asian people within the United States. (This depends on whether the college culture evolves to have a course required of all student as first years)
2. Our department can act as resources for AAPI related unity and already has to some degree by working with the office of the Chaplain for the vigil for the victims of the Georgia murders and with Robert (Bobby) Steiner from SAE.

Create a departmental action plan regarding hiring/staffing, programming, curriculum design, and (re)naming of courses to be submitted to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion by March 1, 2021.

Explain what steps will be taken to support and retain recently hired faculty from underrepresented groups within the submission of the departments action plan.

Our department’s existing model applies to new hires, full-and part-time and teaching assistants, whether or not they are from underrepresented groups:

During the first year and beyond, the Chair connects with all new faculty members regularly and frequently about teaching and adjustment to life in the Gettysburg area and at the college, and serves as a bridge to the campus and local community to increase comfort level of new member
Since we are a small department of four, all other department members also check in with the new hire on a regular basis to discuss teaching and adjustment to life in the Gettysburg area and the college and serve as a bridge to the town and college community.
During the first semester, mentoring relationships and connections within and external to the department are established for the new member.
During the first year and beyond, all department members introduce the new member to those with whom they may have personal or professional common areas of interest and continue conversations formally and informally about teaching, research, advising, and other issues, such as grant opportunities, subvention assistance for proofreading and more
The department discusses teaching formally at department meetings and all members and invite new hires to visit their classes. This includes how to increase participation, scaffolding assignments, and on-line teaching issues.
Senior members provide assistance with the college culture and administrative systems such as new course proposals, academic advising, the Honor Code, committee work, searches, and more.

Audit course syllabi to discourage “reinforced whiteness” and rename courses to state clearly what they are, e.g., “Anglo-European Philosophy of the 1900s;” beginning in Fall 2020.

East Asian Studies courses include those from other departments such as religion, history, art and more. We will examine our own designated AS courses to be sure that beyond discussion of Japanese and Chinese cultures and societies, we address minority issues and well as diversity issues, as possible, within the course area.

The Japanese Studies Major

Core courses

AS 150: Japanese Culture & Society
HIST 224 Modern Japan

Potential comparative courses

AS 255/355 Coming of Age in East Asian Literature and Film

Electives

AS 238/338: Classical Japanese Literature and its Modern Interpretations
AS 247/347: Extraordinary Fiction in Japan and the World
AS 250/350: The Ebb and Flow: Japanese Women's Literature, the First 1200 Years
AS 252/352: Daily Life in Ancient Gettysburg and Tokyo
AS 253/353 Japanese Religions, Myth, and Folklore in Visual Media
AS 242/342 Real and Imagined: Past, Present and Future Japanese Heroes
AS 340/401: Modernity in Modern Japanese Fiction
AS 241/341/402: Genre in Modern Japanese Literature

The Chinese Studies Major

Core Courses

AS 151 Chinese Culture & Society

Electives

AS 224: Chinese Folklore and Fairytales
AS/ANTH 229: Tourism and Culture in China
AS 230 Identity in Chinese Literature

Beginning in Fall 2021, incorporate a mandatory focus on social justice within First-Year Seminar courses to promote intergroup dialogue for incoming first-year students to fulfill the mission of socially responsible citizenship.

All students will be required to take the IDI as part of the FYS system

Our current FYS courses are 149-2 Japanese Popular Culture Goes Global and Junjie’s Technology, Fantasy, and the Age of Internet: A Journey in Chinese Literature