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Faculty and Staff

Asian Studies

  • Phone: (507) 222-5437
  • Fax: (507) 222-7538

Faculty

Katie Ryor - Chair
Kathleen Ryor
Director of Asian Studies
Professor of Art History
Phone: x5590

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).

Emeriti Faculty

Jim Fisher
Jim Fisher
John W. Nason Professor of Asian Studies and Anthropology, Emeritus
Phone: x4108

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).

Russell Langworthy
Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Emeritus
Phone: x4108
John W. Nason Professor of Religion and Asian Studies, Emeritus
Bardwell Smith
John W. Nason Professor of Religion and Asian Studies, Emeritus
Phone: x4282
Eleanor Zelliot
Laird Bell Professor of History, Emerita
Phone: x4217

Staff

Patt Germann
Patt Germann
Administrative Assistant in Art/Art History
Administrative Assistant, Theater and Dance
Phone: x4341

Administrative Assistant in Art/Art History
Administrative Assistant, Theater and Dance

Administrative Assistant, Asian Studies

Phone: x4341

Presentation College, A.Sc.

Patt is the grandmother of eight. She enjoys reading, walking and making craft cards.

Gao Hong
Gao Hong
Performance Activities Coordinator in Music
Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments
Phone: x4475

Gao Hong (Performance Activities Coordinator) began her career as a professional musician at age 12. She graduated with honors from the Central Conservatory of Music, China's premier music school, where she studied with pipa master Lin Shicheng. She has received numerous awards and honors, including First Prize in the Hebei Professional Young Music Performers Competition in China and an Asian Pacific Award, and fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Meet the Composers Inc. in New York and the Jerome Foundation. In 2005 Gao Hong became the first traditional musician to be awarded the prestigious Bush Artist Fellowship, and in 2008 she became the only musician in any genre to win three McKnight Artist Fellowships for Performing Musicians. As a composer, she has received commissions from the American Composers Forum, Walker Art Center, the Jerome Foundation, Zeitgeist, Ragamala Music and Dance Theater, Theater Mu, IFTPA, and Twin Cities Public Television. She has performed throughout Europe, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, China, and the United States and has participated in such events as the Lincoln Center Festival, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, and the International Festival. She has performed countless United States and world premieres of pipa concerti with organizations such as the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Heidelberg Philharmonic, and the Women's Philharmonic (San Francisco). She also is a Guest Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Gao Hong's personal website can be found at http://www.chinesepipa.com.

Other Faculty Involved in Asian Studies

Roger Jackson
Roger Jackson
John W. Nason Professor of Asian Studies and Religion
Coordinator of South Asian Studies
Off Campus: Fall 2013
Phone: x4226

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), editor, The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems (2009).

Religion
Kristin Bloomer
Assistant Professor of Religion
Off Campus: Fall 2013
Phone: x5734

Kristin Bloomer (Wesleyan University, B.A; University of Montana, M.F.A; Cambridge University, B.A, M.A; University of Chicago, Ph.D) teaches courses in global Christianities and religions of South Asia, with specializations in spirit possession and women's and gender studies.  Her research pertains to Christianity, Hinduism, and spirit possession in postcolonial south India; her more general interests lie in exploring historically specific articulations of subjectivity, with particular attention to religiosity, gender, and embodiment.  She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled "Possessed by Mary: Hinduism, Catholicism and Spirit Possession in Contemporary Tamil Nadu, South India," and ethnography of Marian spirit possession in India's most southeastern state.  Theoretically, her work addresses questions of religion and postcoloniality, ritual and performativity, feminist approaches to ethnography, and relationships between religion, gender, and the body.  Her methods aims to explore and interrogate ideas of agency and of subjectivity that pertain not only to the postcolonial "Other," but also to the anthropologist-scholar.

Bloomer's academic publications include:  "Hermeneutics," in Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology:  An Encyclopedia. eds. Richard Warms and John McGee (SAGE Publications Inc., forthcoming); "Comparative Theology, Comparative Religions, and Hindu-Christian Studies: Ethnography as Method," in The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, 2008; "Notes From the Field: Retrieving the Dead," The Martin Marty Center for Religion and Culture Web Forum, University of Chicago, February 2005, "http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/webforum/022005/index.shtml"; and several book reviews.

Before entering academia, she worked for several years as a print journalist and earned an M.F.A. in non-fiction writing.

 

Assistant Professor of English
Arnab Chakladar
Assistant Professor of English
Off Campus: Winter 2014
Phone: x5547

PhD, University of Southern California. Founder of anothersubcontinent.com, an online journal and forum on south asian culture.

Michael J. Flynn
Mike Flynn
Chair of Linguistics
John E. Sawyer Professor of Liberal Learning
Professor of Linguistics
Phone: x4020

Michael Flynn received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts in 1981. Before arriving at Carleton, he taught at a number of American colleges and universities, and Nankai University in Tianjin, The People’s Republic of China, and held a Fulbright Fellowship to the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands. He founded Carleton's Program in Linguistics in 1986. He teaches courses in phonetics and phonology, the structure of Japanese, the evolution of speech, neurolinguistics, the application of linguistic theory to literary study, as well as the introductory survey course. His current research interests focus on articulatory and acoustic phonetics, and Japanese.

Professor Flynn led the inaugural Linguistics and Culture in Kyoto, Japan off-campus studies seminar in spring 2012.  He will be the faculty director once again in spring 2014.  More detailed information about the Linguistics and Culture seminar can be found here.  Also, visit the blog about the 2012 seminar.

Professor Flynn has been a Visiting Professor of Linguistics at Waseda University and Keio University (both in Tokyo), as well as a visiting professor in the Associated Kyoto Program at Doshisha University, Kyoto. He is currently a member of the Faculty Personnel Committee at Carleton. He recently stepped down as Carleton’s Faculty Athletics Director. His writings on Division III athletics can be found here.

Homepage: http://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/ling/people/faculty/michealflynnhomepage/

Frank B. Kellogg Professor of International Relations
Roy Grow
Frank B. Kellogg Professor of International Relations
Phone: x4086

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).

Mark Hansell
Mark Hansell
Coordinator of East Asian Studies
Professor of Chinese
Phone: x5425

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.

Mariko Kaga
Mariko Kaga
Class of 1952 Professor of Asian Languages
Phone: x4006

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).

Adeeb Khalid
Adeeb Khalid
Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor of Asian Studies and History
Phone: x4214

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).

Assistant Professor of History
Amna Khalid
Assistant Professor of History
Phone: x4213

Assistant Professor of History

Melinda Russell
Melinda Russell
Chair of Music
Director of American Studies
Professor of Music
Phone: x5642

Melinda Russell received the B.A. from Simon's Rock Early College, the M.A. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Minnesota, and the Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.  Dr. Russell has a diverse background in ethnomusicology, focusing on a variety of musical traditions in North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. She has published articles on reggae and musical taste, on the Macarena craze of the 1990s, on choral music in an Illinois city, on the folksong repertoire of Americans, on the Star-Spangled Banner in contemporary America, and on including applied  music components in lecture courses.  She coedited the books Community of Music and In the Course of Performance: Studies in the World of Musical Improvisation.  Her current research concerns the folk music revival in Minneapolis during the late 1950s/early 1960s.  Dr. Russell was formerly the Book Review Editor for the journal Ethnomusicology, and served as President of the Midwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology.

Asuko Sango
Asuka Sango
Assistant Professor of Religion
Phone: x7164

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.

msehgal
Meera Sehgal
Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Sociology
Phone: x4975

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.

Katie Sparling
Kathryn Sparling
Tanaka Memorial Professor of International Understanding and Japanese
Chair of Asian Languages & Literature
Off Campus: Fall 2013 through Spring 2014
Phone: x4019

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).

Noboru Tomonari
Noboru Tomonari
Associate Professor of Japanese
Phone: x5955

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.

Nancy Wilkie
Nancy Wilkie
William H. Laird Professor of Classics, Anthropology, and the Liberal Arts
Director of Archaeology
Phone: x4231

Stanford, B.A.; University of Minnesota, M.A., Ph.D.; prehistoric archaeology of South Asia.

Seungjoo Yoon
Seungjoo Yoon
Associate Professor of History
Off Campus: Fall 2013
Phone: x4211

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).

Assistant Professor of Chinese
Hong Zeng
Assistant Professor of Chinese
Phone: x5437

Office Hours:  Monday 2:00-3:00, Tuesday, Thursday 3:00-4:00; and by appointment

University of Electronic Science and Technology (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.

Qiguang Zhao
Qiguang Zhao
Burton and Lily Levin Professor of Chinese
Off Campus: Fall 2013
Phone: x4435

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).

Burt Levin
Burton Levin
SIT Investment Visiting Professor of Asian Policy
Phone: x7848

Sit Investment Visiting Professor of Asian Policy Brooklyn, B.A.; Columbia, M.I.A.

Shana Sippy
Shana Sippy
Visiting Instructor in Religion
Phone: x4228

Visiting Instructor in Religion