name: Ronald P. Loftus

institution: Willamette University

language: Japanese

status: Full-time, tenure track

project:

title: Advanced Japanese Readings

duration: June 1998-May 1999

description: Select appropriate passages from the autobiography of well-known feamle writer, Sata Ineko, for annotation and glossing. The work in question, Nenpu no Gyoma (1983) is 250 pages in length. I plan to select only 25-30 pages to annotate and gloss. The author, born in Nagasaki, discusses her childhood and her experiences as a child worker in a caramel factory. The kinds of things I anticipate doing for this project are:

1. Scan in appropriate section of the text and organize appropriately.
2. Provide slide and map references to the city of Nagasaki.
3. Provide vocabulary glosses.
4. Provide analysis of complex sentence structures.
5. Provide audio of some or all of selections by having a native speaker of Japanese read to be compensated by Student Assistant funds.
6. Provide biographical information on the author herself as well as many of her contemporaries she describes such as Muro Saisei, Nakano Shigeharu and Akutagawa
Ryunosuke.
7. Provide background information on the Proletarian Literary Movement and their small journal, Roba [Donkey] which they published.
8. Provide WWW links to libraries, museums in Japan holding relevant materials.


outcome: The purpose of this grant is to prepare some advanced reading materials for students of Japanese at the 3rd and 4th year level. I want to create a series of short units which will not only teach students vocabulary and complex sentence structures, but will also provide an interesting social and historical context for integrating the material in the target language.

The OUTCOME will be a stand-alone unit or series of units for advanced students of Japanese language which could be used outside of class, but which also could be brought into class with a projection system and effectively used with a larger group.

timeline:

1. June-August 1998 Scan in materials, begin process of glossing and annotating.
2. Late June travel to Middlebury--continue to work on Project--if selected for Advanced Technology Workshop
3. Late summer-fall 1998 travel to Japan and take slides, or use digital camera and/or video camera, visit collections to see copies of journals from the 1920s.
4. Fall 1998 continue work on annotating, glossing, linking
5. Spring 1999 Use-test with 4th yearJapanese class at WU.
6. Spring-Summer 1999 Revise and complete

amount: $4,500

breakdown:

1. Summer Fellowship $3,000
2. Travel Fellowship RT Japan $1,000
3. Student Assistant to Record audio $500