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

Social Change Projects in East Asia – NCTA Online Program

Educators joined 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 focused 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 also discussed the broader context of these changes, examining both top-down and bottom-up dynamics, and considered the similarities and differences among East Asian nations. Finally, we reflected 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 explored together during the session.

Date and Time

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

Program Expectations

All participants received 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 recommended reading the Introduction and Foreword, plus at least two chapters and the teaching appendix.

Program Benefits

  • Online resources.
  • Free WA OSPI clock hours.
  • A free copy of the text.

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.

 

This program was 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).