Critical teaching about Asia: Orientalism, postcolonial perspectives and cross-cultural education

This paper explores the ways to develop a curriculum and pedagogy to teach Asian cultures and histories to US students - and by implication to students in the West - from critical postcolonial perspectives. In particular, by examining studies of Japan as an example, it identifies and discusses several key issues, including application of the concept of Orientalism, (commonsensical) binary oppositions that lurk in cross-cultural studies and understandings, and cultural essentialisms and nationalisms that emerge in (de-colonised and modernising) Asian nations. The paper argues that postcolonial perspectives can offer us a set of useful theoretical tools to counteract the hegemonic ways of teaching and studying about Asia.