Asian Studies Program A Message from the Program Director

A PUBL I C AT I O N O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F V E R M O N T ASIAN STUDIES PROGRAM
FALL/WINTER 2009
Asian Studies Program
A Message from the Program Director
The Asian Studies Program at UVM is as vibrant and dynamic today
as it has ever been. This semester close to 150 students are enrolled in
Japanese language courses and over 180 are taking Chinese language
courses at all levels. In addition, the program is offering more than a
dozen Asia-related classes in fields such as anthropology, history, philosophy, and political science. Program faculty members have published
numerous articles and books during the past year, and several current
faculty research projects have secured highly competitive grants. Many
recent graduates have gone on to jobs in professional fields where their
language and culture expertise has been put to effective use, while others have traveled in Asia and returned to graduate school to pursue
advanced degrees in their chosen field of study.
Beyond the classroom, the ASP continues to bring exciting Asian studies
events to UVM. Last spring, for example, our program sponsored a
fascinating visit to campus by Tenzin Bista, a senior monk in the Sakya
Tibetan Buddhist tradition and an amchi (practitioner of Tibetan medicine) from Mustang, Nepal. In addition, our annual Lintilhac Lecture,
entitled “China’s Environmental Challenge,” was delivered by Elizabeth
Economy, award-winning author of The River Runs Black: The
Environmental Challenges to China’s Future. This semester, the program will help bring to UVM celebrated Chinese-Canadian filmmaker
Yung Chang for a screening of his award-winning film Up the Yangtze
and a series of small meetings with interested students, and we are also
looking forward to a visit by Professor Ian Condry of MIT for a talk
about the transnational dynamics of Japanese anime next term. Finally,
we have just recently secured UVM as the host of the 2010 conference
of the New England Association for Asian Studies next fall, an event that
will bring roughly one hundred Asia scholars from our region to present
and discuss their research during an all day meeting at the Davis
Center.
Put simply, now is a terrific time to participate in the activities and
instruction offered by the Asian Studies Program at the University of
Vermont!
Erik W. Esselstrom, Asian Studies Program Director
UVM Department of History
Erik Esselstrom and the retired yokozuna
(sumo grand champion) Musashimaru in Tokyo, January 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Message from Director..........................................1
ASP Alumni News..................................................2
ASP Student Adventures in Asia............................3
Asian Studies Faculty News..................................6
Asian Studies Program Faculty..............................8
Students & Alumni —
call for submissions
Please send us student or alumni updates,
Asian Studies related news or events,
and/or your ideas for the Asian Studies
Program at UVM
[email protected]
[email protected]
The Asian Studies Program
at the University of Vermont
94 University Place
Old Mill Annex, A506
Burlington, VT 05405
Tel: 802-656-1096
Website: www.uvm.edu/~asian/
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ASP ALUMNI NEWS
Philip Guingona graduated from UVM in 2008 and spent the
following year working as an English teacher for Chenggong
College in Henan Province, China. He was offered admission at
several graduate schools this fall, but ultimately Phillip decided
to attend SUNY-Buffalo, where he will pursue a doctoral degree
in Chinese history while working for the History Department
there as a Teaching Assistant.
Douglas Farnham was the 2009 winner of the Asian Studies
Program Award for graduating seniors. Douglas focused on
Chinese culture and was an outstanding student in his classes at
UVM, earning the highest GPA in Asian Studies.
Stephanie Ollila just returned to the U.S. this summer from a
year of teaching English in China. This year Stephanie will be
teaching Chinese to elementary school students in the US.
Zachary Hydusik graduated with a B.A. in Japanese in 2009,
and he is now working in Aomori prefecture as an Assistant
English Teacher through the Japanese Exchange and Teaching
Programme (JET). Zachary studied at Toyo University in
Tokyo when he was in his junior year at UVM through the ISEP
(International Students Exchange Program).
Jonathan Crowder (Asian Studies) graduated in May 2008
and spent the following year as a high school teacher in
Huaihua, Hunan Province, China. Jonathan now lives in
Shanghai and works for an American law firm there doing
research and editorial work.
The recent UVM commencement in May 2009 marked the first
group of students to graduate from the university with a B. A.
in Japanese. There were four graduates total: Zachary Hoel,
Zachary Hydusik, James McKinney, Sean Sullivan.
Prof. Kyle Ikeda stands with UVM graduates who received
a B.A. in Japanese or Chinese at the 2009 Commencement
Ceremony.
Asian
Studies
Program
Asian Studies graduates at 2009 Commencement Ceremony
For more information on the Asian Studies Program, please call 802-656-1096 or
email the Asian Studies Program Administrator at [email protected]
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ASP STUDENT ADVENTURES IN ASIA
Anna Walsh (Japanese Major)
For the past two summers, I have participated in the Cultural
Exchange Trip to Japan; the first year as a student, and the
second year as a teaching assistant. One of the great things
about this trip is the fact that we were constantly traveling
around Japan and meeting new people. Almost everyone
seemed so eager to practice their English skills on us, while we
were so eager to practice our Japanese skills on them. This
mutual enthusiasm made it really easy to meet people and learn
a lot that we may never have learned in a regular classroom.
Because of this, I think it’s extremely important for anyone
studying a language to visit the country that uses that language
so that they can get a real grasp on it. And besides that, whether someone speaks Japanese or not, Japan is an incredibly
unique and fascinating country; anyone would benefit from a
trip there. I would highly recommend that any student involved
with the Japanese program look into this trip.
Samantha Noble (Japanese major)
I spent the summer of 2009 traveling around Japan, first in a
class with UVM’s Suzuki-sensei, and later by myself. I’ve
been studying Japanese going on 9 years now, first with a
tutor outside of my school and then later in college, but had
never been to Japan before this summer. The previous year, I
was a Japanese teacher for Concordia Language Villages’
“Mori no Ike,” a camp that focuses on Japanese immersion.
For Suzuki-sensei’s class we had to present and converse with
a class learning English, but the majority of the trip was spent
traveling quickly around all different parts of Japan. (Places
like Hiroshima, Nagoya, and Tokyo.) For the second half, I
lived temporarily in an apartment in Kanda, moved in with
family friends in Hokkaido, traveled up through Asahikawa
and back down to Fukuoka, Osaka, and Kyoto before arriving
back in Tokyo. I spent most of my trip to Japan visiting
temples and famous cities, but I also spent a lot of time learning about life away from cities like Tokyo. (I lived in
Hokkaido’s city, Otaru.) Some of the more memorable
moments were seeing the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters
(the local baseball team) play at the Sapporo Dome, visiting
Asahikawa Zoo and cooking yakiniku, nabe, and yakisoba
with my home stay family. Traveling throughout all of Japan
gave me a good insight on different parts of Japan (more rural
areas and the cities that are most famous)... I’d love to go back
and visit some of the places I didn’t get to see.
Anna Walsh, Heather Barr and Christian Barron with
Japanese junior high school students in Nara Park
Samantha Noble with her Japanese host dog in Otaru
Anna, Heather, and Christian at Todaiji Temple in Nara.
David Wallace (Asian Studies major)
Living and studying for a full year in Kunming, China was an
experience I’ll never forget. Studying Chinese five days a
week was intense, but since it is one of my passions, for a
whole year I felt less like a student and more like I was just
“living.” My schedule in Kunming allowed me enough free
time to pursue other hobbies as well, which enhanced my
knowledge and understanding of Chinese culture.
Having dabbled in various types of martial arts over the past
11 years, living in China gave me a great opportunity to praccontinued on page 4
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tice a variety of styles that are seldom found in the US. During
my stay in Kunming, I was fortunate enough to find a san da
guan, where the Yunnan province san da team is based. At
night time, several days a week I received one-on-one lessons
from the coach’s son. San da, also known as san shou is a
modern martial art, developed over the course of the last century. It draws upon the most effective techniques found in traditional Chinese martial arts, and does away with a lot of the
less effective components of martial arts. The end result is a
blend of Chinese martial arts’ most effective techniques, which
involves everything from Judo-like takedowns to a punching
style very close in appearance to western boxing. each project, along with a list of specific Japanese terms to go
with the theme of the film. The idea was to create materials that
would help students of the school learn English. They could
vote on their favorite films as well, with the winning team
receiving free Apple laptops.
When I got back and started my college education, I knew I
wanted to go back to Japan because the trip confirmed an interest in Asia that started for me in high school. I am an Asian
Studies major at UVM, with a minor in Japanese and Business.
I want to be fluent in Japanese, and I have also been studying
Chinese for about two years now. I will graduate in spring
2010 and I am already exploring opportunities that will get me
back to East Asia after leaving UVM.
Dave Wallace and his martial arts instructor in Kunming
Alexander Darr (Asian Studies major)
After I graduated from high school, I participated in a unique
opportunity for students in Japan called Japan Discovery
Challenge. The JDC program was a film competition conducted
by a Japanese private school involving students of the Japanese
language from United States. We were split into mixed Japanese
and American student teams, taught how to shoot film and edit,
and set loose to make movies. Our films were structured around
the locations we visited: a local natto producer, a sumo-wrestling academy, a samurai armor maker, a Kobe beef farm, and
one of the worlds largest fish markets to name a few. Different
teams got to visit different locations; no one was doing the same
projects. After our work, we often celebrated by going out to eat
and I never missed an opportunity to try new food!
I felt it was a huge privilege to be in Japan. I was so excited; it
was the first time I was on my own in a truly ‘foreign’ country.
Everywhere I went I was bombarded by cultural and environmental surroundings that were new to me, and I loved it! The
Japanese students were all very interested in practicing English
with us and they seemed to have a very good grasp of it. Even
with three years of high school Japanese, my proficiency was
not quite strong enough to be independent. Fortunately, our
team leader was a Japanese major from the University of
Oregon, and she was there to help things move smoothly. We
became very close as a group, we had to produce around 2-3
film projects a week, record audio journals for the group after
Alex Darr with the Great Buddha at Kamakura
James Dopp (Asian Studies major)
For the previous academic year, I spent one calendar year in
Kunming, the capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan,
China. Our group was originally 16 members, most of whom
left in December. Basically, we were planted into a new culture and environment, adapting to the area day by day. I studied Mandarin, as well as a few elective courses including a
course on China’s ethnic minorities. Outside of class, me and
a few friends learned some traditional Chinese martial arts, and
I also took up lessons for the Chinese violin (erhu). Perhaps
some of the most valuable experience was also gained through
travel to far away places including Chinese Turkestan and to
Laos and Thailand. Yunnan Province is characterized by its
great geographical, topographical cultural and ethnic diversity.
In the northwest you have distinct Tibetan highlands, and in the
south of the province you have tropical rainforests, the Mekong
river, and an unmistakably Southeast Asian feel. Quite amazing in my opinion! Another thing that is constantly calling me
continued on page 5
For more information on the Asian Studies Program, please call 802-656-1096 or
email the Asian Studies Program Administrator at [email protected]
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back is the local “scene” in Kunming. You can meet
anybody from punks, hip hoppers, hippies, wandering
Laowai (foreigners), businessmen and just plain average
folks. What more could you ask for? You’ve got Tibet,
Southeast Asia, China, and a whole mesh of different
lifestyles all in one place and its all in front of you. If
you ask me, my time abroad was hands down, the BEST
year in my life, and all I can hope for is to have something like it again. Go abroad!
Last summer, a group of fourteen UVM students participated
in the Study Abroad in China Program, led by Professor John
Yin, at Yunnan Normal University, which is located in
Kunming, China. Students had a study tour and traveled to
Beijing, Shanghai, and Xi’an while they were in China.
With a local tour guide of Sani Nationality at Stone Forest,
which is about 50 miles away from Kunming and has a complete range of karst formations.
Students at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, where emperors of
China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties would come every winter solstice to worship Heaven and to solemnly pray for a good
harvest.
For more information on the Asian Studies Program, please call 802-656-1096 or
email the Asian Studies Program Administrator at [email protected]
A PUBL I C AT I O N O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F V E R M O N T ASIAN STUDIES PROGRAM
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ASIAN STUDIES FACULTY NEWS
Saleem H. Ali (Environmental Studies) completed a fellowship with the
Brookings Institution’s research Middle East research center in Doha,
Qatar in the spring of 2009 as part of his sabbatical. He worked on a
research paper for Brookings on the role of oil and gas pipelines in fostering cooperation between adversaries in South and Central Asia. He
has also made several presentations around South Asia and the Middle
East about his book, Islam and Education: Conflict and Conformity in
Pakistan’s Madrassas (Oxford University Press). The Asia Society also
asked Saleem to serve as a principal advisor for their leadership group
on water security. As part of this project, he was invited to present the
findings of the leadership group’s report to the World Water Forum in
Istanbul and also at the Dubai School of Government. Saleem’s latest
book, Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future,
has just been published by Yale University Press.
Thomas Borchert (Religion) spent the first half of the summer in
Thailand, where he was beginning a project on the relationship between
being a monk and citizenship in Thailand and China. In October he will
be presenting a paper at Syracuse University at a Mellon funded conference, “Place/No Place: Spatial Aspects of Urban Asian Religiosity.” The
paper is focused on the dedication of a new temple in Southwest China,
and what it reveals about the state of religion and ethnicity in the region.
He will be spending Spring 2010 in Singapore where he has received a
Fellowship from the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies to look at
Buddhist network in Asia.
Pablo Bose (Geography) presented a paper on development and diasporas during the current global economic crises with a particular focus on
South Asian migrants in the Persian Gulf for a World Bank-sponsored
panel for the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for the Study
of International Development in Ottawa in May 2009. The summer also
saw the publication of his review essay entitled “India Songs: The
Politics of Recasting the Nation” and completion of a soon-to-be published essay on new urbanism and cities of the Global South.
Matthew Carlson (Political Science) traveled to Vietnam over the summer to learn more about Vietnam’s political system and the legacies of
the Vietnam War for his classes on Asian politics. He also published two
recent articles that examine what Asian citizens think about their
government on the basis of public opinion polls. He is also studying
the issue of “money politics” in Japan and plans to visit Tokyo later
in the year.
One of the many amazing cultural sites that Matthew Carlson visited in Hué,
Vietnam: the Honour Courtyard with rows of elephants, horses and mandarins watching over the tomb of Emperor Khai Dinh, who ruled Vietnam from
1916 to 1925.
Kazuko Suzuki Carlson (Asian Languages and Literatures) has completed her fourth faculty-led trip to Japan this summer. She is currently
working on developing this course further by establishing a new partnership with the University of Aichi where her students will be able to
visit next May.
Students on faculty-lead trip to Japan with Kazuko Carlson,
Summer 2009.
Dinner with students on faculty-lead trip to Japan with
Kazuko Carlson, Summer 2009
Sin Yee Chan (Philosophy) was invited to participate in conferences on
ethics and Chinese philosophy at the Duke University, The Wesleyan
University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong during the 200809 academic year. She presented papers on the Confucian notion of
Motherhood, and the role of music in moral cultivation in ancient
Confucianism.
Mutsumi Corson (Asian Languages and Literature) continues in her
responsibilities as director of the Japanese Language Program, and she
has also been focusing lately on how to improve students’ reading skills
in upper level Japanese courses, especially methods of teaching kanji
effectively. She is also trying hard to cultivate new ties with a university in Japan to which UVM can send more students in the future.
While in Japan last summer 2009, she visited several universities with
that goal in mind.
Erik Esselstrom (History) presented his latest research concerning the
Japanese antiwar movement in China during the Second World War at
the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Chicago in
March 2009, and he will soon publish an article drawn from his recent
book in the Japanese language journal Jinbun gakuhō. He has also been
invited to speak at Harvard University in December for a seminar series
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organized by the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard’s
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Asian Studies
Program Director
Erik Esselstrom
and his oldest son,
Kaito, at Hirosaki
Castle in northern
Japan (August 2009)
Kyle Ikeda (Asian Language and Literature) was invited to participate
in the Center for Okinawan Studies Conference at the University of
Hawaii in March of 2009 to give a presentation about the current state
of and future possibilities for Ryukyuan and Okinawan literary studies
in North America. A revised version of that presentation appears as an
article in the RYUKYUANIST, Nos 81-82 (Autumn 2008 - Winter
2009). He will be presenting at the New England Association for Asian
Studies Conference at Brown University this October, and will be taking his Japanese Popular Culture class to the Cool Japan Project screening of “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” at the Museum of Fine Arts
in Boston this November.
Emily Manetta’s (Anthropology) comparative work on question
formation processes in Kashmiri and Hindi-Urdu will be the subject of
a long article in the MIT journal Linguistic Inquiry, appearing in
January of 2010. Her research on narratives of nostalgia and longing in
Tajik and Afghan Badakhshan, presented at the last meeting of the
Anthropological Association of America, is being prepared as part of a
special collection entitled “Affecting Global Movement: The
EmotionalTerrain of Transnationality”. Currently on junior leave,
Emily is spending the semester focusing on her newest research project,
concerning discourse-motivated rightward movement in Hindi-Urdu.
Hyon Joo Yoo Murphree (Film Studies) lectured on “Reading Cinema
Globally: A Cinema of Failure” for the English Graduate Organization
Spring Speaker Series at Syracuse University in April, and made
another presentation entitled “Trans-Pacific Studies and Transnational
Anti-Humanism” at the Research Institute of Comparative History and
Culture at Hanyang University in Seoul, South Korea in July.
Jeanne Shea (Anthropology), together with translator Francis Yu Lu,
will publish in December an article on her research comparing Chinese
media discourse with Beijing women’s own perspectives on sexual
liberation in later life in the Journal of Guangxi University for
Nationalities, a leading scholarly anthropology journal in China. Also
in December, Professor Shea will present a paper on “Later Life
Conjugality in Contemporary China: Dominant Promotional Discourses
Versus Chinese Women’s Own Views” at the annual meeting of the
American Anthropological Association in Philadelphia.
Jonah Steinberg (Anthropology) will publish his book Ismaili Modern:
Globalization and Identity in a Muslim Community with the University
of North Carolina Press in their series on Muslim Networks and Islamic
Civilizations in 2010. Steinberg has also been awarded a grant of
$233,654 from the National Science Foundation for his research on
runaway street children in North India. His three year grant will allow
him to explore in detail why children in rural India leave home of their
own accord with such frequency and to investigate both the villages
they leave and their lives once in the capital city of New Delhi; it will
also allow him to expand his teaching program on global childhoods.
The grant will include funding to explore the applied value of the
research for service and advocacy organizations working with youth
on the streets of India’s cities.
Diana Yiqing Sun (Asian Languages and Literature) coauthored with
John Jing-hua Yin Practical Rhythmic Chinese with an MP3 CD,
which was published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research
Press in the spring of 2009. She also attended the 7th International
Conference on Chinese Pedagogy in Guilin, China on August 1-3,
2009 and made a presentation entitled “Using Rhythmic Verses to
Acquire Accurate and Natural Chinese.”
Abby McGowan (History) published her first book, Crafting the
Nation in Colonial India, in July 2009 with Palgrave, exploring craft
development politics in nationalist era colonial India. Her next book,
an edited collection called Towards a History of Consumption in South
Asia (co-edited with scholars from Dartmouth, the London School of
Economics, and Chiba University in Japan), is due out with Oxford
University Press in this fall. As part of a new project exploring
changes in the use and furnishing of domestic space in early 20th century India, McGowan was in London for three weeks on research in
the summer of 2009. She will present some of that research at the
American Historical Association’s annual meeting in San Diego in
January 2010.
John Jing-hua Yin (Asian Languages and Literature) has been teaching Chinese language and literature at UVM since 1997. To help students to reduce their anxieties in learning Chinese characters and
tones, he devised a new approach to teaching Chinese characters and
tones in compliance with their intrinsic regularities and peculiarities
that have been largely neglected by the conventional teaching
approach. Based on his research findings and teaching experiences, he
wrote Fundamentals of Chinese Characters, which adopts his new
approach to teaching the Chinese writing system, and had it published
by Yale University Press in 2006. Last year, he started to write a book
that adopts his new approach to teaching tones. This book entitled as
Practical Rhythmic Chinese with an mp3 CD was published by
Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press earlier this year. Last
May he was invited to speak on teaching Chinese characters and tones
at Confucius Institute at Portland State University, and his paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Chinese Language
Pedagogy in China was chosen to be included in Studies of Teaching
Chinese as a Foreign Language in a Multidimensional Field of Vision,
which has been published by Guangxi Normal University Press.
Visit our website
for updated news
& information at
www.uvm.edu/~asian
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ASIAN STUDIES PROGRAM FACULTY
Saleem Hassan Ali
Associate Professor of Environmental
Studies
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Research interests: Environmental planning,
South Asian regional conflicts, Resource policy
across Asia.
Course offerings: Intro. Environmental Studies,
Environmental Conflict Resolution, Environmental
Planning and International Development,
Terrorism: An Asian Perspective.
Pablo Bose
Assistant Professor of Geography
Ph.D., York University, 2006
Research Interests: University Culture, space and
power, transnationalism and diaspora, urban and
cultural geography, political economy and ecology,
India and South Asia.
Course offerings: Development, Displacement and
Environment, and Political and Cultural
Geography of India
Tom Borchert
Assistant Professor of Religion
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Research Interests: Religion in contemporary
China and Thailand, Religion and Politics in Asia,
Ethnicity and Religion, and Monastic Education.
Course offerings: Buddhist Traditions, Religion in
Japan, Religion in China, Intro. Religion: Asian
Traditions.
Matthew Carlson
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Ph.D., University of California, Davis, 2003
Research interests: Asian politics, electoral systems, public opinion, human rights.
Course offerings: Politics of Japan, Politics of
China, Politics of East Asia, Comparative Political
Systems.
Sin Yee Chan
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1993
Research interests: Ancient Confucianism, feminist ethics, emotions.
Course offerings: Emotions, Ancient Chinese
Philosophy, Theories & Issues of Feminism, Intro.
to Philosophy: East & West.
Michele Commercio
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Research interests: Comparative politics and
issues related to regime transition and ethnic politics in post-Soviet states.
Course offerings: Central Asian Politics
Mutsumi Corson
Senior Lecturer of Japanese Language
M.A., Teaching ESL, St. Michael’s College, 1989
Course offerings: Japanese language.
Erik W. Esselstrom
Director, Asian Studies Program
Assistant Professor of East Asian History
Ph.D., University of California-Santa Barbara, 2004
Research Interests: Japanese colonialism, modern
Sino-Japanese relations.
Course offerings: Chinese and Japanese history.
Kyle Keoni Ikeda
Assistant Professor of Japanese
Ph.D., University of Hawaii, Manoa, 2007
Research Interest: Okinawan literature, war memory,
second generation trauma, war survivor narratives
Course Offerings: Japanese (JAPN 001/002),
Traditional and Modern Japanese Literature in
Translation (WLIT 195/196).
Ms. Rui Liu
Visiting Lecturer of Chinese
M.A., Beijing Language University, China, 2007
Research Interest: Cross-cultural communication,
Teaching Chinese as a foreign language
Course offerings: Chinese language (CHIN 051/052,
CHIN 295/296)
Emily Manetta
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
(Anthropology Department)
Ph.D., University of California-Santa Cruz
Research interests: Comparative Indic syntax: question formation and clause boundary organization in
Kashmiri and Hindi-Urdu. Theoretical syntax,WHMovement.
Course offerings: Intro to South Asian Languages.
Cuong Mai
Visiting Lecturer of Religion
Completing a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, University of
Indiana
Research interests: Mortuary practices and paradise
beliefs surrounding the Buddha figures Amitabha
and Maitreya in the early medieval Chinese religious
world.
Course offerings: Intro. Asian Religions, Religions of
Vietnam, Religious Perspectives on Death.
Abigail McGowan
Assistant Professor of History
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2003
Research interests: Development efforts in handicrafts in late colonial Western India.
Course offerings: Early and modern South Asia,
Gandhi and his Legacy; Peoples, Cultures and Politics
of the Himalayas.
Stephanie Seguino
Professor of Economics
Ph.D., American University, 1994
Research interests: Economic growth, development,
gender in Asia.
Course offerings: East Asian economic growth.
Peter Seybolt
Professor Emeritus
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1970
Research interests: China and Japan during WWII,
rural China, China in the 20th Century.
John Seyller
Professor of Art History
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1986
Research interests: Indian painting, Indian and
Islamic art.
Course offerings: Asian art, Japanese art,
Chinese painting, Indian painting, The Hindu
Temple, Islamic art, Art of Southeast Asia, various
special topics in Asian art.
Jeanne L. Shea
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1998
Research interests: Culture and social change,
health and healing, gender and sexuality, the lifecycle and generations, ethnicity and socioeconomic
class, Chinese culture, Chinese diaspora, China,
Canada and the US.
Course offerings: Cultures of East Asia: race and
ethnicity; Asians in the US and Canada.
Jonah Steinberg
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2006.
Research interests: Transnational and global
communities, responses to marginality and social
crisis, migration and diaspora; Islam, South Asia,
and West Asia; Indic diasporas.
Diana Sun
Senior Lecturer of Chinese Language
M.A., St. Louis University, Missouri 1991
Research interests: Language pedagogy.
Course offerings: Chinese language.
Ms. Huili Sun
Visiting Lecturer of Chinese
M.Ed., Beijing Language University, China, 2007
Research Interest: Teaching Chinese as a foreign
language, second language acquisition
Course offerings: Chinese language (CHIN
001/002, CHIN 201/202).
Kazuko Suzuki
Senior Lecturer of Japanese Language
M.A., Teaching ESL, Saint Michael’s College, 2002
Course Offerings: Japanese language.
Kevin Trainor
Associate Professor of Religion
Ph.D., Columbia University, 1990
Research interests: South Asian Buddhism, with
a focus on Sri Lankan Theravada tradition;
Buddhist ritual.
Course offerings: Buddhism in Sri Lanka,
Ritualization, Interpretation of Religion,
Introduction to the study of Religion -Comparative, Buddhist traditions.
John Jing-hua Yin
Associate Professor of Chinese Language
Ph.D., SUNY-Buffalo, 1995
Research interests: Chinese language pedagogy,
Chinese writing system.
Course offerings: Chinese language, Chinese
characters, Chinese literature in English translation, Chinese culture.
For more information on the Asian Studies Program, please call 802-656-1096 or
email the Asian Studies Program Administrator at [email protected]