People

I am a historian of modern Japan, with a particular interest in international history.  My work adds methods and topics of cultural history to the study of international relations.  For instance, my essay in JAPANimals: History and Culture in Japan's Animal Life uses the controversial practice of whaling to explore not only the formation of a national identity on the global stage but also the role of culture in diplomacy.  Focusing on the wartime activities of the Society for International Cultural Relations, my essay in the forthcoming volume Tumultuous Decade: Japan’s Challenge to the International System, 1931-41 examines the mobilization of culture for Japan’s imperialist project. My current research focuses on the changing meanings of internationalism in transwar Japan and the role of cultural exchange and production in international relations on both the regional and global levels.  For the 2008-2009 academic year, I will be an Advanced Research Fellow at the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University, where I will complete my book entitled, “Warring Internationalisms: Imagining Japan’s Place in the World, 1933-1964.”  I am also beginning a project examining the contributions of writers in Japan and in the colonies to the construction of a “cultural Co-Prosperity Sphere.”

E-mail: jessamynabel@psu.edu | Phone: 814-865-3931 | Office: 326 Weaver

I am interested in the complete lifecycle of cultural products, from the process of conception through multiple receptions. My work foregrounds the historical contexts to literary production and consumption, while maintaining a space for those discursive meanings that transcend a particular time or place.  My recent articles have appeared in Japan Forum, Comparative Literature Studies, Asian Cinema, and Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation.  My translation of Azuma Hiroki's Animalizing Postmodernity: Japanese Society seen through Otaku will be published by University of Minnesota Press in 2009. I will be completing my book entitled “Archiving Censors: The Preservation and Production of Banned Japanese Literature, 1923-1970” while a Fellow at Harvard’s Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies 2008-2009.

E-mail: jea17@psu.edu | Phone: 814-865-2263 | Office: 441 Burrowes

I am a historian of late imperial and modern Chinese history. My research has largely centered on the ethno-religious identity of the Muslim Chinese (or Hui) in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan. I have published several articles on this topic and most recently a monograph entitled The Chinese Sultanate: Islam, Ethnicity and the Panthay Rebellion in Southwestern China, 1856-1873 (Stanford University Press). My new project on Lin Zexu examines the late imperial conceptions of China's borderlands, ethnicity and self through one of China's most famous officials in the early nineteenth century.

E-mail: dga11@psu.edu | Phone: 814-865-1218 | Office: 413A Weaver

My professional focus includes staying abreast of the trends within Asian languages, history, culture, and publishing, in addition to librarianship. My research has been concentrated on library’s collection development in Asian Studies and Chinese academic librarianship. Currently I am enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Yunnan University, China, with an emphasis on Chinese ethnic history.

E-mail: yya2@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-0738 | Office: 126 Paterno Library

I am an intellectual historian of Warring States and early imperial China (500 BC to 200 AD). I am interested in the religions, philosophies and aesthetic and political ideas that were born and flourished during this time, a selection of which went on to prominence in the intellectual discourse of China and throughout East Asia for the next two thousand years. Recent research projects of mine include: a study of views of the self and individualism; discourses on music and its role in self-cultivation; and Yue (Viet) ethnicity in the early history of China's southern frontier. I am completing a book based on my doctoral dissertation, 'Individualism in Early Chinese Thought and Politics', which outlines a history of views on human agency and examines how such views relate to the rise of centralized states and a unified empire. In parallel I am beginning a book on the changing religious, ideological, and political implications of musical entertainments from pre-imperial times through the Han Empire. In addition to these research topics, I enjoy teaching about the notions of China and Chinese identity; the ideas of ethnicity and gender; and the nature of science, religion, and the body as reflected in pre-modern Chinese writings."

E-mail: efb12@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-3968 | Office: 209 Weaver

Gretchen Casper specializes in democratization and elite behavior in cross-national perspective and the politics of developing nations and new democracies. She came to Penn State in 1998 from Caltech and from Texas A&M.

E-mail: gcasper@psu.edu | Phone: 814-865-8748 | Office: 315 Pond Lab

I am a historian of early modern South Asia ( 17 th to early 19th centuries). My research interests focus on the cultural and intellectual history and political culture of the region and range from early encounters with British colonialism to the cultural dynamics of the Mughal and later Mughal periods. My recent publications include, “The Persianization of Itihasa: Performance Narratives and Mughal Political Culture in Eighteenth Century Bengal”, Journal of Asian Studies, 67, 2, May 2008 and Europe Observed: Multiple Gazes in Early Modern Encounters (co-edited with Clement Hawes), Bucknell University Press, 2008. A monograph entitled, The Cultures of History in Early Modern India:Persianization and Mughal Culture in 17th and 18th Century Bengal is forthcoming from the Oxford University Press. Iam currently working on a book about the cultural history of 17th and 18th century South Asia with an emphasis on transregional cosmoplitanism.

E-mail: kkc1@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-0081 | Office: 202 Weaver

My fields of specialization include pre-modern Chinese drama, performance theory, and language pedagogy. My publications include essays on Peony Pavilion, Ming & Qing drama miscellanies, and the grammaticalization of Mandarin idioms. I am currently finishing a dissertation, "Staging the Worlds: Representations of Otherness on the Late Imperial Chinese Stage."

E-mail: luc12@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-4930 | Office: 428 Burrowes

Tina Chen's research interestes include Asian American literature and culture, 20th-century Ethnic American literature, ethics and pedagogy, and contemporary American drama. She is the author of Double Agency: Acts of Impersonation in Asian American Literature and Culture (Stanford, 2005). Her essays have appeared in MELUS, Modern Fiction Studies, and Contemporary Literature, among other publications.

E-mail: tina.chen@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-9592 | Office: 16 Burrowes

Dr. Desai teaches courses in Asian architecture, urbanism and art. Her scholarly interests lie in the area of South Asian architecture and urbanism, and she brings a comparative and inter-disciplinary focus to her work. Her dissertation, entitled “Resurrecting Banaras: Urban Space, Architecture and Religious Boundaries,” examines the intersection of colonial orientalism and indigenous religious revivalism in the remaking of the city of Banaras in northern India in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr. Desai's dissertation research was supported by an International Dissertation Research Fellowship awarded by the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and through grants awarded by the University of California at Berkeley. She has published her research in the Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, and has also published book reviews in this journal as well as in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Her research interests include the historiography of South Asian architecture, colonial urbanism in South Asia, and the relationship between the South Asian city and cinema.

E-mail:msd13@psu.edu | Phone: 814-865-4885 | Office: 221 Arts Building

After earning my degree in Chinese traditional Opera, I came to the United States to study music, and earned a B.A. in music composition at the University of Arizona. I came to Penn State in 2007.

Email: cud15@psu.edu | Phone: 814-867-3419 | Office: 324 Pond Lab

Fields of specialization: Classical and medieval Japanese literature; Buddhism and the literary arts; contemporary Japanese fiction; the fantastic; theories of orality, body, memory and performance. Publications: Articles on Hayashi Fumiko; Kishimo, a Buddhist child-protecting deity; and the intersection between folklore, nativism, and Meiji era literature. Book project underway: A study of body and gender in Buddhist "explanatory tales" (setsuwa).

Email: cde13@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-4933 | Office: 438 Burrowes

My work focuses on the transnational history of literary and cultural forms, the historical relations between East and West, particularly the Asian diaspora, and a temporally and geographically expansive version of modernism. I'm the author of Chinese Dreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel quel (Michigan, 2004), and the co-editor of Sinographies: Writing China (Minnesota, 2007); my recent essays have appeared in Representations, Contemporary Literature, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, PMLA, and Comparative Literature; and I contribute regularly to  Printculture. My latest book, The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in late 2008. (Personal website)

Email: ehayot@psu.edu | Phone: 814-865-1188 | Office: 441 Burrowes

My research has focused on the history of the Protestant Reformation, Catholic Renewal, anti-Semitism, and the encounter between Europe and Asia. My current book project, tentatively titled Translating Christianity: China and the Catholic Missions 1584-1780, is a study of the history of cultural encounter between Counter-Reformation Europe and the Ming and Qing empires. “I teach courses in early modern Europe and am interested in developing world history and comparative history courses for the early modern period. I am especially interested in the history of religion and the history of empires. After working on the history of Central Europe for more than twenty years, during which time I have published extensively on the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the history of anti-semitism, I have widened the horizon of my research to a global perspective. Thus, the history of explorations, the rise of western Europe, the comparative history of early modern empires, and the history of Christian missions (particularly in China) constitute my current teaching and research agenda. With a background in Chinese history and culture, being born and educated in Hong Kong, I studied primarily in the UK and the USA, and have extensive research experiences in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Austria, and Italy.

Email: rxh46@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-8942 | Office: 108 Weaver

My work focuses on the transnational imaginary of China and East Asia in Sinophone literature and performance (theatre and cinema) since the mid 19th century, including the works and films of mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, French-Chinese, and British-Chinese artists. I am the author of Chinese Shakespeares: A Century of Cultural Exchange (Columbia University Press, forthcoming in 2009) and co-editor of Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia and Cyberspace (Purdue University Press, forthcoming in 2009). My works have appeared in MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly, Asian Theatre Journal, Shakespeare Bulletin, Theatre Journal, China Review International, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, and other journals and collections. Further projects underway include a book on humor, epistemology, and modern culture of China and Taiwan, and a book on alterity, ethics, and multilingual performance. (Personal website)

Email: acyhuang@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-4934 | Office: 439 Burrowes

I specialize in the intellectual history of late imperial China, from the sixteenth to early nineteenth century. With my abiding interest in Confucianism as a dynamic and multifaceted tradition, my work cuts across disciplinary boundaries and is situated at the intersection of various fields: history, philosophy and religious studies. Apart from the 2001 monograph, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing: Li Guangdi and Qing Learning, and the 2005 co-authored volume, Mirroring the Past: The Writing and Use of History in Imperial China, I have published scores of book chapters and articles in a variety of major academic periodicals, including Journal of the History of Ideas, Journal of Chinese Religions, Philosophy East and West, Journal of Chinese Philosophy and Journal of World History.

I am writing a book on the classical jinwen (New Script) commentaries in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China. While it is primarily an investigation of a Confucian exegetical tradition with distinct hermeneutical disciplines and philosophical concerns, it also explores the interpretive possibilities opened up by contemporary Western hermeneutic theories of reading and understanding.

I work with various academic organizations in multiple administrative capacities. I was Executive-Secretary and Member of the Advisory Board of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Association for Asian Studies. I am Associate Editor and Book Review Editor of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, and a member of its Editorial Board. Since 2002, I have been a Director of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions, and Chairperson of the University Seminar on Neo-Confucianism at Columbia University.

Email: oxn1@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-7703 | Office: 213 Weaver

Email: nuo2@psu.edu | Phone: 814-867-3264 | Office: 325 Pond Lab

I study human resource management internationally where I examine the political, economic and cultural influence on human resource practices. My recent research involves study of human resource practices in the information technology sector of India.  Another research examines the impact of work on the personal identities of Indian call agents who service clients located in the western hemisphere. My research is published in leading management journals. I am the Area Editor (Human Resource Management) for the Journal of Asia Business Studies. I also consult with Indian IT organizations and have taught on a visiting basis at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, India.

Email: sur19@psu.edu | Phone: 814-865-5425 | Office: 125 Willard

Fields of specialization: Development Economics, International Economics, Industrial Organization.

Email: byr@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-1996 | Office: 501 Kern

Gonzalo Rubio is an Assyriologist whose work focuses on the languages and literatures of Ancient Mesopotamia (Sumerian and Akkadian). His interests also cover early Semitic languages and literatures, Semitic and historical linguistics, cultural contacts in the Ancient Mediterranean, Anatolian studies, and comparative literature. His scholarly contributions address diverse linguistic, literary, and historical aspects of Ancient Mesopotamia, as well as the Ancient Near East in general.

Email: gxr18@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-4946 | Office: 324 Weaver

Manini Samarth's interests include South Asian and Asian-American literature, with an emphasis on post-colonial and immigrant fiction. Her work also explores mutable constructions of cultural and gender identity as constitutive tropes in immigrant women's writing. Samarth's articles and fiction have appeared in periodicals and anthologies such as Parnassus: Poetry in Review, The Malahat Review, Chelsea, Stand (UK), The London Magazine (UK), Boston Review and Signals (Constable Press, London). She has been awarded Individual Artist Fellowships from the Indiana Arts Council and The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; and her short stories have been broadcast internationally by the BBC World Service.

Email: mns2@psu.edu | Phone: 814-865-5311 | Office: 144 Burrowes

I am interested in the following areas: History of Religions of South Asia; Relationship between Religion and Literature in South Asia; Role of English Language in the Formation of Contemporary South Asian Literary and Religious Traditions; and Science and Religion. My research interest spans two aspects of the South Asian Religious and Cultural Traditions. First, I am interested in tracing the evolution of religious ideals within Hinduism through its oral as well as written tradition. I have published in Asian Folklore Studies on the topic of contemporary Hindu women's ritual tales and how such stories may influence the social and religious views of contemporary Hindu women. Second, I am interested in studying how the current generation of South Asian writers has created a niche within the broader English literary tradition, and how this recent development may influence the traditional religious and cultural outlook in South Asia. I have published in Contemporary Literature on this topic and I am engaged in a book length project on this topic. Finally, I have become interested in the relationship between Science and Religion, and am exploring ways in which the public understanding Science can be enhanced through general education courses in the undergraduate humanities curriculum. I have also developed a web based version of the popular course on world religions at Penn State.

Email: srs11@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-8940 | Office: 414 Weaver

My scholarship focuses on comparative science and technology policy, technological innovation, and international technology transfer, with special reference to China and the Pacific Rim. Over the last 25+ year, I have forged deep government, business and academic relationships in China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. Prior to joining the Penn State School of International Affairs, I served as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at SUNY's Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce in Manhattan. Previously, I was Dean of the Lally School of Management and Technology of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a full-time member of the faculties of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. Along with my career in academia, I also have held a number of leadership positions in the world of strategic management consulting. I am a past president of the Monitor Group (China) Ltd. in Beijing and the founder and former president of China Consulting Association in Boston. I also have served as Managing Director of the Business Strategy and Innovation Center for Scient International in Singapore, and as Director of the China Strategy Group and General Manager for Anderson Consulting in Beijing. I am a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Association for Asian Studies, and the National Committee for US-China Relations.

Email: dfs12@psu.edu | Phone: 814-867-2789 | Office: 409 Beam

I am a historian of colonial India and of the British Empire. I am interested most broadly in the history of empire, as it played out through multiple relations of power, in colonial India. My research has spanned the history of the British-Indian connection from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. My first book focused on the construction of a politics of 'colonial masculinity': a multiply faceted ideological mechanism through which the British responded to the political challenge from an educated urban middle-class in India in the late nineteenth century. I followed this with a study of the political transformations of the British-Indian connection in the post-First World-War period as they were mediated by the coalescence in the public and political realms in late colonial India of a new collective identity for women. My current book project focuses on the trajectory of the concept of imperial citizenship, the demand for the rights of Indians as British subjects, in colonial India. My interest lies in the alternative forms of political community and of political solidarity, beyond the nation-state, that animated anti-colonial politics at least until the interwar period in India. I am currently also co-editing with Catherine Hall and Kathleen Wilson a new book series for Cambridge University Press entitled "Critical Perspectives on Empire". My research as well as my teaching has been marked by a focus on the impact of the connections and interactions that have shaped our modern world.

Email: mis12@psu.edu | Phone: 814-865-2278 | Office: 222 Weaver

I am a social and cultural historian of Japan, whose interests range from the fifteenth through the early twentieth centuries. I am also a specialist in the history of the Ryukyu Kingdom. My early research focused on the intellectual history of the Ryukyu Kingdom. Later, my interests moved to questions of the construction of identities in Japan's Okinawa Prefecture during the early twentieth century. Most recently, I have been working on the social history of earthquakes and disasters in Japan, especially the 1855 Ansei Edo Earthquake. My current book project, tentatively entitled Shaking Up Japan examines the 1855 Ansei Edo Earthquake and its social, cultural, and political ramifications for modern Japan. I maintain a Web site which includes a set of innovative Web-based textbooks.

Email: gjs4@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-0172 | Office: 211 Weaver

Professor Strauss investigates language and cognition and language and culture. Regarding the former, she is interested in discovering the subconscious motivations behind speakers' choices of linguistic items (e.g., demonstratives in English, tense, and aspect markers) and has done work in this area using both spoken and written discourse in Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, and English. She is also interested in the relationship between language and culture, and in developing new ways of uncovering and analyzing that relationship. She has published a number of articles in these areas and has also co-edited two volumes of Japanese/Korean Linguistics. In the field of ESL, Professor Strauss has taught courses in developmental composition and in ESL writing pedagogy.

Email: sgs9@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-7986 | Office: 300 Sparks

Fields of specialization: twentieth Century Japanese literature, transnational writers of Japan, East-West literary relations; Japanese and German postwar fiction. Publications include a book Narrative as Counter-Memory:; A Half-Century of Postwar Writing in Germany and Japan (1998) and articles, such as "On Two Interviews Between Gunter Grass and Oe Kenzaburo;” "The Obsession to Destroy Monuments: Mishima and Boll;” "Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum and Oe Kenzaburo's My Tears: A Study in Convergence,"  "The Documentary Novel: Ibuse Masuji's Black Rain and Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries;"  "Hiroshima in Oba Minako's Urashimaso: Desire and Self-Destructiveness; ” "Seeing Between the Lines: Imamura Shohei's Kuroi Ame (Black Rain);" Oe Kenzaburo’s "Shiiku" (Prize Stock); and “Nomadic Writers of Japan: Tawada Yoko and Mizumura Minae.” She is working on a book on translational women writers.

Email:rxn6@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-4932 | Office: 443 Burrowes

Field of specialization; Second language pedagogy, Japanese literature.

Email: mut6@psu.edu | Phone: 814-867-3420 | Office: 324 Pond Lab

Xiaoye You's major research interests are in rhetorical histories and theories; composition theory and practice; comparative rhetoric; second language writing; he is the co-editor of The Politics of Second Language writing: In Search of the Promised Land (Parlor, 2006), and of essays in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, College Composition and Communication, and other journals. His current book project is "Writing in the "Devil's" Tongue: Rhetoric and English Composition in Chinese Colleges, 1862-2005."

Email: xuy10@psu.edu | Phone: 814-863-0595 | Office: 118 Burrowes