Violence in East Asian Literature
A Workshop for K-12 Educators
June 28, 2025; 9:30am-4:30pm (Central Time)
An In-person Workshop at the Merlo Branch, Chicago Public Library,
644 W Belmont Ave, Chicago IL, 60657
This workshop is open to all K-12 educators in the states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio.
Participation is limited to 25 educators
Join Indiana University faculty member, Nick Vogt, on June 28, 2025 for a grades 6-12 educator professional development workshop focused on violence in East Asian literature. This NCTA workshop is co-sponsored by the Indiana University and University of Pittsburgh national coordinating sites.
Violence is unfortunately part of the shared experience of all of humanity. Despite its commonality, though, different cultures separated in space and time have hit upon different ways of dealing with violence in art, literature, and public discourse. This workshop will introduce three case studies dealing with the depiction of violence in words: from China, the romanticized story of the Three Kingdoms period of history; from Japan, the ideal of the samurai warrior and its manifestations in the tale of the Ako vendetta; and from Korea, the lurid story of Crown Prince Sado as recorded in the Memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong.
Each of these stories is a part of pre-modern East Asian History, but each is also well known in its country of origin, spawning many depictions in pop culture and mass media. Each therefore makes an effective case study of how to think through the relationship between storytelling and history. The workshop will provide teachers with supporting materials on these stories and will explore how to introduce middle- and high-school students to these materials, and others like them, in a responsible, culturally sensitive, and engaging way.
Participants will receive a certificate of completion for 6 professional development hours as well as a copy of four books focusing on the topic:
- Samurai and the Warrior Culture of Japan, 471-1877: A Sourcebook
- The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea
- Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood: Early Chinese Plays on the Three Kingdoms
- Records of the Three Kingdoms in Plain Language
Participation is limited to 25 educators
Learn more about our Workshop Speakers & Facilitators
Dr. Nick Vogt
Dr. Nick Vogt is an Associate Professor of Early Chinese History in the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. His research focuses on the cultural and religious history of early China. He works largely with paleographical materials, such as inscribed bronze vessels and bamboo manuscripts, and takes a special interest in “alternate histories” and other texts that didn’t make it into the classical canon.
To date, his work has concentrated on the Western Zhou era (ca. 11th-8th c. BCE), a time of sage kings and culture heroes. His current monograph project, entitled Bound by Bronze: Ritual and Kingship in Western Zhou China, explores the royal ritual of that period based on contemporary bronze inscriptions. Recently, he has begun a second line of research on the ideological, literary, and aesthetic concerns behind later tales of Western Zhou history in sources ranging from ancient manuscripts to modern science fiction.
Kathryn Vandrey
Kathryn is the current Program Manager for the East Asian Studies Center at IU. She is a 2023 Distinguished Poly-IU-Glot recipient. Kathryn holds a BA in Chinese Language and Culture with an Education Certification and an MA in East Asian Studies both from Indiana University. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Chinese Thought, focusing on Epistemology and Confucian ritual, from the IU Department of Religious Studies. Kathryn was a teacher and administrator in the US and China before pursing her MA. She has experience with classroom teaching and curriculum building.