Faculty and Staff
Asian Studies
- Phone: (507) 222-5437
- Fax: (507) 222-7538
Faculty
Director of Asian Studies
Tianjin Normal University, B.A.; Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Beijing), M.A.; University of Massachusetts (Amherst), M.A., Ph.D.; Chinese language and literature, especially comparative study of Chinese, English, and American fiction. Translator and editor, Selected Works of Joseph Conrad (in Chinese, 1985); translator, The Shadow Line (in Chinese, 1997). Author, Strangers in Strange Lands (in Chinese, 1991); A Study of Dragons, East and West (in English, 1992); Hearing Rain from a Passing Boat (in Chinese, 2000), Many Roads, Heart's Journey (in Chinese, 2005).
Staff
Administrative Assistant in Asian Languages and Literatures
Other Faculty Involved In The Department/Program
Amherst College, A.B.; Yale, M.Phil., Ph.D.; Intellectual history of the Islamic East, Sufism, messianism, apocalypticism, gender, and aesthetics. Author, "Enshrining Divinity:The Death and Memorialization of Fazlallah Astarabadi in Hurufi Thought" (2000), "The Imam's Return: Messianic Leadership in Late Medieval Shi'ism" (2001). Website.
Central University of Nationalities, Beijing, M.A., Ethnology, Ph.D., Linguistics. Post-doctoral fellow at Cambridge University,1992 -1994. Interests inculde semiotic approaches to ethnicity and politico-cultural boundaries; teaches language and culture, theory of race and ethnicity, anthropology of Japan, and race and ethnicity in the U.S. and China. He has consulted with the World Bank and UNDP, and has participated in many development projects and training programs in China. He is a fellow of the Salzburg Seminar on Race and Ethnicity.
PhD, University of Southern California. Founder of anothersubcontinent.com, an online journal and forum on south asian culture.
Chair of Sociology and Anthropology
Director of South Asian Studies
Director of Cross Cultural Studies
Princeton, B.A.; University of Chicago, M.A., Ph.D.; South and Central Asian social anthropology, Sherpas and social change, life histories, Nepali pronouns of power and solidarity. Editor, Himalayan Anthropology: the Indo-Tibetan Interface (1978); author, Trans-Himalayan Traders (1986), Sherpas (1990), Living Martyrs (1997).
University of Michigan, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.; modern Chinese politics, Sino-Soviet and Sino-Japanese relations, Japanese businessmen in China. Author, "Resolving Commercial Disputes in China: Foreign Firms and the Role of Contract Law" in Northwestern Journal of International Law and Business, vol. 14, #1 (1993).
McGill University B.A.; University of California, Berkeley M.A. Ph.D.; Chinese language and linguistics, especially language contact, lexical borrowing; writing systems; Southeast Asian historical linguistics.
Chair of Religion
Wesleyan, B.A.; University of Wisconsin (Madison), M.A., Ph.D.; the religions of South Asia, Indian Buddhist philosophy, Tibetan ritual and meditative practices, Asian religious poetry, mysticism. Co-author, The Wheel of Time: Kalachakra in Context (1985); author, Is Enlightenment Possible? (1993), Tantric Treasures (2004); co-editor, Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre (1996), Buddhist Theology (2000).
Chair of Asian Languages & Literature
Kobe Kaisei Women's College, B.A.; University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana), M.A., Ph.D.; Japanese language and language pedagogy, especially proficiency measures. Author, "Dictation as a Measure of Japanese Proficiency" in Language Testing, vol. 8, #2 (1991).
University of Punjab, B.A.; McGill University, B.A.; University of Wisconsin (Madison), M.A., Ph.D.; Islam in Central Asian history. Author, "Muslim Printers in Tsarist Central Asia" in Central Asian Survey (1992); "Printing, Publishing, and Reform in Tsarist Central Asia" in International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (1994); The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Tsarist Central Asia (1998).
Sit Investment Visiting Professor of Asian Policy Brooklyn, B.A.; Columbia, M.I.A.
Simon's Rock of Bard, B.A.; University of Minnesota, M.A.; University of Illinois, Ph.D.; world music, traditional and popular music of India and Indonesia.
Chair of Art & Art History
University of Virginia, B.A.; Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, M.A., Ph.D.; Chinese painting and calligraphy, Chinese gardens, relationship of the military to the arts of China. Author,"Nature Contained: Penjing and Flower Arrangements as Surrogate Gardens in Ming China" in Orientations (2002), "Regulating the Qi and the Xin: Xu Wei and His Military Patrons" in Archives of Asian Art (2003-2004), and "Fleshly Desires and Bodily Deprivations: The Somatic Dimensions of Xu Wei's Flower Painting" in Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture (forthcoming 2004).

Wittenberg University, BA; University of Illinois, MA; Princeton University, PhD; teaches courses in the religions of East Asia. Her special interests include Buddhist rituals, religion and society in Japan, food and religion, and Buddhist activism in contemporary societies. Her dissertation examines Buddhist debates in premodern Japan and analyzes how such ritual performance offered a unique site for producing political power and doctrinal knowledge.
PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison; specializes in social movements, gender and South Asia. Her research, based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, focuses on the mobilization and participation of women in a religious right wing movement in India. Originally from India, she emphasizes a transnational feminist perspective in her teachings and travels regularly to India for research and familial purposes. She teaches courses on South Asia, social movements, qualitative methods, post-colonial feminist theory, feminist approaches to research and women's health in the U.S.
California (Berkeley), B.A.; University of Michigan, M.A., Ph.D.; modern Indian history, gender, colonialism, missionaries.
Director of Women's and Gender Studies
Stanford, B.A.; Ochanomizu University, M.A.; Harvard, Ph.D.; Japanese language and literature, especially modern fiction, with particular emphasis on Natsume Soseki, Mishima Yuko, Shimao Toshio, and fiction by contemporary Japanese women. Translator, The Sting of Death and Other Stories by Shimao Toshio (1985); co-author, Women in Japanese Society: An Annotated Bibliography (1992).
Director of East Asian Studies
Sophia University, B.A.; Tsukuba University, M.Ed.; Monash University, M.A.; University of Chicago, Ph.D. Japanese language, literature, cinema, and intellectual history with particular emphasis on autobiographies, diaries, the literature of ethnic minorities, and documentaries.
Director of Archaeology
Stanford, B.A.; University of Minnesota, M.A., Ph.D.; prehistoric archaeology of South Asia.
Seoul National University, B.A.; Harvard University, A.M., Ph.D.; Modern China and East Asian history, bureaucratic behavior, political ideas, social history, and foreign relations of China, Japan, and Korea. Author, "The Green Gang Nexus in Shanghai General Labor Union, 1924-192," in Papers of Chinese History, vol. 2 (1993); "Literati-Journalists of the Chinese Progress (Shiwu bao) in Discord, 1896-1898," in Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China, (2002).
University of Electronic Science and Engineering (Peoples Republic of China); Beijing Foreign Studies University, MA, PhD; University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), PhD; modern and contemporary Chinese literature and film; women's literature; comparative literature; comparative study of literature, philosophy, religion and art--the reflection of Taoism and Zen Buddhism in literature and the arts, especially in contemporary Chinese poetry, fiction and film.























