2022 AAS Election Nominees & Issues

We are pleased to announce the slate of candidates for the fall 2022 AAS elections. The online ballot will open on September 15, and all current AAS Members will receive an email with instructions for accessing it. Election day (when the ballot is closed and votes recorded) will be November 15. Newly elected representatives will take office immediately after the in-person Annual Conference in March 2023.

In addition to the offices up for election, the Association for Asian Studies Board of Directors (BoD) requires membership approval for amendments and additions to the Constitution and Bylaws. There are four (4) proposed revisions to the AAS Constitution and Bylaws that each member may vote on. Please read the information presented on the ballot and prepare to vote either approval or disapproval of the additions and amendments.

Our sincere thanks to all candidates for accepting nominations to represent their respective areas and councils.

Read more about each candidate and their vision for AAS leadership and governance by clicking on the arrow next to their name, which will expand the green box below.

President

Jean C. Oi (Stanford University), the current AAS Vice President, will automatically assume the role of President.

Vice President Nominees

Represented Area: Northeast Asia

Hyaeweol Choi

Current position: Professor; C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Korea Foundation Chair in Korean Studies

Institution/Affiliation: University of Iowa

Discipline: Gender history and culture; Korean studies

Area or countries of interest: Korea

Specialization or research interests: Modern Korea, gender history and culture, colonialisms, religions, food and body, transnational history

Publications

  • Gender Politics at Home and Abroad: Protestant Modernity in Colonial-Era Korea (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
  • New Women in Colonial Korea: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2013).
  • Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways (University of California Press, 2009). Chinese translation by Jiangsu People’s Publishing, Ltd (2023).

Service to the Profession

  • Chair of the Annual Conference Program Committee of AAS (2021-22) and Vice Chair of the Annual Conference Program Committee of AAS (2020-21)
  • AAS Northeast Asia Council (2008-11)
  • President of the Western Conference of the AAS (2008-2009)

Personal Statement

I am deeply honored to be nominated for the position of Vice President of the Association for Asian Studies. I think that this particular historical moment poses numerous challenges but also presents exciting new possibilities for scholars of Asia in the 21st century. If elected, I would work to foster inter-area, transnational, and diasporic studies while continuing the traditional vigor in country-specific research by cultivating active collaboration not only between traditional areas of focus in the humanities and social sciences but also natural, medical, and environmental sciences. As a strong believer in mentoring, I would also further strengthen various programs to support the younger generation of scholars. In addition, in response to a growing demand for timely and relevant scholarship on the critically important issues of our time, I would work to cultivate creative and responsible engagement with issues of the day for the public good as well as greater diversity and equity.

I feel I am well-suited to serve our community of scholars to advance AAS. In my own research, which focuses on gender history, colonialisms, religions, food, and body, I take a strongly interdisciplinary, transnational, and intersectional approach. I bring years of global experience building collaborative networks with scholars, students, and community members at a number of institutions and professional societies. I have already served in a number of leadership positions in Korean Studies, Asian Studies, gender studies, and religious studies in Korea, the U.S, and Oceania. I have had a number of enriching experiences as an appointed or elected member of councils and committees within the Association for Asian Studies. Most recently I served as the Chair of the Annual Conference Program Committee of AAS (2021-22). I have been elected to the Northeast Asia Council (2008-11), the Council of Conferences (2004-2007), and the Executive Committee on Korean Studies (2004-2007). I have also served as President of the Western Conference of the AAS (2008-2009). While working as the Director of the Korea Institute at the Australian National University (2010-2016), I spearheaded a team of colleagues from Korean, Japanese, and Chinese studies that successfully applied for a five-year grant from the Academy of Korean Studies. As project director for this grant project, I made special efforts to facilitate inter-area dialogue by co-organizing conferences, such as “Grassroots Regionalization and the Frontiers of Humanities in East Asia: Korea as a Hub” (2015) and “Latent Histories, Manifest Impacts: Interplay between Korea and Southeast Asia” (2015). I am currently serving as the founding director of the Korean Studies Research Network at the University of Iowa, which brings together Korea-focused scholars throughout the Midwest in a virtual network dedicated to mentoring and fostering interdisciplinary, innovative, and collaborative research.

I would welcome the opportunity to serve AAS by listening to members, facilitating innovative scholarly communication across regions, further internationalizing AAS through closer links and communication with Asia, Europe, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas, and finding ways to make Asia research and teaching highly relevant to this rapidly changing world.

William Tsutsui

Current position: Chancellor and Professor of History

Institution/Affiliation: Ottawa University (Kansas and Arizona, USA)

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Japan, the Pacific World

Specialization or research interests: Business, economic, environmental, and cultural history of modern Japan, with particular interest in Japanese industrial management and labor relations, Japanese banking, the environmental history of Japan and its empire, oceans and fisheries, and Japanese popular culture (especially the Godzilla franchise).

Publications

  • Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan (Princeton University Press, 1998).
  • Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), Japanese translation: Gojira to Amerika no hanseiki, Kamiyama Kyōko (Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 2005).
  • “The Pelagic Empire: Reconsidering Japanese Expansion,” in Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power, eds. Brett Walker, Julia Thomas, and Ian Miller (University of  Hawaiʻi Press, 2013), pp. 21–38.

Service to the Profession

  • Chair, AAS Editorial Board (2011–present)
  • Member (2008–2011) and Chair (2010–2011), AAS Northeast Asia Council
  • Commissioner, Japan–US Friendship Commission and Panelist, US–Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON) (2020–present)

Personal Statement

I study modern Japanese history, with eclectic research and teaching interests spanning business and environmental history, Pacific fisheries, and Godzilla movies. My professional path has been equally varied, taking me from a big state flagship to a private research university to a small liberal arts institution to a regional comprehensive with sprawling adult and online programs. Along the way I served as department chair, center director, dean, and college president, and am currently the chancellor of a private university system. 

In each of these institutions and leadership roles, I have been a fierce advocate for the power of area studies, the promise of public scholarship, and the imperative of justice on our campuses, in our profession, and throughout our society. At a time of shrinking budgets and enrollments, accelerating contingentization of the professoriate, rising threats to academic freedom, and public devaluation of scholarly knowledge (and expertise more generally), professional associations like the AAS are more important than ever before. The AAS must be an inclusive, accessible, and empowering organization for all scholars and students interested in Asia; it must work to grow our field and the impact of our research and teaching around the world; it must make the case (in the academy and to the larger public) for the central importance of Asian Studies; it must support our membership with high-quality programs and publications; and it must continue to evolve with changes in the academy, scholarship, and the sociopolitical contexts of our work. As Vice President, I would strive to amplify the voices—and the impact—of all Asianists and of our field as whole.

Over my three decades in the academy, I have been the only person of color on far too many committees, seen far too many of my graduate students struggle with precarious employment, and witnessed far too many instances of systemic injustice go unaddressed on campuses and in our larger society. Consequently, I am passionate about working with others to create just organizations where all can feel a genuine sense of belonging. I chaired the Diversity Committee of the American Society for Environmental History, was a member of the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee, and have been active with Japanese American community organizations. In the administrative roles I have held, I have worked doggedly to mobilize people and resources to advance equity. During my presidency at Hendrix College, for instance, we improved compensation and job security for contingent faculty, built vibrant partnerships with Arkansas schools to boost accessibility, welcomed our most diverse classes ever, almost doubled the percentage of Pell-eligible and first-generation students, and dramatically improved retention and graduation rates for students of color. 

I am an inveterate proselytizer for Asian Studies. I have long been committed to outreach—to K-12 educators and learners, as well as to the broader public—since the long-term sustainability of our field is dependent on having students in our courses and broad general interest in our scholarship. I founded and directed the Kansas Consortium for Teaching about Asia, providing professional development for hundreds of classroom teachers across the Great Plains; chaired the Kansas Committee for International Education in the Schools, an advocacy organization promoting world language learning and global awareness; and have developed curricular materials and resources (including my volume on Japanese popular culture for the AAS Key Issues in Asian Studies series). Sharing my enthusiasm for Asia is just second nature to me, so I am a frequent media commentator and have given hundreds of presentations (the vast majority on Godzilla and Cool Japan) in rural public libraries, school and university classrooms, Rotary Clubs, and anime conventions across the United States. 

The AAS has been important to me since I was a graduate student in providing opportunities to learn from others, make professional connections and personal friends, and share my research with the global scholarly community. I have sought to give back to the AAS and the field whenever possible: as a member (and chair) of NEAC, as the chair of the Editorial Board and editor of the book series Asia Past and Present and Asia Shorts, on the Board of Directors (from 2010-2011 and since 2019), and as a member of the committee that developed the recently completed AAS strategic plan. I have also served Asian Studies over the decades by co-organizing numerous scholarly conferences (including a fiftieth-birthday extravaganza for Godzilla in 2004), serving as Title VI National Resource Center director, and writing, winning, and administering grants totaling over $5 million. I am particularly proud that these grant-funded projects supported the growth of the field through expanded opportunities for study abroad in East Asia, instruction in Asian languages at the K-12 level, and the creation of eight new tenure-track faculty positions.

I am a strong believer in the mission of the AAS and its unique, critical role in advancing the field of Asian Studies, scholarship related to Asia, and the professional lives of its members (both in and beyond the academic world). As Vice President, I would leverage my experience working with other complex institutions to help the AAS achieve its full potential as an essential resource, an influential advocate, and an agent of change. Throughout my career I have sought opportunities to bring people together to make organizations and systems more responsive, more participatory, more effective, and more just: the AAS can only flourish if it empowers (and listens to) its members, adapts to meet the changing needs of all Asianists, and makes real its commitment to diversity and equity. I am humbled to be nominated for this position and would be honored to serve the AAS and its membership.

East & Inner Asia Council Nominees

Jackie Armijo

Current position: Visiting faculty, Centre for the Study of Islamic Culture

Institution/Affiliation: Chinese University of Hong Kong

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: China

Specialization or research interests: China’s Muslim communities, Chinese Muslim diaspora, China-Gulf relations, education and cultural dimensions of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, women’s education in Asia

Publications

  • With Shaojin Chai, “Chinese Muslim Diaspora Communities and the Role of International Islamic Education Networks: A Case Study of Dubai,” in Chinese Religions Going Global, eds. Nanlai Cao, Giuseppe Giordan, and Fenggang Yang (Brill, 2020).
  • “China,” in Oxford Handbook of Islamic Archaeology, eds. Timothy Insoll and Bethany Walker (Oxford University Press, 2020).
  • “Islam in China,” in Asian Islam in the 21st Century, eds. John Esposito, John Voll, and Osman Bakar (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Service to the Profession

  • Editor-in-Chief for “Islam in China” article series for Oxford Islamic Studies Online, Oxford University Press (2013-2014).
  • Organized and chaired five panels for AAS Annual Conferences (2006-2016) on a range of interdisciplinary border-crossing topics.
  • Manuscript reviewer for Columbia University Press, Stanford University Press, and University of  Hawaiʻi Press; peer reviewer for the Journal of Asian Studies, Modern China, Late Imperial China, Population and Development Review, Ethnopolitics, Cross-Currents, Comparative Education Review, Paedgogica Historica, etc.

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Teaching overseas for almost 20 years, across Asia from Shanghai and Hong Kong to Bangladesh, Qatar and the UAE, I’ve been able to contribute to developing or introducing China studies in several countries and facilitated inter-Asian research networks among a range of scholars. In the U.S., I also had the opportunity to develop a China studies program at Clark Atlanta University, a historically Black college in Atlanta. My own research is interdisciplinary, and while focusing on different dimensions of China’s Muslim population, also incorporates a range of inter-Asian themes including diaspora studies, women’s education, museums and identity, and the cultural and educational dimensions of China BRI projects.

Ho-fung Hung

Current position: Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy

Institution/Affiliation: Johns Hopkins University

Discipline: Sociology/International Studies       

Area or countries of interest: China, East Asia

Specialization or research interests: Global political economy, development, state formation, nationalism, protest

Publications

  • Clash of Empires: From “Chimerica” to the “New Cold War” (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
  • The China Boom: Why China will not Rule the World (Columbia University Press, 2015).
  • Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty (Columbia University Press, 2011).

Service to the Profession

  • Editor-in-Chief, Asian Perspective (2022-present)
  • Program Committee Co-Chair, Social Science History Association (2021-22)
  • Member, Publication Committee, Social Science History Association (2022)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

When Asia and the world are still struggling with the pandemic and confronting the multiple crises of authoritarian advance, worsening inequality, great power rivalry, and racist hatred, the AAS offers a unique platform for open, inclusive, and in-depth research and debate on Asian issues. It is indispensable to advancing the world’s understanding of Asia and mutual understanding between Asian peoples. In our polarizing world, the AAS tradition of accommodating scholarly exchanges among diverse or even conflicting views is precious and needs to continue. One area that the AAS could do more in the future is to introduce our members’ deep historical and cultural knowledge to policymakers and practitioners to help them make more educated decisions involving Asia.

Maria Repnikova

Current position: Associate Professor 

Institution/Affiliation: Georgia State University

Discipline: Communication and Political Science

Area or countries of interest: China (but now expanding to Central Asia as part of a new research project)

Specialization or research interests: China’s political communication, including domestic propaganda and journalism, and more recently, soft power.

Publications

  •  “Rethinking China’s Soft Power: ‘Pragmatic Enticement’ of Confucius Institutes in Ethiopia,” The China Quarterly (2022).
  • Chinese Soft Power (Global China Element Series, Cambridge University Press, 2022).
  • Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Service to the Profession

  • Editorial Board Member, International Journal of Press/Politics (January 2022–present)
  • Chair, Chinese Politics Mini Conference, Annual Meeting of American Political Science Association, Montreal (September 2021-September 2022)
  • Editorial Board Member, Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (May 2022-May 2023)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I aspire to contributing to the AAS leadership and governance by making the study of Asia more accessible to and inclusive of diverse backgrounds, institutions, and methodologies. I hope to partake in efforts to expand the participation in the AAS by scholars from Asia, but also from the Global South, including Africa and Latin America, including institutions that tend to be cut off from the Western academy. I also plan to advocate for more methodological diversity and inclusivity, and especially to further strengthen and expand the existing focus on interdisciplinary research approaches and collaborations across scholars in humanities and social sciences.

Guldana Salimjan

Current position: Visiting Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Simon Fraser University

Discipline: Feminist Anthropology

Area or countries of interest: China

Specialization or research interests: intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and gender, politics of memory, settler colonialism, and environmental justice

Publications

  •  “Blood Lineage,” “Recruiting Loyal Stabilisers: On the Banality of Carceral Colonialism in Xinjiang,” and “Camp Land: Settler Ecotourism and Kazakh Dispossession in Contemporary Xinjiang,” in Xinjiang Year Zero, eds. Darren Byler, Ivan Franceschini, and Nicholas Loubere (Australian National University Press, 2022). DOI: http://doi.org/10.22459/XYZ.2021
  •  “Naturalized Violence: Affective Politics of China’s Ecological Civilization in Xinjiang,” Human Ecology, special issue “Ecological Resilience and Society in China” 49, no. 1 (2021): 59-68. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-020-00207-8
  • “Mapping Loss, Remembering Ancestors: Genealogical Narratives of Kazakhs in China,” Asian Ethnicity, special issue “Voiced and Voiceless in Xinjiang: Minorities, Elites, and Narrative Constructions in Context” 22, no. 1(2021): 105-120. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2020.1819772

Service to the Profession

  • Co-director of the Xinjiang Documentation Project at the University of British Columbia
  • Member of the Academic Freedom, Advocacy, and Scholars at Risk (AFASAR) Committee at Central Eurasian Studies Society
  • Peer reviewer for the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Central Asian Survey, and Asian Ethnicity

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As an ethnic minority originally from China and now navigating academia in North America, I believe diversity, equity, and inclusivity mustn’t only be lip service. My vision for AAS leadership and governance prioritizes promoting academic work about and by Indigenous people of Asia and creating more space for dialogue in building international Indigenous solidarity, decolonizing efforts, and public scholarship.

Tansen Sen

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: NYU Shanghai

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: China and India

Specialization or research interests: Chinese history; China-India interactions; Chinese Buddhism; intra-Asian connections

Publications

  • Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (Association for Asian Studies and University of  Hawaiʻi Press, 2003). South Asian edition: Manohar, 2004. Paperback edition: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. Chinese edition forthcoming.
  • India, China, and the World: A Connected History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). South Asian edition: Oxford University Press, 2018.
  • Editor, with Brian Tsui, Beyond Pan-Asianism: Connecting China and India, 1840s–1960s (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Service to the Profession

  • Director, Center for Global Asia, NYU Shanghai (2016–present)
  • Co-editor, Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Asian Interactions (2018–present)
  • Co-series editor, Oxford Series on India-China Studies (2016–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

If elected to the East and Inner Asia Council of the AAS, I hope to engage in the discussions on conducting research in China as well as AAS’s engagement with the scholars and institutions in China and elsewhere in Asia. I would also like to explore the possibilities of further developing border-crossing and inter-Asian emphasis through AAS events and publications. Additionally, if needed, I can contribute to AAS-in-Asia initiatives.

Emily Wilcox

Current position: Associate Professor and Director of Chinese Studies

Institution/Affiliation: William & Mary

Discipline: Asian Studies

Area or countries of interest: China

Specialization or research interests: modern and contemporary Chinese performance culture, PRC history, gender and ethnicity, Sinophone studies

Publications

  • Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy (University of California Press, 2018).
  • Editor, with Katherine Mezur, Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2020)
  • Editor, with Zhuoyi Wang and Hongmei Yu, Teaching Film from the People’s Republic of China (Modern Language Association, forthcoming).

Service to the Profession

  • President, Association for Asian Performance (2015–2017)
  • Board Member, Society of Dance History Scholars (2014–16)
  • Board Member, Dance Studies Association (2019–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I have participated in the governance of multiple scholarly organizations over the past decade. I am eager to bring fresh ideas and perspectives to AAS that I gained from this decade-long experience. I want to be part of the conversation and labor that brings a vibrant and responsible in-person AAS into the new post-pandemic environment, while also maximizing the reach and access afforded by new technology. I hope to continue and deepen AAS’s initiatives around diversity, equity, and inclusion and to foster conversations across regions and fields within Asian Studies, as well as between Asian Studies and other disciplines.

Shengqing Wu

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Discipline: Chinese Literature

Area or countries of interest: China

Specialization or research interests: Modern Chinese literature and culture, Chinese poetry, history of photography, the study of text and image, sensory studies, etc.

Publications

  • Photo Poetics: Chinese Lyricism and Modern Media (Columbia University Press, 2020).
  • Modern Archaics: Continuity and Innovation in the Chinese Lyric Tradition 1900-1937 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013).
  • Editor, with Xuelei Huang, Sensing China: Modern Transformations of Sensory Culture (Routledge, 2023).

Service to the Profession

  • President of the Association of Chinese & Comparative Literature (2013–2015)
  • Member of the Humanities Panel for the Hong Kong Research Assessment Exercise (2020)
  • Editorial board member, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (2021–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I feel grateful and delighted to be considered for this position with the East and Inner Asia Council. I would like to thank you in advance for your encouragement and support. Given the challenges of our times and the drastically changing academic environment, I will work diligently with other committee members to identify exciting areas of research that critically address our history and social reality and encourage emerging ideas, methods, and missions. Drawing on my extensive academic and personal experience working across the transpacific region, if elected, I will continue my endeavor to facilitate productive dialogues and social networking between scholars working in East Asia and the West.

Northeast Asia Council Nominees

Japan Candidates

Charlotte Eubanks

Current position: Professor of Comparative Literature, Japanese, and Asian Studies

Institution/Affiliation: Pennsylvania State University

Discipline: Comparative Literature

Area or countries of interest: Japan

Specialization or research interests: Buddhist literature, Japanese literature and visual culture, book history

Publications

  • Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (University of California Press, 2011).
  • The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan (University of  Hawaiʻi Press, 2020).
  • Co-Editor with Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, Special Issue on “Indigeneity,” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 4:2 (Fall 2018).

Service to the Profession

  • Verge: Studies in Global Asias. Associate Editor (2016–present); Member of Editorial Collective (2010-2015)
  • MLA Executive Committee “LLC Japan to 1900.” Chair of Proposal Committee and Lead Organizer (2013–2015); Founding Chair (2016–2017); Chair ex-officio (2017–2018)
  • MLA Executive Committee “East Asian Languages and Literatures to 1900.” Member (2011–2013); Secretary (2013–2014); President (2014–2015); President ex-officio (2015–2016)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am honored to have been nominated and see service on the NEAC as an opportunity to support research, to encourage diversification of the profession, and to promote inter-institutional collaborations. As a comparatist, I have spent my career working across and between disciplines (literature, religious studies, history, art history) and am eager to think together about how our different fields can be brought into fuller conversation. At my home institution, much of my service work has focused on building mentorship structures and on centering equity and inclusion initiatives: areas of energy I would be excited to continue working on at the NEAC.

Katsuya Hirano

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of California Los Angeles

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Japan

Specialization or research interests: Early modern and modern Japanese history, (settler) colonialism, capitalism, racism, indigenous studies, Marxist historiography, global history 

Publications

  • “遭遇としての植民地主義:北海道開拓における人種化と労働力の問題をめぐって”, 成田龍一、田辺明生、竹沢泰子編『環太平洋地域の移動と人種』(京都大学出版、2020) (“Colonialism as Encounter: On Racialization and Labor Power in the Settler-Colonization of Hokkaido”), in Migration and Race in the Trans-Pacific Region, eds. Ryuichi Narita, Akio Tanabe, and Yasuko Takezawa (Kyoto University Press, 2020), pp. 31-69. (English version forthcoming as “Settler Colonialism as Encounter: On Racialization and Labor Power in the Dispossession of the Ainu” in Migration and Race in the Trans-Pacific Region, eds. Akio Tanabe and Yasuko Takezawa [ Routledge, 2022]).
  • “Regulating Excess: Cultural Politics of Consumption in Tokugawa Japan” in The Right to Dress: Sumptuary Laws in a Comparative and Global Perspective, eds. Giorgio Riello and Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 435-460
  • “Thanatopolitics in the Making of Japan’s Hokkaido: Settler Colonialism and Primitive Accumulation,” Critical Historical Studies 2, no. 2 (September 2015): 191-218.

Service to the Profession

  • Associate editor, positions (2020–present)
  • Editorial board member, Settler Colonial Studies (2018–present)
  • Organizer, Trans-Pacific Workshop (2013–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

During my tenure, I would like to encourage and support the following activities: free and innovative academic inquiry that comes with academic integrity; transnational collaborations across disciplines; productive exchanges between academia and activism.

Sarah Kovner

Current position: Senior Research Scholar

Institution/Affiliation: Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Japan, Korea, Northeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Gender history, war and society, labor migration, international and global history

Publications

  • Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps (Harvard University Press, 2020). Forthcoming in Japanese translation (Misuzu Shobo, 2022).
  • Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan (Stanford University Press, 2012; paperback 2013).
  • “The Soundproofed Superpower: U.S. Bases and Japanese Communities, 1945-1972,” Journal of Asian Studies 75, no. 1 (February 2016): 87-109.

Service to the Profession

  • Chair, Columbia University Seminar on Modern Japan (2019–present)
  • Peer Reviewer, Harvard University Press, Cornell University Press, Columbia University Press, Berghahn Books (2007–present)
  • Book Prize Committee, Southeast Conference Association for Asian Studies (2014–16)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Considering the impact of Covid-19, the role of the AAS in building community and providing support for new scholarship has never been more important. If elected, I would seek to listen to and advocate for all members, especially those with nontraditional career paths, and try to broaden membership in Latin America, Europe, and Australia. I would aim to develop a new mentoring and collaboration program, which would pair junior and senior scholars. I would also work to create new ways of recognizing all the work members do, including more workshops and new NEAC awards for teaching and mentoring.

Kate McDonald

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Santa Barbara

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Japan

Specialization or research interests: History of mobility, history of technology, critical human geography

Publications

  • Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan (University of California Press, 2017).
  • Editor, with David R. Ambaras, Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History (2019 and 2021), bodiesandstructures.org.
  • “Olympic Recoveries,” Journal of Asian Studies 79, no. 3 (2020): 599-608.

Service to the Profession

  • Associate Editor for Japan, Journal of Asian Studies (2019–present).
  • Monograph series coeditor, Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology (2021–ongoing).
  • Peer reviewer for University of  Hawaiʻi Press, University of California Press, Stanford University Press, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Japanese Studies, Technology and Culture, positions, and others (2019–present).

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I’m excited for the opportunity to serve the NEAC and the AAS. If elected, I would work to create opportunities for early career scholars to develop their work and build new connections across area fields, disciplines, and languages. I am particularly interested in developing ways to more fully incorporate digital scholarship in the intellectual and pedagogical work of the AAS.

Korea Candidates

Christine Kim

Current position: Associate Teaching Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Georgetown University

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Korea, Northeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Modern Korea, social and cultural history, empire studies

Publications

  • “Politics and Pageantry in Protectorate Korea (1905-10): The Imperial Progresses of Sunjong.” Journal of Asian Studies 68, no. 3 (August 2009): 835-59.
  • “Colonial Plunder and the Failure of Restitution In Postwar Korea.” Journal of Contemporary History 52, no. 3 (July 2017): 607-624.
  • “South Korea: Commemorations, Revision, and Reckoning,” in Memory, Identity, and Commemorations of World War II: Anniversary Politics in Asia Pacific, eds. Mike Mochizuki and Daqing Yang (Lexington Books, 2018), pp. 55-68.

Service to the Profession

  • Researcher for Overseas Historical Materials, National Institute of Korean History (Kuksa p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe) (2014–2017)
  • Review panelist, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships on East Asia, multiple occasions
  • Judge, George Washington Institute for Korean Studies Next Generation Scholarship Conference (2022).

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I would welcome the opportunity to contribute to Asian Studies by promoting networks that connect U.S. and international scholarly communities; supporting Korean scholarship that is transnational, comparative, and interdisciplinary; and encouraging research that broadens academic and public understanding of Korea.

Jina Kim

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Oregon

Discipline: Literature

Area or countries of interest: Korea, Japan, Taiwan

Specialization or research interests: Modern Korean literature and cultural studies; comparative literature (Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Korean American); sound studies, radio, and radio dramas; intermediality.

Publications

  • Urban Modernities in Colonial Korea and Taiwan (Brill, 2019).
  • “Broadcasting Solidarity Across the Pacific: Reimagining the Tongp’o in Take Me Home and the Free Chol Soo Lee Movement.” Journal of Asian Studies 79, no. 4 (2020): 891-910.
  • “Between Documentation and Dramatization: Modes of Critique in South Korean Yushin-Era Radio Culture.” positions: asia critique 27, no. 2 (2019)” 397-420.

Service to the Profession

  • Editorial Collective, positions: asia critique (September 2021–present)
  • Korean Literature Association, Executive Committee (2021–present)
  • MLA, Delegate Assembly, LLC Korean Representative (2020–2022)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Having benefited from AAS since I was a graduate student, I would like to continue to play a role in making various aspects of AAS accessible to graduate students through grants that would enable them to attend conferences and hold special workshops/panels that connect graduate students to mentors and peers across different institutions. Additionally, although I am primarily a Koreanist working on Northeast Asian topics, I would like to foster greater cross-regional collaborative research as well as see comparative work within Northeast Asia present.

Sungyun Lim

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Colorado Boulder

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Korea

Specialization or research interests: Korea under Japanese colonial rule, women, law, family, colonialism/post-colonialism

Publications

  • Rules of the House: Family Law and Domestic Disputes in Colonial Korea (University of California Press, 2019).
  • “Adopting in the Shadows: False Registry as a Method of Adoption in Postcolonial Korea.” In special issue, “Productive Encounters: Kinship, Gender, and Family Law in East Asia,” eds. Seung-kyung Kim and Sara Lizbeth Friedman. positions: asia critique 29, no. 3 (August 2021): 495-521.
  • “Affection and Assimilation: Concubinage and the Ideal of Conjugal Love in Colonial Korea, 1922–1938,” Gender and History 28, no. 2 (2016): 461–479.

Service to the Profession

  • Mentor, Committee on Korean Studies Mentoring Program, Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, March 23, 2019 (Mentee, Young Sun Park)
  • Co-organizer and Panel Chair, “Breaking Through the Old Paradigm: Expanding the Landscape of the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue” (sponsored by the Northeast Asia Council of AAS), co-organized with Sayaka Chatani (NUS), Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference
  • Discussant, “Beyond Colonial Modernity: New Approaches to State-Society Relations in Japanese-Occupied Korea,” Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Boston, MA, March 2020. [conference cancelled due to COVID-19 outbreak]

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

AAS has been crucial in my development as a scholar, and I would like to help the AAS continue its strong presence as the leading conference in the field of Asian Studies. I would like to see AAS expand its works on bridging academias between North America and Asia. I would also like to explore innovative ways to help AAS stay relevant and current to the fast-developing field of Asian Studies.

South Asia Council Nominees

Dean Accardi

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Connecticut College

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Kashmir, South Asia, India, Pakistan

Specialization or research interests: History of gender, religion, and politics in South Asia, especially in early modern and modern Kashmir; secularism and religious conflict; connections between religious and political practices, institutions, and discourses; gendered ascetic practices of saints revered by both Hindus and Muslims and their use to establish and articulate religious and political power.

Publications

  • “Religious and Political Power in Kashmir: Recollecting the Past for the (Post)colonial Present,” in Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies, eds. Mona Bhan, Haley Duschinski, and Deepti Misri (Routledge, 2022).
  • “Orientalism and the Invention of Kashmiri Religion(s),” International Journal of Hindu Studies 22, no. 3 (2018).
  • “Embedded Mystics: Writing Lal Ded and Nund Rishi into the Kashmiri Landscape,” in Kashmir: History, Representation, Politics, ed. Chitralekha Zutshi (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Service to the Profession

  • Faculty Consultant, Kashmir Scholars Consultation and Action Network (2019–present)
  • Trustee, American Institute of Pakistan Studies (2016–2018)
  • Guest Editor, special issue of International Journal of Hindu Studies, on Modern Hagiographical Politics (2017–2018)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a historian of Kashmir, I am particularly attuned to the complexities and challenges around the need to represent voices of those in liminal spaces who are continually subjected to—if not silenced by—those with privilege and power wishing to exert their own nationalist, religious, or other identities and agendas over them. If I am chosen to serve on the South Asia Council, I will make explicit efforts to bring forward the work and perspectives of those from oppressed and underrepresented communities in South Asia as well as highlight the particular challenges facing South Asia and connect them to the broader issues confronting Asia for which the AAS exists to address. With the rapid changes and  challenges facing the world today, we cannot simply continue hearing the voices and pursuing the agendas of those who have led us to where we find ourselves today. I vow to do what I can to bring about the changes needed to make the South Asia Council and the AAS more generally better represent the aims and interests of those marginalized in/from our community and positions of power in the world.

Mabel Gergan

Current position: Assistant Professor in Asian Environmental Studies

Institution/Affiliation: Vanderbilt University

Discipline: Geography

Area or countries of interest: South Asia/Himalayan Region

Specialization or research interests: Race and ethnicity in South Asia; indigenous environmentalism; Himalayan region

Publications

  • With Cháirez-Garza, J., Ranganathan, M., Vasudevan, P., “Introduction to the Special Issue: Rethinking Difference as Racialization through the Indian Context,” Ethnic and Racial Studies (2021). 
  • With Curley, A. Indigenous Youth and Decolonial Futures: Energy and Environmentalism among the Diné in the Navajo Nation and the Lepchas of Sikkim, India (Antipode, 2021).
  • With Chakraborty, R., Sherpa, P. Y., and Rampini, C., “A Plural Climate Studies Framework for the Himalayas” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 51 (2021): 42-54.

Service to the Profession

  • Editorial Board Member (Nature and Society), Annals of the American Association of  Geographers (2019–present)
  • Executive Council member, Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies (2018–2022)
  • Search Committee Member for Mellon Assistant Professor position in AsAm/AsAm  Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

To advocate for scholarship from the geographic and cognitive borders and margins of Asian Studies. To give prominence to the existing and next generation of Black, Indigenous, and minoritized scholars in Asian Studies. To generate more lines of inquiry and conversation between the social science and humanistic disciplines in Asian Studies.

Walter Hakala

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University at Buffalo, SUNY

Discipline: South Asian Studies

Area or countries of interest: South Asia

Specialization or research interests: Urdu language and literature

Publications

  • “Two New Kinds of Fire: Syphilis and Capsicum in Early Hindvi Vocabularies,” in Objects, Images, Stories: Simon Digby’s Historical Method, ed. Francesca Orsini (Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 134-161.
  • “Literary Translingualism in Hindi and Urdu,” in The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism, eds. Steven G. Kellman and Natasha Lvovich (Routledge, 2021), pp. 301-315.
  • Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia (Columbia University Press, 2016; New Delhi: Primus Books, 2017). Awarded The Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies, 2015; Honorable Mention, AAS Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize, 2018.

Service to the Profession

  • Member, Nominations Committee, American Institute of Pakistan Studies (2015, 2017, 2018); Chair (2021)
  • Member, Fellowship Selection Committee, American Institute of Indian Studies (2017–2019); Chair (2019–2020)
  • At-Large Trustee (elected), American Institute of Pakistan Studies (2015–17, 2018–21)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As the lone South Asianist at a large state university, I have strived to apply former Journal of Asian Studies editor Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s “one over rule” in my professional life by reaching across disciplinary and regional boundaries to support colleagues and students. In my previous role as director of the University at Buffalo Asian Studies Program, I organized an annual faculty symposium on pan-Asian themes and a weekly Asia at Noon lecture series, and I secured student research funds in South Asian languages, Korean Studies, and Southeast Asian Studies. My eclectic interests find reflection in the wide range of research projects for which I regularly recruit undergraduate students assistants (see https://www.buffalo.edu/eln/students/project-portal.html?q=hakala) as well as the Rustgi Undergraduate Conference on South Asia, an annual student-run conference I have overseen since 2018 that has brought to Buffalo dozens of undergraduates from across Canada, India, Pakistan, UK, and U.S. I hope to work with the South Asia Council to find ways to identify additional sources of research funding for non-U.S. citizen students and create opportunities for first-generation students and those attending institutions of higher education without established area studies programs to attend AAS regional conferences.

Anneeth Kaur Hundle

Current position: Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Dhan Kaur Sahota Presidential Chair of Sikh Studies

Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Irvine

Discipline: Anthropology

Area or countries of interest: South Asia, Punjab, Indian Ocean, East Africa

Specialization or research interests: Sikh Studies, Punjabi/Sikh diasporas, Afro-Asian entanglements/connections, race, religion and caste, violence, citizenship, gender and sexuality, feminist approaches to transregional study, university studies, with regional interests in Punjab, Indian Ocean, East Africa, Uganda.

Publications

  • “Decolonizing Diversity: The Transnational Politics of Minority Racial Difference.” Public Culture 31, no. 2 (2019): 289-322. Special Issue on “Interrogating Diversity,” eds. Damani Partridge and Matthew Chin.
  • “Guru Nanak in an Era of Global Thought: Sikhism, Sikh Studies, the University and the Political” https://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/sikh_studies.html (overview of Sikh Studies/critical approaches to the field)
  • “Postcolonial Patriarchal Nativism, Domestic Violence and Transnational Feminist Research in Uganda.” Feminist Review, special issue on “Transnational Feminist Research 121, no. 1 (2019): 37-52.”

Service to the Profession

  • Associate Editor, Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory (2019–present)
  • Steering Committee Member, Sikh Studies Unit, American Academy of Religion (2017–2022)
  • Organizer, Sikh Formations Quarterly Webinar Series (2020–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a member of the South Asia Council, I will look forward to helping shape the policies and activities of the AAS along inclusive and critical directions. I aim to build equitable membership and represent the needs of the existing South Asian/South Asian Studies focused membership at the AAS. In my leadership capacity, I plan to highlight minoritized and marginalized perspectives (religious minority, caste-oppressed, feminist and queer perspectives), advocate for initiatives that speak to critical approaches to region and area (transregional perspectives to South Asia and South Asia diasporas), and strategize responses to pressing political and ethical concerns, including within academic institutions. I look forward to helping build AAS South Asia membership through the UC system, the public university system with which I am affiliated, as well as critical Sikh Studies networks. Finally, I plan to learn from institutional histories and previous AAS leadership to better understand the inner-workings of the AAS and mentor others (especially junior scholars) who will fill leadership roles in the AAS in the future.

Naeem Mohaiemen

Current position: Associate Professor of Visual Arts & Concentration Head of Photography

Institution/Affiliation: Columbia University

Discipline: Visual Arts, Visual Anthropology, Photography, Moving Image

Area or countries of interest: Bangladesh, South Asia, Islamicate World

Specialization or research interests: Naeem Mohaiemen combines photography, films, archives, and essays to research the many forms of utopia-dystopia (families, borders, architecture, and uprisings)—  beginning from Bangladesh’s two postcolonial markers (1947, 1971) and then radiating outward to unlikely, and unstable, transnational alliances and collisions. Despite underlining a historic tendency toward mis-recognition of allies, the hope for a future international left, as an alternative to current silos of race and religion, is always a basis for the work. A through-line in all his work is family unit as locus for pain-beauty dyads, abandoned buildings as staging ground for lost souls, and the necessity of small prevarications to keep on living.

Publications

  • Editor, with Eszter Szakáks, Solidarity Must Be Defended: An Anthology on Visual Art Practices Across Nations (Tranzit, forthcoming 2022).
  • “What Was Chobi Mela and What Comes Next,” in Art and its Worlds: Exhibitions, Institutions and Art Becoming Public, eds. Choy, Esche, Morris, Steeds. (Afterall Books, 2021).
  • Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Correct History) (Kunsthalle Basel, 2014).

Service to the Profession

  • Board Member, Vera List Center for Art & Politics, The New School for Social Research, (2019–present)
  • Board Member, Film Council, Institute for Contemporary Arts, London (2018–present)
  • Curriculum Sub-Committee for Expanded Practices, Columbia University (2022–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

The United States Census, and myriad tributary forms (e.g., healthcare), continue to have “Asian” as an overall, undifferentiated check-box category, despite decades of efforts by scholars and activists to bring in the nuances, differences, and overlaps between regions as diverse as Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Western Asia. As a member of the South Asia Council, I would gently bring this conversation into our governance, programming, and public communication. In addition, I would emphasize expanding the concept of “South Asia” to its constitutive elements, including, but not limited to, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Myanmar, as well as India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

Projit Bihari Mukharji

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Pennsylvania

Discipline: History of Science

Area or countries of interest: India, Bangladesh, Myanmar

Specialization or research interests: History of science and medicine in modern South Asia

Publications

  • Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Science in India, c. 1920-66 (University of Chicago Press, 2022)
  • Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies and Braided Sciences (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
  • Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print and Daktari Medicine (Anthem Press, 2009).

Service to the Profession

  • Co-Editor, Osiris
  • Associate Editor, Asian Medicine: Journal of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine
  • Council Member, History of Science Society

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

There are two forms of engagement I would love to see more of. First is a greater engagement with the humanistic and social scientific study of science and medicine in Asia. Second, a greater opportunity for conversation between scholars working on different regions of Asia. The first of these would require AAS’s leadership working with the leadership of professional associations in science, technology studies, history of science, medical anthropology, etc. The second could be promoted by working with editors of regionally focused journals. In both cases, AAS leadership could play a mediating role.

Navine Murshid

Current position: Associate Professor of Political Science, Director of International Relations

Institution/Affiliation: Colgate University

Discipline: Political Science

Area or countries of interest: South Asia, Bangladesh, India

Specialization or research interests: Migration, refugees, neoliberalism, ethnicity, nationalism, culture

Publications

  • India’s Bangladesh Problem: The Marginalization of Bengali Muslims in Neoliberal Times (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
  • The Politics of Refugees in South Asia: Identity, Resistance, Manipulation (Routledge, 2013).
  • With NS Murshid, “‘Innovations’ during COVID-19: Microfinance in Bangladesh,” Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work 37, no. 2 (2022): 232-249.

Service to the Profession

  • Associate Editor, Journal of Bangladesh Studies (2016–2018)
  • Executive Committee Member, Bangladesh Development Initiative (2016–present).
  • Executive Committee Member, Bangladeshi Educators of North America

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

South Asian Studies is heavily dominated by Indian hegemony such that scholarship on India by Indian scholars finds most prominence here. As a self-proclaimed “margins scholar,” I hope to draw attention to peripheralized perspectives at the Council and help foster an inclusive space for scholarship on countries and peoples deemed less important by global powers in the interest of a more democratic process of knowledge production.

Sasanka Perera

Current position: Professor of Sociology and Dean, Social Sciences

Institution/Affiliation: South Asian University

Discipline: Sociology/cultural anthropology

Area or countries of interest: South Asia/Sri Lanka/Nepal/India

Specialization or research interests: Urbanization and spatial politics; education; ethnicity, nationalism and political violence in Sri Lanka/South Asia; politics of memory; visual cultures; the idea of South Asia

Publications

  • Fear of the Visual? Photography, Anthropology and the Anxieties of Seeing (Orient BlackSwan, 2020).
  • Warzone Tourism in Sri Lanka: Tales from Darker Places in Paradise (Sage, 2016)
  • Violence and the Burden of Memory: Remembrance and Erasure in Sinhala Consciousness (Orient BlackSwan, 2015).

Service to the Profession

  • Vice President, South Asian University, New Delhi (2016–2019)
  • Founding Editor, Society and Culture in South Asia (2015–2020)
  • Chairman, Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture, Sri Lanka (2003–2010)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

South Asia produces a significant body of work in English as well as numerous local languages, though most of it does not reach global forums due to issues of language as well as politics of location. I would like to explore ways to allow some of this knowledge to transgress the language and locational borders   that restrict them and enter global discourses through AAS. Also, it is necessary to complicate the idea of South Asia itself in research and writing and find ways for its political pluralism to more clearly manifest in centers of knowledge production, including AAS.

Southeast Asia Council Nominees

Michitake Aso

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University at Albany, SUNY

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Vietnam, Southeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Environmental and medical history

Publications

  • “Mapping Invasion: Biological Warfare During the First Indochina War,” for Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History, directed by Kate McDonald and David Ambaras, https://scalar.chass.ncsu.edu/bodies-and-structures-2/geographies-of-invasion-landing-page
  • Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897-1975 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018).
  • “Learning to Heal the People: Socialist Medicine and Education in Vietnam, 1945-1954,” in Translating the Body: Medical Education in Southeast Asia, eds. Hans Pols, C. Michele Thompson, and John Harley Warner (National University of Singapore Press, 2017).

Service to the Profession

  • Executive Committee, Vietnam Studies Group (2018–2021)
  • Book Review Editor, H-Envirohealth (2016–present)
  • Program Committee, History of Medicine in Southeast Asia Conference (2015–2016)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a SEAC member, I would promote the presence of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian studies within AAS and work to ensure the health of the organization overall. For me this means continuing to advocate for diversity and the inclusion of scholars from Southeast Asia. It also means expanding engagement with the digital humanities and encouraging effective communication, both in person and online. Finally, I would seek to raise awareness among the public of the myriad environmental and health challenges currently facing the region.

Netra Eng

Current position: Executive Director

Institution/Affiliation: Cambodia Development Resource Institute

Discipline: Public Policy

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Public policy, political economy, state-society relations, gender equality

Publications

  • With Astrid Norén-Nilsson, “Pathways to Leadership within and beyond Cambodian Civil Society: Elite Status and Boundary Crossing,” Politics and Governance 8, no. 3 (2020).
  • With Caroline Hughes, “Coming of Age in Peace, Prosperity, and Connectivity: Cambodia’s Young Electorate and Its Impact on the Ruling Party’s Political Strategies,” Critical Asian Studies  49, no. 3 (2017): 396-410.
  • With Caroline Hughes, “Peace Formation in Cambodia,” in Post-Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Peace Formation and State Formation, eds. Oliver Richmond and Sandra Pogodda, (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

Service to the Profession

  • Board member, Youth Star Cambodia, (2017–present)
  • Civil Society Expert Team in Cambodia (2010–2020)
  • Fulbright Alumni Board (2003–2006)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

To support the AAS to be more accessible and more engaged with scholars, researchers, students, and policymakers from Southeast Asian countries, particularly from under-represented countries and groups of emerging researchers, in strengthening interests, participation, exchange, and collaboration in the Asian Studies.

Jenna Grant

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Washington

Discipline: Anthropology

Area or countries of interest: Cambodia; Southeast Asia; Southeast Asian America

Specialization or research interests: Cultural anthropology; social studies of science, technology, and medicine; visual studies; multimodal anthropology

Publications

  • Fixing the Image: Ultrasound and the Visuality of Care in Phnom Penh (University of Washington Press, 2022).
  • “Portrait and Scan,” Public Culture 33, no. 3 (2021): 349-369. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-9262863
  •  “Repair in Translation,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 14 (2020): 15-33. DOI 10.1215/18752160-8233535

Service to the Profession

  • Board member, Thailand/Laos/Cambodia Group (2016–2018)
  • Organizer and host, visit of Cambodian diasporic filmmaker Rithy Panh to University of Washington as Walker Ames Scholar (2018)
  • Reviews editor (founding), Medicine Anthropology Theory (online, open-access journal) (2013–2016)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

If elected, I would look forward to supporting scholarship and creative work about, from, and for Southeast Asia. This could involve new methods of institutional collaboration, building on insights from my ongoing work with Center for Khmer Studies and the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in Cambodia. It could involve focused conversations with Asian American Studies, inspired by ongoing work with scholars in American Ethnic Studies (where I am Adjunct Assistant Professor) and with community activists and cultural workers in Seattle/Tacoma.

Paul Hutchcroft

Current position: Professor of Political and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs

Institution/Affiliation: College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University

Discipline: Politics

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Southeast Asian politics and comparative politics, with a particular focus on the Philippines

Publications

  • Co-author, with Edward Aspinall, Meredith L. Weiss, and Allen Hicken, Mobilizing for Elections: Patronage and Political Machines in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2022).
  • Co-author, with Weena Gera, “Strong-Arming, Weak Steering: Central-Local Relations in the Philippines in the Era of the Pandemic,” Philippine Political Science Journal (forthcoming 2022).
  • Co-author, with Ronald D. Holmes, “The Philippines in 2021: The Decline of the House of Duterte?,” Southeast Asian Affairs 2022 (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2022).

Service to the Profession

  • AAS Program Committee Chair (2006–2007)
  • Founding Director, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific (2009–2013)
  • Overall chief investigator of ANU project on democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in Southeast Asia (2018–2021)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Service on the Southeast Asian Council would build on involvement with the AAS that began more than 30 years ago. I greatly value the way in which AAS facilitates the exchange of ideas not only across disciplines, but also among scholars who focus on different countries in Southeast Asia and indeed among those who focus on different regions of Asia. As a scholar of Philippine politics, and Southeast Asian comparative politics more generally, I have worked to make contributions of value both to academic and to practitioner audiences (often in close collaboration with colleagues in Southeast Asia, including many junior scholars). As a member of SEAC, I would seek opportunities to foster programs that encourage various types of productive dialogue: across disciplines, across borders and regions, across cohorts of our profession, and across the scholarly-practitioner divide.

Allan Lumba

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Virginia Tech

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: United States

Specialization or research interests: Throughout almost fifteen years in academia, I’ve been exploring the entanglements of race, capitalism, and colonialism in the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific in my writing. I also enjoy teaching about Southeast Asian and Southeast Asian diasporic films, fiction, art, music, and culture. I also bridge much of Southeast Asia with the broader world, especially the worlds of the Atlantic and the Caribbean in my teaching and public dialogue.

Publications

  • Monetary Authorities: Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines (Duke University Press, 2022).
  • “Left Alone With the Colony,” Journal of Critical Ethnic Studies 7, no. 1 (Spring 2021).
  • “Transpacific Migration, Racial Surplus, and Colonial Settlement,” in Histories of Racial Capitalism, eds. Justin Leroy and Destin Jenkins (Columbia University Press, 2021), pp. 111-134.

Service to the Profession

  • Advisory Board member, Philippine Studies Group

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

My scholarly and pedagogical commitment has been to critically explore how and why the peoples, cultures, and histories of Southeast Asia offer much in thinking about the major and urgent global questions of the present. I am invested in strengthening and supporting AAS initiatives in bridging scholarship of Southeast Asia (and Asia more broadly) to pressing social and political issues, such as transnational anti-Asian racism, climate catastrophe, refugee and migrant crisis, global anti-Blackness, and international wealth inequality. My vision entails a collective and collaborative effort, not only with scholars in the Global North, but scholars across the Global South—across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well exploring beyond traditional paywalled media platforms, to engage broader, wider, and differently literate publics.

Mary Mostafanezhad

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Discipline: Geography and Environment

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: I am a human geographer broadly interested in development and socio-environmental change in Southeast Asia. Development geography encompasses the range of socio-economic activity that unevenly affects people’s livelihoods and wellbeing. My scholarship engages with these themes through the analysis of tourism, agriculture, and infrastructure. My work on socio-environmental change draws on political ecology framings that account for the range of political and economic drivers of environmental degradation and socio-ecological movements. I focus on how these processes materialize in the contexts of air pollution, forest degradation, and agrarian transitions. Collectively, my work asks, how is everyday experience mediated by broader transnational processes and with what social and environmental implications? I seek answers to this question through ethnographic fieldwork and in popular culture and other textual representations, as well as collaboratively with GIS and remote sensing specialists.

Publications

  • With Sebro, T., Prasse-Freeman, E., and Norum, R., “Surplus Precaritization: Supply Chain Capitalism and the Geoeconomics of Hope in Myanmar’s Borderlands,” Political Geography 95 (2022): 102561.
  • With Dressler, W., “Violent Atmospheres: Political Ecologies of Livelihoods and Crises in Southeast Asia,” Geoforum 124 (2021): 343-347.
  • With Evrard, O. “Chronopolitics of Crisis: A Historical Political Ecology of Seasonal Air Pollution in Northern Thailand,” Geoforum 124 (2021): 400-408.

Service to the Profession

  • Executive Committee, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
  • Affiliated Researcher, Chiang Mai University
  • Editor and Chief, Tourism Geographies

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I will represent the interests of the Southeast Asia contingent by supporting initiatives that will help grow the representation of Southeast Asian scholars as well as scholars of Southeast Asia in the AAS. I also anticipate contributing to the further development of diversity and inclusion in the AAS through the support of financial, mentoring, and publication opportunities for early career scholars. Finally, I will contribute to the ongoing growth of timely AAS scholarship on issues such as environmental change, regional politics, and health and wellness in Southeast Asia by supporting initiatives that address new research agendas in the region.

Ardeth Thawnghmung

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Massachusetts Lowell

Discipline: Political Science

Area or countries of interest: Myanmar

Specialization or research interests: Political economy, ethnic politics, political violence, Myanmar/Southeast Asia, qualitative research methods/research ethics

Publications

  • With Jacques Bertrand and Alex Pelletier, Winning by Process: The State, Democratic Transition, Ethnic Conflict in Myanmar (Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2022).
  • The Everyday Economic Survival in Contemporary Myanmar (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019).
  • The “Other” Karen in Myanmar: Ethnic Minorities and the Struggle Without Arms (Lexington Books/Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, 2012).

Service to the Profession

  • President, SayDaNar Community Development Center, Lowell MA (2012–present)
  • Southeast Asia Regional editor, Critical Asian Studies (2020–present)
  • AAS Southeast Asia Council (2012–2015)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

To promote diversity and inclusivity in governance and conference participation by making easier access to Southeast Asia-based scholars; to create educational opportunities for faculty and students from conflict-affected areas; fund raising for the Council through endowment.

Council of Conferences Nominees

New York Conference on Asian Studies (NYCAS)

Nathen Clerici

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: SUNY New Paltz

Discipline: Literature

Area or countries of interest: Japan

Specialization or research interests: modern Japanese fiction & film; subculture

Publications

  • “Yumeno Kysūaku and the Spirit of the Local,” Japanese Studies 39, no. 1 (March 2019): 75-94.
  • “Performance and Nonsense: Osaki Midori’s ‘Strange Love,’” Japanese Language and Literature 51, no. 2 (October 2017): 271-304.
  • “History, ‘Subcultural Imagination,’ and the Enduring Appeal of Murakami Haruki,” Journal of Japanese Studies 42, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 247-78.

Service to the Profession

  • NYCAS Executive Board Member (2017–present)
  • NYCAS host and co-organizer (2019)
  • Faculty Senator (Languages, Literatures & Cultures Representative) (2019–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I want to encourage continued support for regional conferences, which play an important role for fostering scholarship and teaching networks, especially for early-career scholars. They also encourage local outreach. The variety of funding programs and publishing venues AAS provides is impressive, and given the challenges to research projects during the Covid pandemic, these resources must be continually supported and even expanded. Again, this is particularly important for early-career scholars.

Patricia Welch

Current position: Professor of Japanese and Comparative Literature

Institution/Affiliation: Hofstra University

Discipline: Japanese Literature and Language

Area or countries of interest: Japan primarily

Specialization or research interests: Modern Japanese fiction, including Murakami Haruki, detective fiction; also rakugo, comic oral narrative

Publications

  • “Trumping 1Q84/Nineteen Eighty Four: Reading Murakami in a Dystopian Era,” in Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage, eds. Gitte Marianne Hansen and Michael Tsang (Routledge, 2022).
  • With Mari Fujimoto, NipponGO! An Introduction to Elementary Modern Japanese Language (Kendall Hunt Publishers, 2017).
  • “A Consideration of Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life.” Book and essay translated into Vietnamese as Kokoro – Những Ám Thị Và Âm Vang Trong Đời Sống Nội Tại Nhật Bản and published by NXB Thế Giới, Phương Nam Book, 2018. Essay originally published in reissued edition of Lafcadio Hearn’s Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life (Tuttle, 2011).

Service to the Profession

  • NYCAS representative, AAS Council of Conferences (2009–2011)
  • President, NYCAS Executive Board (2005–2008, 2008–2011, 2011–2014, 2015–2018, 2018–2021)
  • Representative, NYCAS Executive Board (2004–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

The COC serves as a vital bridge between the larger AAS body and the regional conferences. As a COC officer and a long-standing member of the NYCAS board, I would work hard to promote exchange and collaboration between NYCAS, AAS, and the other regional conferences. I am also excited about the opportunities to continue the COC’s mission of providing outreach opportunities for the regional conferences. In addition, I would like to promote greater opportunities to support emerging scholars’ work through increased participation at regional and national conferences.

Southeast Conference of the AAS (SEC/AAS)

Annika A. Culver

Current position: Associate Professor of East Asian History

Institution/Affiliation: Florida State University

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Japan and Northeast Asia (Northeast China, Korea)

Specialization or research interests: My research and publications have focused on propaganda and advertising, cultural production in Manchuria/Manchukuo and the Japanese empire, the history of science in Japan, and more recently, the growth of Japanese consumer capitalism. My latest project involves a microhistory of U.S.-Japan relations as revealed within the movements of a trans-oceanic Japanese-American noble family in the twentieth century.

Publications

  • Japan’s Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology (Bloomsbury Press, 2022)
  • Editor, with Norman Smith, Manchukuo Perspectives: Transnational Approaches to Literary Production (Hong Kong University Press, 2019).
  • Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo (University of British Columbia Press, 2013; University of Washington Press, 2014).

Service to the Profession

  • Scholar, US-Japan Network for the Future (2012–present)
  • Executive Board, Member at Large, Southeastern Council of the Association for Asian Studies (2019–present)
  • Editorial Board, Texas National Security Review (2020–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Since 2012, I have served as a scholar in the US-Japan Network for the Future, a group initiated by the late Ezra Vogel to connect academics to foreign policy communities. I also belong to the Editorial Board of the Texas National Security Review (TNSR). As a cultural and intellectual historian, I highly support diversity of viewpoints, as well as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to global issues benefiting from multifaceted understandings of history. In addition, I strongly believe in advocating for additional support for solo parents to attend AAS meetings, as well as encouraging and funding graduate student conference participation as essential to career growth. Fostering inclusion in our profession is also a priority, and establishing strong mentorship for early, and mid-career, scholars in under-represented fields and communities.

Kevin Fogg

Current position: Associate Director, Carolina Asia Center

Institution/Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, Indonesia

Specialization or research interests: Islamic history in Indonesia

Publications

  • Indonesia’s Islamic Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
  • “Indonesian Socialism of the 1950’s: From Ideology to Rhetoric,” Third World Quarterly, special issue on “Marx and Lenin in Asia and Africa: Socialism(s) and Socialist Legacies,” 42, no. 3 (2021): 465-482.
  • With Saipul Hamdi, “The Indonesian Central Government in Local Conflict Resolution: Lessons from the Reconciliation of Nahdlatul Wathan,” Indonesia 112 (2021).

Service to the Profession

  • Local Arrangements Chair, 2021 annual meeting of the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies
  • Interim President, Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (2022-23)
  • Editorial Board, Indonesia and the Malay World (2014–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Having worked in a tenure-track position in Europe, a lecturer and research collaborator in Southeast Asia, and now as an administrator in the United States, I know that Asian Studies requires leaders with many different skills and backgrounds. I hope to increase support for the teaching of Asia at minority-serving institutions and community colleges (I am also active in this area through my position administering a U.S. Department of Education-funded National Resource Center). I also want to amplify the voices of non-professors who contribute to the discipline through their research, activism, and administrative roles.

Li-ling Hsiao

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: UNC-Chapel Hill

Discipline: art, literature, and theater

Area or countries of interest: China

Specialization or research interests: illustrations of Ming drama, Chinese traditional theater, Chinese paintings, guqin music, poetry by Wang Wei

Publications

  • “Beyond Words: The Writing and Reading of the Color Stationery in the Illustrations of Xixiang Ji by Min Qiji,” Art Collection and Appreciation, no. 4 (Dec. 2018): 83-100.
  • “Picturing Qin Music: Min Qiji and Others’ Illustrations of ‘Yingying Listens to Qin’ in Xixiang ji,” Ming Qing Studies (2018): 189–230.
  • “Theater and Society in the Ming World” in the Ming World project, ed. Kenneth Swope (Routledge, 2018), 183–199.

Service to the Profession

  • Co-editor, Southeast Review of Asian Studies (2010–2013)
  • President, Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (2014–15)
  • Secretary/Treasurer, Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (2016–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Encourage the members of Southeast Regional Conferences to participate in AAS and the annual meetings, the academic institutions to host regional conferences to promote the awareness of Asian Studies in institutions that do not have an obvious presence of Asian Studies.

Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (SWCAS)

Paul Clark

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: West Texas A&M University

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Japan

Specialization or research interests: Modern Japanese history, language  history, Kokugo Studies

Publications

  • Commodore Perry’s Visit to Japan: A Short History with Documents (Hackett Publishing, 2020).
  • The Kokugo Revolution: Education, Identity, and Language Policy in Imperial Japan (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California Press, 2009).
  • “Seinan Jo Gakuin, Women’s Schools and Parochial Education in Taishō Japan,” Journal of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies 8 (September 2015): 146-160.

Service to the Profession

  • Chair, AAS Council of Conferences (2013–2014)
  • Editor, Southwest Journal on Asian Studies (2008–2020)
  • President and Program Chair, Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (2009)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I would like for the AAS to continue to advocate for and promote scholarly investigation into the peoples of Asia, facilitate networking and exchange between cultures, and support career development of its members. I can think of few changes I would like to see in the leadership and governance of the body as it is currently constituted.

Jooyoun Lee

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: St. Edward’s University

Discipline: Global Studies and Political Science

Area or countries of interest: Northeast Asia, Japan, Korea, Asia-U.S. Relations

Specialization or research interests: Historical memory, conflict and reconciliation in Asia, international/Asian security, discourse and narrative, knowledge production, gender and politics, popular culture, imperialism and decolonization, East Asian politics, East Asian international relations, Asia-U.S. relations

Publications

  • “Healing an Abnormalized Body: Bringing the Agency of Unseen People Back to the Inter-Korean Border,” Third World Quarterly (2021), advance online publication at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2021.1928488
  • “Yasukuni and Hiroshima in Clash? War and Peace Museums in Contemporary Japan,” Pacific Focus 33, no. 1 (2018): 5-33.
  • “The Korean Wave: Korean Popular Culture at the Intersection of State, Economy, and History,” in Asia in International Relations: Unlearning Imperial Power Relations, eds. Pinar Bilgin and L.H.M. Ling (Routledge, 2017), pp. 172-183.

Service to the Profession

  • President, Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (2018–2019)
  • Member, Board of Directors, Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (2017–2020, 2021–2024)
  • Member, L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize Committee, British International Studies Association (2020, 2021)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance I would be honored to serve as the representative of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (SWCAS) to the Council of Conferences of the Association for Asian Studies. I believe that my experience as the President of the SWCAS in 2018–2019 has provided me with valuable lessons that have developed my critical understanding of how to bridge the SWCAS and the AAS. As a liaison between the two, I hope to bring diverse voices from the members of the SWCAS to the AAS and collaborate with other regional conferences and AAS leadership in a way to promote transparent communication, inclusive learning, and mutual growth. I will work to contribute to creating multiple spaces where new connections for and diverse knowledge about Asia are produced in order to vitalize Asian Studies.

Leah Renold

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Texas State University

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: India

Specialization or research interests: My work explores the complex inter-relationships between Hindu identity, Hindu-Muslims relations, education, and colonial policy during the Indian independence movement. My first book was Hindu Education: The Early Years of Banaras University (OUP). I have continued to work on Hindu nationalism in Uttar Pradesh and have a forthcoming book, Hindu Interests: The Life and Times of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya. My current research focuses on the environmental history of the Ganges River during the colonial period.

Publications

  • “Nationalist Education: The Case of Banaras Hindu University and Malaviya,” in Handbook of Education Systems in Asia, eds. P. M. Sarangapani and R. Pappu (Springer Nature, 2021).
  • “The Maharaja and the Brahman: The Subordination of History to Myth,” in Hidden Histories: Religion and Reform in South Asia, eds. Manu Bhagavan and Syed Akbar Hyder (Primus Books, 2018).
  • “The Mahatma and the Missionary: Gandhi’s Conflicting Accounts of His First Encounter with Christianity,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 19, no. 1 (Spring 2018). Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/cch.2018.0006.

Service to the Profession

  • Treasurer, Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (2020–present)
  • Editorial Board Member, Indian Journal of Dalit and Tribal Studies (2020–present)
  • Organized Roundtable Discussion and Lecture by Dr. Rajmohan Gandhi on white nationalism in the U.S. and Hindu nationalism in India, Texas State University (October 2021)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am happy to work with the AAS as it continues its efforts to promote transparency and increased inclusiveness in its governance. In addition to the promotion of scholarship and intellectual exchange, I support the active engagement of the AAS in social justice issues related to gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity. As global citizens and educators, the members of the AAS have a responsibility to work both within the organization and outside against oppression, discrimination, and authoritarianism.

Diversity & Equity Committee Nominees

Graduate Student Nominees

Felicity Stone-Richards

Current position: PhD Student

Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Santa Barbara

Discipline: Political Science

Area or countries of interest: Japan, Northeast Asia, United States

Specialization or research interests: Contemporary Japan politics, Japanese anti-racist activism, and Afro-Japanese intellectual exchange

Publications

  •  “Afro-Japanese Feminist Practice: Reading Fujimoto Kazuko, Yoshida Ruiko and Chikappu Mieko,” in Who Is the Asianist? The Politics of Representation in Asian Studies, eds. Will Bridges, Nitasha Tamar Sharma, and Marvin D. Sterling (Association for Asian Studies, forthcoming 2022).
  • Review, “The Color Line: Les Artistes Africains-Americains et la Ségregation, Paris, Quai Branly, 04 October 2016 – 15 January 2017,” Detroit Research 3 (Spring 2022).

Service to the Profession

  • President, UCSB Graduate Student Association (2021–2022)
  • VP for External Affairs, UCSB Graduate Student Association (2020–2021)
  • President, Political Science Graduate Student Association (2019–2020)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am excited to have the opportunity to represent graduate student interests in the Diversity & Equity Committee for the Association for Asian Studies. I have three years of experience in graduate student advocacy and have detailed knowledge of the structural barriers affecting all kinds of graduate students. I will assist in developing policies that will increase support for Black scholars in Asian Studies, and particularly Black graduate students. I will also advocate for increasing financial travel support for graduate student conference presenters.

Veronica Sison

Current position: Teaching Associate

Institution/Affiliation: University of the Philippines Diliman

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, Philippines

Specialization or research interests: Cold War Asia, post-war history of Southeast Asia and the Philippines, labor migration history, social history

Publications

  • Review of Women Who Stay: Seafaring and Subjectification in an Ilocos Town, by Roderick G. Galam, Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 67, no. 2 (2019): 265-268. doi:10.1353/phs.2019.0014.

Service to the Profession

  • Research Fellow, Cold War Archives Research Institute Fellowship under the History and Public Policy Program of the Wilson Center (December 2021–June 2022)
  • Overseas Research Assistant, Reconceptualizing the Cold War Project in Asia under Professor Masuda Hajimu of the National University of Singapore (April 2020–December 2021)
  • Core Group, Reading Group Landscapes of Southeast Asia: Spaces, Times, Disciplines hosted by the Centre of South Asian Studies (under Dr. Michael Edwards and Dr. Nicole Aboitiz), University of Cambridge (2021–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a Filipina scholar based in Manila, I have been exposed to and greatly benefited from various research and mentorship programs locally and internationally. By running for a position in the DEC, I hope to provide a platform to enrich the AAS community and promote its programs and opportunities to my fellow scholars based in the peripheries, such as provinces and far-flung communities.

Tenure-track/Adjunct/Non-tenure-track/Independent Scholar Nominees

Mark Bookman

Current position: Postdoctoral Fellow

Institution/Affiliation: Tokyo College, the University of Tokyo

Discipline: Disability Studies

Area or countries of interest: Japan

Specialization or research interests: 1) Disability history and policy; 2) minority social movements; 3) inclusive education and employment; 4) accessible built environments; and 5) equitable disaster risk management

Publications

  • “The Coronavirus Crisis: Disability Politics and Activism in Contemporary Japan,” Japan Focus: The Asia–Pacific Journal 18, no. 3 (2020): 1–13.
  • “Creating ‘Disability Publics’ in Postwar Japan (1937-1957),” Journal of Japanese Studies 49, no. 2 (forthcoming 2023).
  • “A Recent History of Activism for Accessibility in Japan (1981–2006),” Disability Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (forthcoming 2023).

Service to the Profession

  • International Committee Member, Japan Society for Disability Studies (2021–present)
  • Accessibility Consultant, Organizing Committee for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games (2018–2021)
  • Chairperson of the Committee for Equity and Access, University of Pennsylvania Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (2017–2018)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

If elected to the AAS Diversity and Equity Committee, I would help draft accessibility guidelines for all organizational activities by mobilizing my personal experiences and professional expertise as a wheelchair user and historian of disability policy in Japanese and global contexts. To date, the AAS has demonstrated its commitment to inclusion by offering some people from diverse backgrounds accommodations on an ad-hoc basis at specific events: for example, quiet rooms, infant changing stations, childcare services, and hybrid presentation modes. I would expand and formalize such accommodations by introducing a list of best practices for real-time captioning, image descriptions, preferred terminology, and related services for all AAS programs, which can empower disabled persons, foreign language learners, sexual minorities, and other demographics. By working with members of the AAS community to implement new policies around accessibility, I aim to incentivize the recruitment and retention of diverse academics interested in Asia, reduce the association’s carbon footprint, and amplify its contributions towards a more equitable society.

Lin Li

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of St. Thomas

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: East Asia

Specialization or research interests: Trained in East Asian history with a minor in gender and women’s studies, Lin is interested in the interactions among gender, disability, race, and imperialism in East Asia and across the Pacific. 

Publications

  • “Integrating Black Feminist Studies, Transforming ‘Comfort Women’ Scholarship,” invited paper contribution to an edited volume on latest trends in studies on the “comfort women” issue edited by Mary McCarthy (forthcoming 2023/24).
  • “‘Comfort Women’ Memorials at the Crossroads of Ultranationalist, Feminist, and Decolonial Critiques: Triangulating Japan, South Korea, and the United States,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 43, no. 3 (forthcoming January 2023).
  • Review of Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress, Journal of Asian Studies 78, no. 4 (2019): 1001-3.

Service to the Profession

  • Co-chair, the North American Asian Feminist Collective caucus, National Women’s Studies Association (2022–present); active committee member on the caucus since 2019
  • Editor and contributor to Gender News, Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University (2020–present)
  • Co-organizer, Third and Fourth Trans-Asia Graduate Student Conferences, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2015–2016, 2014–2015)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

If I were elected a non-student member of the Diversity and Equity Committee, I would be dedicated to making three major contributions to AAS leadership and governance through my service: (1) bringing in an anti-racist feminist of color lens, which means I will actively plan academic talks, forums, teaching resource sessions, and in-person events at Annual Conferences that address how the field of Asian Studies can be transformed through feminist and anti-racist perspectives; (2) promoting a wider awareness of barriers faced by scholars with disabilities in the field of Asian Studies, and implementing appropriate accommodations and overall changes to make virtual events and in-person conferences more inclusive and equitable; and (3) supporting students and junior scholars of Asian Studies, especially those who are of international immigrant status, who don’t have stable funding, and who have young children.

Wen Liu

Current position: Assistant Research Fellow

Institution/Affiliation: Academia Sinica

Discipline: Institute of Ethnology

Area or countries of interest: Taiwan, East Asia, Transpacific

Specialization or research interests: queer theory, Asian/American Studies, diaspora, affect theory, critical race theory, decoloniality, interimperial rivalry

Publications

  • “Boundless China and Backward Asians: Hegemonic Confucianism as Epistemological Violence in Queer Psychology,” Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 56 (2022): 491–505.
  • Editor, with Chien, J.N., Chung, C., and Tse, E., Reorienting Hong Kong’s Struggle: Leftism, Decoloniality, and Internationalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
  • “Complicity and Resistance: Asian American Body Politics in Black Lives Matter,” Journal of Asian American Studies 21, no. 3 (2018): 421-451.

Service to the Profession

  • Chair, North American Asian Feminists Caucus at National Women’s Studies Association (2020–2022)
  • Co-Director, Taiwan Feminist Scholars Association (2021–2022)
  • Editorial Board member, Current Sociology (2020–2023)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

My vision for the position is to increase interdisciplinary and inter-regional dialogues, specifically between Asian Studies and Asian American Studies. In light of the globalization of Black struggles as well as the increasingly hostile conservative backlash, I believe it’s critical for the Association for Asian Studies to closely engage with the questions of race and racial power in the context of Asia and the Asian diaspora. I would like to propose programs and special issues that deal with Black-Asian interracial solidarity and critically approach questions around the racial formation in Asian societies.

David Oh

Current position: Associate Professor of Communication Arts

Institution/Affiliation: Ramapo College of New Jersey

Discipline: Communication

Area or countries of interest: South Korea

Specialization or research interests: Korean media culture & alterity; transnational reception of Korean popular culture (racial difference and diaspora)

Publications

  • “‘Feminists Really Are Crazy’: The Isu Station Incident and the Creation of Androcentric, Misogynistic Community on YouTube,” Journal of International & Intercultural Communication (advance online publication).
  • With Han, M. W. “Globalization from Above and Below: Rejecting Superficial Multiculturalism and Igniting Anti-Korean Sentiment in Japan,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 25, no. 1 (2022): 51-67.
  • Whitewashing the Movies: Asian Erasure and White Subjectivity in U.S. Film Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2022). 

Service to the Profession

  • Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, Access Committee, International Communication Association (2021–present)
  • Immediate Past Chair, Critical & Cultural Studies Division, National Communication Association (2022)
  • Minority Faculty Staff Association President, Ramapo College of New Jersey (2020–2021)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

My vision for leadership is to empower all members to have a voice and stake in the direction of AAS. As a scholar with ties to communication, cultural studies, ethnic studies, and contemporary Korean studies and as a colleague with scholarly and service commitments to D.E.I., I would bring a unique perspective as well as intellectual and social commitments to equality and social justice in the field of Asian Studies. My goal would be to make space for those who have been historically marginalized in the field, including scholars of color, queer scholars, women scholars, scholars whose work sits outside the dominant sites of inquiry, and scholars from underrepresented interdisciplinary fields.

Issues

Name of China & Inner Asia Council

Issue 1:  Member vote on changing the China & Inner Asia Council to the East & Inner Asia Council.

At its March 2022 meeting, the AAS Board of Directors approved the following motion:

The name of the CIAC is unique among the association’s four area councils in that its label centers on one particular country. The names of the various councils are intended to encompass the variety of fields in them. Some scholars in the CIAC have felt that highlighting one modern country’s name in the council title misrepresents the diversity of the areas and time periods that they study and marginalizes their work. In order to redress these concerns, we propose changing the name of the “China and Inner Asia Council” (CIAC) to the “East and Inner Asia Council” (EIAC).

The AAS Board of Directors seeks membership approval to change the name of the China & Inner Asia Council to the East & Inner Asia Council in the AAS Constitution and Bylaws.

Current (AAS Constitution):

Article V, Section 7. Councils

(a) The China and Inner Asia Council, the Northeast Asia Council, South Asia Council, and the Southeast Asia Council constitute the four major divisions of the Association relating to areas of scholarly interest in Asia.

Proposed (AAS Constitution)

Article V, Section 7. Councils

(a) The East and Inner Asia Council, the Northeast Asia Council, South Asia Council, and the Southeast Asia Council constitute the four major divisions of the Association relating to areas of scholarly interest in Asia.

If approved, this name change in Section 7(a) of the AAS Constitution will apply to all appearances of “China and Inner Asia Council” throughout the document.

Current (AAS Bylaws)

12. Area Councils

(a) The four major regions of Asia shall be deemed to refer to: China and Inner Asia; Northeast Asia; South Asia; and Southeast Asia.

Proposed (AAS Bylaws)

12. Area Councils

(a) The four major regions of Asia shall be deemed to refer to: East and Inner Asia; Northeast Asia; South Asia; and Southeast Asia.

If approved, this name change in Section 12(a) of the AAS Bylaws will apply to all appearances of “China and Inner Asia Council” throughout the document.

Removal of Gender-Specific Language

Issue 2: Proposed Amendment to Remove Gender-Specific Language from AAS Constitution and Bylaws

This proposal seeks to make the AAS Constitution and Bylaws more inclusive through removal of all gender-specific language in the documents. If approved, all instances of the pronouns “he” and “she” and variations thereof will be changed to “they,” “them,” and “their” throughout the Constitution and Bylaws.

AAS Council Chair Terms of Service

Issue 3. Membership vote on instituting two-year terms of service on the AAS Board for Council Chairs

The AAS Board of Directors proposes the following amendments to sections 12 and 13 of the AAS Bylaws:

Current

Section 12. Area Councils

(a) The four major regions of Asia shall be deemed to refer to: China and Inner Asia; Northeast Asia; South Asia; and Southeast Asia.

(b) There shall be one council to represent each of the four major regions of Asia, designated as: the China and Inner Asia Council; the Northeast Asia Council; the South Asia Council; and the Southeast Asia Council.

(c) Each council shall be charged with promoting and developing the Association’s interest for the geographic area. Collectively, all four area councils and the Council of Conferences shall serve as the major policy body for the Association, and shall serve as liaison between the Board of Directors and the members at large.

(d) Each of the four area councils shall consist of nine members elected for three-year staggered terms so that three new members shall be elected each year.

(e) Each of the four area councils shall elect annually a chairperson and a vice-chairperson. These Council officers may be reelected for up to three terms. The chairperson shall be a member of the Board of Directors.

(f) Insofar as the electoral process permits, each council shall be constituted in such a manner that the several disciplinary and/or geographic interests of the membership concerned with that major region are adequately represented.

(g) A council may establish committees or groups for the study of particular countries, regions, or topics within the area of its specific geographic concern, or for the management of some part of the council’s program. Such committees or groups shall normally have a rotating membership, and will become recognized as a part of the Association upon approval by the Board of Directors. All persons serving on such committees or groups shall be members of the Association. The committee or group must meet the legal, financial, and reporting requirements of the Association.

(h) The Board of Directors shall consult the councils for advice on staffing and policy, and may request each council to designate a representative of that council to serve on any committee of the Association.

Section 13. Council of Conferences

(a) The Council of Conferences represents the interests of the several regional conferences concerned with Asian studies.

(b) It shall be charged with promoting and developing interest in Asia and the encouragement of the scholarly and more popular understanding of Asia in the regions of its concern. The Council of Conferences shall serve as a liaison between the Board of Directors and participants in the various conferences.

(c) The Council shall consist of one member from each regional conference elected for three-year staggered terms so that new members shall be elected each year.

(d) The Council of Conferences shall consult with the constituent conferences to assure an appropriate rotation of actual nominations for the council so that no constituent conference is unrepresented on the council. In case a position becomes vacant among the members of the council, the position shall be filled by the person nominated by the same regional conference who received the next highest number of votes for that position.

(e) The Council of Conferences shall elect its chairperson and vice-chairperson annually from among its membership. These council officers may be reelected for more than one term. The chairperson shall be a member of the Board of Directors.

(f) The Board of Directors shall consult the Council of Conferences on staffing and policy, and may request the council to designate a representative of that council to serve on any committee of the Association.

Proposed:

Section 12. Area Councils

(d) Each of the four area councils shall consist of nine members elected for three-year staggered terms so that three new members shall be elected each year, subject to the exceptions provided for in (e) and (f) in this section.

(e) Each of the four area councils shall elect a Chair every two years and a vice-Chair annually. The Council Chair will serve for two years and may not be reelected; the Vice-Chair may be reelected for up to three terms. The Chair shall be a member of the Board of Directors.

(f) If a Council member is elected as Chair for two years and this would mean that this member would exceed the normal three-year term on the Council, the Council can allow this extension of service for up to two years, during which period the Council will have ten members at any given point in time (with some financial implications and need for cutbacks).

Section 13. Council of Conferences

(c)The Council shall consist of one member from each regional conference elected for three-year staggered terms so that new members shall be elected each year, subject to the exceptions provided for in (f) in this section.

(e) The Council of Conferences shall elect its chairperson every two years and vice-chairperson annually from among its membership. The Chair may not be re-elected; the Vice Chair may be reelected for more than one term. The chairperson shall be a member of the Board of Directors.

(f) If a Council member is elected as Chair for two years and this would mean that this member would exceed the normal three-year term on the Council, the Council can allow this extension of service for up to two years, during which period the Council will have ten members.

Creation of an Executive Committee

Issue 4. Member vote on addition of an Executive Committee to the AAS Constitution and Bylaws

The Association for Asian Studies Board of Directors seeks membership approval for the creation and implementation of an Executive Committee (EC). If approved, the addition of the EC would be reflected in both the Constitution (Article V, Section 10) and the Bylaws (section 22)

Proposed Addition to the AAS Constitution:

Section 10. Executive Committee

(a) The purpose of the Executive Committee (EC) is to add value to the work of the Board of AAS by taking action on behalf of the Board in the case of a crisis or other urgent circumstances when it is difficult for the full Board to meet; by exploring complex strategic issues in order to advise the full Board; by providing counsel to the President and ED, as requested; by overseeing the evaluation of the ED; and by undertaking any other specific tasks formally delegated to the Committee by the Board.

(b) The committee will consist of the President, Past President, Vice President, two (2) council chairs (including the Past Past President region’s chair), one (1) member of the Finance Committee, and ED. The five council chairs are to identify which Council Chair will sit as the second council Chair and, if needed, the BOD will vote on it. All committee members are to have a current AAS membership.

(c) All members of the Executive Committee, except for the Executive Director, have a vote. If there is a tie, then that is a signal that the issue should come before the entire Board.

(d) The President of AAS shall serve as the Committee’s Chair (the “Chair”);

Proposed Addition to the AAS Bylaws:

22. Executive Committee (EC)

(a) The EC will act, if necessary, on behalf of the full AAS Board, in the case of a crisis or other urgent circumstances, when it is extremely difficult to convene the full Board, subject to any specific policies, guidance, or instructions on any given topic given by the full Board.

(b) The EC shall provide counsel to the President and ED on any matters of importance on which they seek advice.

(c) The EC shall consider complex strategically important matters in-depth with a view to advising the full Board and/or making recommendations on a policy or course of action

(d) The EC shall coordinate, oversee, and deliver the results of the evaluation of the Executive Director and report these to the full Board.

(e) The Committee will not generally take decisions on the following matters: amending the AAS Bylaws; electing or removing Board members; hiring or firing the Executive Director; approving or changing the budget; or making major structural changes (adding or eliminating programs, approving mergers, or dissolving the corporation).

(g) The Executive Committee reports and is accountable to the full Board. The proceedings and any decisions of the Committee will be communicated as soon as possible after they have occurred. The Committee will provide the minutes of its meetings to the Board. The full AAS Board will always confirm the Committee’s decisions in its next meeting.

(i) Once a year, at a regular meeting, the Board will undertake a review of the functioning of the Executive Committee, to assess the value and efficiency that it has added and identify any issues or concerns.