Japan Exchange & Teaching (JET) Program Alumni Association (JETAA) of Chicago - Illinois, Wisconsin & Indiana will continue our partnership with the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) - Midwest District Council (MDC) on the return of our webinar series J-Talks: Strengthening Ties Through Dialogue, which centers around themes of identity, social issues, cultural understanding, and leadership as experienced by people with meaningful connections to Japan.
Thank you to those in our community who joined us for Part 1 of our webinar series with Derrick Fields! Complete our trilogy (of course new attendees are welcome too!) and join us for second and third installments of the J-Talks: Godzilla Edition - Care & Consumption Webinar series:
PART 2: Thursday, November 14th at 7:00pm CT with Dr. Yuki Miyamoto, Ph.D
Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Humanities Center at DePaul University. Dr. Miyamoto brings an important perspective as the daughter of Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors along with her academic work that centers environmental ethics and advocacy.
Since earning her PhD in ethics from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, Dr. Miyamoto has been teaching courses on nuclear ethics and environmental ethics at DePaul University. Her works include the monograph Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: Commemoration, Religion, and Responsibility after Hiroshima (Fordham University Press, 2011), A World Otherwise: Environmental Praxis in Minamata (Lexington Press, 2021), and articles examining gender in the atomic age. She has also published a monograph in Japanese that explores US nuclear discourse in comparison to Japanese discourse, titled Naze genbaku ga aku de nainoka (Iwanami Shoten, 2020), as well as a translated work on the lawsuit regarding the victims of radiation exposure: Mokusatsu sareta hibakusha no koe (original: The Hanford Plaintiffs: Voices from the Fight for Atomic Justice) (Akashi Shoten, 2023). Her current work focuses on discrimination against irradiated bodies in Japan. Since 2005, she has led two-week-long study abroad programs, bringing DePaul students to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with this year’s trip scheduled for December.
PART 2: RSVP Required via Guestlist!
PART 3: Wednesday, November 20th at 7:00pm CT with Gabriel Coronado
Lifelong Godzilla fan & President of Japan Exchange & Teaching (JET) Program Alumni Association - Chicago. Gabriel brings the aficionado perspective to our webinar series as his love for Godzilla is grounded in family connection.
Born and raised in a mixed race family on the southwest side of Chicago, Gabriel Coronado (he/him) has been watching Godzilla films as long as he can remember. Thanks to a father who spent his own childhood watching the original Showa era Godzilla films, Gabe grew up with all of the classic Godzilla films on VHS that his family could find. The interest in Godzilla inspired a broader curiosity about Japan’s culture and history and led him to pursue studying Japanese language and literature at Whitney M. Young High School and DePaul University. After spending a year post-undergrad on the Japan Exchange and Teaching(JET) Program in southern Japan, Gabe returned to Chicago and found a career in event production, project management and community impact programming. Eventually, he became involved in the JET Program Alumni Association of Chicago as a volunteer helping at events before becoming President in 2019. As a leader in the local Japan-America community for the last 5 years, Gabe works hard to build community through mutual respect and understanding of other cultures.
Part 3: RSVP Required via Guestlist!
In honor of Godzilla’s 70th anniversary, this year’s J-Talk Webinars are a series of interviews that center around the themes of Care & Consumption in relation to the King of the Monsters origins, history and cultural impact. Join us as we connect with JET alumni and members of the US-Japan community about how we interact with Japanese culture and how our perception evolves over time.
This online event is open to the public including our fellow JET Alumni, JACL members, community partners, and our Friends of JET/JACL (FOJ).
Questions? Contact mdc.ypc@jacl.org or vicepresident@jetaachicago.com