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East Asia Resource Center, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change in East Asia Projects in East Asia

Join Andrea Gevurtz Arai, Professor of Japan and East Asia Studies and Cultural Anthropology in the Jackson School of International Studies, for an online program exploring the newly published  volume Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia, which she curated and edited. This collection brings together a cross-national, interdisciplinary group of scholars, scholar-activists, artists, and others to explore the past two decades of growing income inequality, declining birth rates, increasing precarity, and grassroots responses across East Asian societies.

We will focus on the case studies in the book that highlight how young people throughout East Asia are working together to create socially sustainable change, particularly in the areas of gender, labor, and the environment, both built and natural. We will also discuss the broader context of these changes, examining both top-down and bottom-up dynamics, and consider the similarities and differences among East Asian nations. Finally, we will reflect on what it means to confront large-scale political and economic forces that shape individual lives and communities. Each project in the volume is centered on making everyday life more liveable and imagining more hopeful futures. The volume also includes a teaching appendix, which we will explore together during the session.

Date and Time

Wednesday, November 5, 2025, 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM (Pacific Time).
This program will be held on Zoom.

Program Expectations

All participants will receive a copy of Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia in advance. To get the most out of the session, we recommend reading the Introduction and Foreword, plus at least two chapters and the teaching appendix.

Program leader

Andrea Gevurtz Arai is a cultural anthropologist of Japan and East Asia and Acting Assistant Professor in The Henry M Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Arai was the interim chair of Korean Studies 2023-24. She is the author of The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan (2016) and co-editor of Spaces of Possibility: Korea and Japan and Global Futures in East Asia. Her chapter, “Nuclear Visuality and Popular Resistance in Hitomi Kamanaka’s Documentary Films” was published in Rachel DiNitto (editor) Eco-Disaster Films in Japan (2024). Arai organized a conference “Ultra Low-Birthrate Societies in East Asia: Crisis Discourses and Responses (UW, April,. 2025) and is completing a second book: The 3.11 Generation: Changing the Subjects of Gender, Labor and Environment in Trans-Local Japan.

Registration

This program is free and open to K-12 teachers of all grades and subjects. Space is limited. To register, please follow this link. For any questions, just send us an email at earc@uw.edu.

This program is sponsored by the East Asia Resource Center at the University of Washington and funded by a Freeman Foundation grant in support of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA).