Ms. Fatimah Joy S. Almarez and Dr. Christine Godinez-Ortega, faculty members of the Department of English, College of Arts & Social Sciences read papers during the Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities (ACAH 2013) and the Asian Conference on Literature & Librarianship (LibrAsia 2013) at the Ramada Hotel, Osaka, Japan on April 4-7, 2013.
The back-to-back conference was sponsored by the International Academic Forum (IAFOR). Almarez delivered a paper on the “Images of Mindanaoans and the Literary Devices that Shape them in Poems and Short Stories of Mindanaoan Writers” during the ACAH conference; and, Ortega delivered hers entitled, “Reinventing the Myth of the Tribal Woman turned into a Snake by the diwatas (gods) in a Novel-in-Progress” where she also served as one of the Session Chairs during the LIBrAsia conference.
Almarez’s paper drew a steamy response on the use of local and national languages by local writers from the participants. The ACAH and the LIBrAsia attracted participants from 39 countries of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas.
After the Osaka conference, Almarez and Ortega along with other participants from the Philippines, Dr. Hope Sabanpan Yu, Director of the University of San Carlos’s Cebuano Studies Center and Sumitomo Fellow, and Dr. Victor N. Sugbo, Chair of the Humanities Division of the UP College Tacloban went to the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) at the University of Kyoto.
Ortega likewise initiated talks with CSEAS’s Dr. Caroline S. Hau that could lead to a possible academic exchange and partnership in ASEAN studies between the University of Kyoto and the MSU-IIT. With the opening of the ASEAN borders in 2015, the Cornell- educated Hau, who is married to a Japanese, enthusiastically endorsed, and is looking forward to a possible partnership between Kyoto University and MSU-IIT. (OC News Release)
Topics : research