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Contact: Barbara Watkins, Continuing Education, (785) 864-7881.

Symposium to focus on missionary women in East Asia

LAWRENCE -- Perspectives on the work and legacies of a Kansan and other American missionary women in East Asia will be reviewed during a free public symposium that begins at 2:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10, in the University of Kansas Continuing Education Building, 1515 St. Andrews Drive, Lawrence.

Titled "Crossing Boundaries: Kate Hansen and American Missionary Women in East Asia," the symposium will focus on the work of the late Kate Hansen, daughter of a promient pioneer family from Logan in northwest Kansas. The symposium is funded in part by a grant from the Dane G. Hansen Foundation of Logan and is sponsored by KU Continuing Education and KU's Center for East Asian Studies.

The symposium will assess the influences that prompted women missionaries to East Asia to decide to cross international boundaries and to operate outside the traditional domestic sphere and will detail their contributions to international relations and education.

Kate Hansen's nephew Dane G. Bales and his wife, Polly Roth Bales of Logan are co-authors of "Kate Hansen -- The Grandest Mission on Earth: From Kansas to Japan, 1907-1951." The Bales will join Grant Goodman, KU history professor emeritus and Japan specialist, in a discussion of Hansen's life and work in Japan and the importance of preserving her diaries, letters and publications.

Daniel Bays, KU professor of history and a scholar on Christianity in East Asia, will lecture on "American Missionary Women in East Asia and Their Legacy."

Other KU faculty on the program are Del Shankel, KU chancellor emeritus; Elaine Gerbert, associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures; Elizabeth Schultz, Chancellor's Club teaching professor of English; and William Tsutsui, associate professor of history and acting director of KU's Center for East Asian Studies.

Yoshie Murakami, a doctoral student in music at KU and a graduate of Miyagi Gakuin, the Japanese college where Hansen taught, will join the panel discussion "Kate Hansen and Japan" following the lecture.

Hansen was a 1905 graduate of KU. Following her graduation, she traveled to Japan to serve as a missionary teacher, dean and acting president at Miyagi College in Sendai, as well as a mediator between Japanese and American cultures. She retired in 1951, returning to Logan where she lived until her death in January 1968.

During retirement she was honored by KU, Miyagi College and the Emperor of Japan for her contributions to the education of Japanese women. She and Lydia Lindsey, her colleague at Miyagi College, received distinguished service citations from KU in 1955. Miyagi College dedicated a concert hall in her memory in 1980.