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Teacher Programs

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About Teacher Programs

NCTA provides content rich professional development programs for K-12 educators and pre-service teachers in all fields. This includes face-to-face college level seminars, online courses, workshops, book groups, webinars, and among other opportunities. Below are current offerings both locally and nationwide:

Event/Opportunity Type: 
Teacher Programs

Minority Literatures of East Asia: Diversity and Difference - An NCTA Workshop Series for K-12 Educators

 

 March 27, April 22, May 15 & June 17, 2025

6:00pm - 7:30pm (Eastern Time)

 

Great works of literature like The Tale of Genji and Dream of the Red Chamber have influenced the way that many of us think about the culture, history, politics, and traditions of China and Japan. Yet these and other canonical works are largely the products of highly educated social elites. What might culture, history, politics, and tradition look like when viewed from the vantage point of marginalized or disempowered populations within those countries? This is the question that underlies this thematically linked series of book workshops on minority literatures of East Asia. The series will introduce teacher-participants to literary works by members of Tibetan and Uyghur populations in China as well as members of Zainichi (or resident) Korean and Okinawan communities in Japan. Each workshop will feature a presentation by an expert in the field on several focal short stories or chapter excerpts, in addition to time for Q&A and facilitated dialogue on potential classroom adaptation. Teacher-participants will be asked to prepare select materials in advance.

Educators can register for individual workshops or choose to register for the entire series. For each workshop in the series that an educator attends, they will receive a complementary book recommended by our expert presenters and a certificate of completion at the conclusion of the entire workshop series. PA teachers will also receive Act 48 hours.

 

All Workshop Sessions will take place on Zoom from 6:00pm - 7:30pm (Eastern Time)

  • March 27, 2025: Tibetan Literature (feat. Dr. Christopher Peacock, Dickinson College)

  • April 22, 2025: Uyghur Literature (feat. Dr. Darren Byler, Simon Fraser University)

  • May 15, 2025: Zainichi Korean Literature (feat. Dr. Cindi Textor, University of Utah)

  • June 17, 2025: Okinawan Literature (feat. Davinder Bhowmik, University of Washington)

 
After you register, we will send you a confirmation email. Educators who attend and participate in a workshop will receive a Certificate Completion and a copy of a book recommended by our speakers focusing on the literature of that minority group.  
 
You will also receive information on accessing the Zoom meeting for the mini-course after registering.
 
If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Shawn Bender as benders@dickinson.edu
 
 
 
 

Learn More About our Presenters & Facilitator

 
 

 

 

Moderator/Organizer: Dr. Shawn Bender is Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Dickinson College. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Dr. Bender teaches courses on contemporary Japan, cultures of care and the family, and the social effects of digital technology. His research examines the use of robotics in fields as diverse as eldercare and agriculture. He is the author of Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion (California, 2012). His most recent book monograph Feeling Machines: Japanese Robotics and the Global Entanglements of More-Than-Human Care is under review at Stanford University Press. 

 

 

 

 

 
 
Featured Presenter: Davinder L. Bhowmik is an associate professor of Japanese at the University of Washington, Seattle. She teaches and publishes research in the field of modern Japanese literature with a specialization in prose fiction from Okinawa, where she was born and lived until the age of 18. Other scholarly interests include regional fiction, the atomic bombings, and Japanese film. Her publications include Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa (co-edited with Steve Rabson, 2016); Writing Okinawa: Narratives of Identity and Resistance (2008); and “Temporal Discontinuity in the Atomic Bomb Fiction of Hayashi Kyōko" (in Ōe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan, 1999). Currently she is writing a manuscript on military basetown fiction in Japan.
 
 
 
 
 
Featured Presenter: Darren Byler is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University. He is a sociocultural anthropologist whose teaching and research examines the dispossession of stateless populations through forms of contemporary capitalism and colonialism in China, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. He is the author of In the Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony (Columbia Global Reports, 2021) and an ethnographic monograph titled Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City (Duke University Press, 2022). His current research interests are focused on infrastructure development and global China in the context of Xinjiang and Malaysia.
 
 
 
 
 
Featured Presenter: Christopher Peacock is an Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at Dickinson College whose research focuses on modern Chinese and Tibetan literatures. His recent work has examined the interactions between Chinese and Tibetan intellectual traditions in the 20th and 21st centuries, considering how concepts of national identity have taken shape in Tibetan literature in the PRC. As a translator, he has published translations of modern Tibetan writing in a range of journals and literary magazines, as well as the book-length publications The Handsome Monk and Other Stories (Columbia University Press, 2019) and The Red Wind Howls (Columbia University Press, forthcoming), both by Tsering Döndrup, and Tsering Yangkyi’s Flowers of Lhasa (Balestier Press, 2022), the first novel by a Tibetan woman writer translated into English and recipient of a PEN Translates award.
 
 
 
 
 
Featured Presenter: Cindi Textor is Associate Professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Utah. She is the author of Intersectional Incoherence: Zainichi Literature and the Ethics of Illegibility (University of California, 2024), which stages an encounter between the critical discourse on intersectionality and texts produced by Korean subjects of the Japanese empire and their postwar descendants in Japan, known as Zainichi Koreans. Her work on the literary production of the Japanese empire and its postcolonial legacies, including Zainichi and Okinawan fiction, has appeared in positions: asia critique, Journal of Korean Studies, and Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. She is also the translator of several works of Zainichi fiction, most recently Nabi T’aryŏng and Other Stories by Lee Yangji (Seoul Selection, 2022).
 
 
 
Event/Opportunity Type: 
Teacher Programs
Type: 
Online Workshop Series

Global Issues through Literature Series: Exploring Labor - K-Pop Confidential by Stephan Lee

 

Global Issues through Literature Series: Exploring Labor

K-Pop Confidential by Stephan Lee

Thursday, May 15, 2025

6:00pm - 7:30pm (Eastern Time)

Online via Zoom

In collaboration with our colleagues at the Global Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh, this professional development workshop series is designed for K-12 educators seeking to deepen their understanding of global labor issues through literature. Utilizing young adult novel, K-Pop Confidential by Stephan Lee, this contemporary work examines the high-pressure world of K-pop training, offering insights into the demands of creative labor, cultural identity, and personal ambition set against the backdrop of contemporary South Korea.

By exploring compelling stories from diverse cultural perspectives, educators will gain insights into the complexities of labor, its impact on individuals and communities, and how to engage students in meaningful discussions around these topics. Each session features a carefully selected book, paired with interactive discussions, teaching strategies, and cross-disciplinary activities to inspire classroom implementation.

Through the lens of this year’s theme, educators will explore how labor intersects with identity, resilience, inequality, and justice. Participants will examine the personal and societal dimensions of work and its implications for young people across the globe.

Three Act 48 credit hours (for PA educators) and a copy of the book and are provided for each session.

 

Event/Opportunity Type: 
Teacher Programs
Type: 
Online Book Discussion & Workshop