Dr. Kawamura attends an event where he visits with Dr. Vo Van Sen, rector (president) of the university where Kawamura was a visiting scholar.

Hiroaki Kawamura, Ph.D., chair of the department of language and culture and associate professor of Japanese, recently returned from a trip to Vietnam. There, Kawamura was a visiting scholar with the Vietnam – U.S.A. faculty exchange, a grant program funded by the American Council of Learned Society through the ASIANetwork, a consortium to promote Asian studies in U.S. liberal arts colleges.

The University hosted Dr. Tran Le Hoa Tranh from Vietnam during spring semester 2007. Kawamura visited the National University of Vietnam, University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH), in Ho Chi Minh City, where Tran teaches.

Kawamura speaks to a classroom of students at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh city.

While there, Kawamura gave two public lectures geared toward faculty and master’s program students at the Japan Research Center and another public lecture for faculty, master’s and doctoral program students in the department of cultural studies at USSH. In addition, he presented “Law, Culture and Politics Among Contemporary Native Americans: Hunting, Fishing and Plant Gathering Practices Among Nez Perce Indians in Idaho” to a group of undergraduate anthropology students.

“I met Vietnamese faculty and staff I truly respect,” said Kawamura. “I also met young, bright scholars through my public lectures. It was simply a great joy to meet these people and spend time discussing various issues.”

Before returning to UF, Kawamura stayed four days in Hanoi, where he met Vietnamese scholars and visited Japanese automobile companies.

Kawamura will continue to work with USSH faculty and staff to develop a faculty and student exchange program.