Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Cornell University

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: South Asia

Specialization or research interests: Colonialism, gender, sexuality, legal history, and increasingly art history

Publications

• Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919-1947 (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
• Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
• “Stabilizing history: statues, monuments, and memorials in Curzon’s India,” Historical Journal 66.2 (2023): 348-69.

Service to the Profession

• Co-chair (2023-2024) and chair (2024-2025), AAS Annual Conference Program Committee
• Member, AAS Annual Conference Program Committee (2010-2012)
• Member, AAS South Asia Council (2006-2009)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am honored to be nominated for the position of vice president of the Association for Asian Studies. As a scholar of colonial and postcolonial South Asia, I’m deeply aware of how important it is to sustain education in global matters that is based on expert knowledge. In a time when there are multiple efforts to shrink universities and the professoriate, academic and professional organizations that support research, teaching, and the creation of credible knowledge from and about Asia are much needed. It is critical to support the next generation of scholars and sustain an infrastructure of support and advocacy for Asian studies.

I am the author of two monographs, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The making of empire (2006) and Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919-1947 (2017) as well as nearly two dozen articles that have appeared in American Historical Review, Journal of Asian Studies, Modern Asian Studies, Journal of Historical Geography and Historical Journal, South Asia, Women’s History Review. In my scholarship, I have been engaged with thinking about the gendered and racial politics of colonialism, why one power occupies and settles in another territory, how those processes are resisted, and what it might mean to fully decolonize. My next book project analyzes the politics of installing and removing colonial statues across the Indian subcontinent. Like my other projects, it is interdisciplinary, drawing from conversations in art and architectural history, urban history, and gender studies. 

In addition to serving on committees within the Association for Asian Studies, I am on the editorial board of the Journal of Asian Studies. Beyond AAS, I have been involved with the American Institute of Indian Studies, the American Historical Association, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, and the North American Conference of British Studies. I currently serve on the editorial board of the Journal of British Studies. At Cornell, I have served on the steering committee of the South Asia Program, directed the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program (2017-2020), and directed the Humanities Scholars Program (2020-2023). Starting in 2025, I will become the Taylor Family Director of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell.

Having benefitted from the work done by the Association for Asian Studies, I am at a time in my career where it is important to pay forward the many advantages I received as a young scholar.

Current position: Professor of Global Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies

Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley

Discipline: Gender and Women’s Studies; South Asian Studies; Transnational Asian Studies

Area or countries of interest: South Asia; Bangladesh; Middle East; Global South

Specialization or research interests: Transnational feminism; history and politics of feminist movements; activisms; critical approaches to development; political economy; Islam and politics

Publications

• Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism (University of California Press, 2021; South Asia edition by University Press Limited, 2022)
• “Between Orientalism and Anti-Muslim Racism: Pakistan, the United States, and Women’s Transnational Activism in the Early Cold War Interlude,” meridians 20:2, special issue on “Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Muslim Racism” (2022)
• “Muslim Women’s Religious and Social Activism in South Asia,” in Oxford Handbook of Islam and Women, edited by Asma Afsaruddin (Oxford University Press, 2024)

Service to the Profession

• Member, AAS South Asia Council (2019-2022); Chair, AAS South Asia Council (2021-2022)
• Faculty Director, Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies, UC Berkeley
• Associate Editor (2022-2025); Co-Editor (2025-onward), Journal of Bangladesh Studies

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am a qualitative and interdisciplinary social scientist interested in the political mobilization of Muslim women, especially in South Asia. My scholarly work complicates and challenges misperceptions regarding the oppression of Muslim women, provides a critical perspective on social, economic, and political development, and enriches the idea of the Muslim world by bringing in a South Asian and, specifically, a Bangla-language and Bangladeshi, perspective. In my recent and current projects, I broaden the scope of my longstanding interests across time and space to examine both the deeper history of South Asian Muslim women’s activism and the complex network of international connections forged by these activists. I do so by interweaving theoretical approaches, methodologies, and research that have generally not been put in dialogue across boundaries of disciplines, historical periods, and area studies. My recent book, Sisters in the Mirror: A Long and Entangled History of Women, Islam, and Global Politics (University of California Press, 2021), was selected as a 2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association and awarded the 2023 Coomaraswamy Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies.

Alongside my own academic projects, I have eagerly sought out opportunities to help shape the fields of South Asian, Middle East, Islamic, postcolonial, and women’s and gender studies by collaborating with colleagues from other disciplines. To that end, I was guest co-editor, with two economists, of a special issue of the highly ranked journal Feminist Economics on “Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities.” In 2008-2024, I served as Associate Editor for South and Central Asia for the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (EWIC), where I worked with colleagues responsible for scholarship about the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. I am currently an Associate Editor (and incoming Co-Editor) of the Journal of Bangladesh Studies (to be published by Brill starting in 2025), a member of the board of the American Institute for Bangladesh Studies, and Director of the Center for Bangladesh Studies at UC Berkeley (the only such university center outside Bangladesh). All three positions allow me to collaborate with colleagues across a range of disciplines in order to support scholars of all ranks and showcase the best new scholarship in Bangladesh studies, itself understood in the most capacious terms possible.

My commitment to “Asian studies” extends to my teaching and to my earliest days as a faculty member. For over two decades at my previous institution, Rice University, I worked with my colleagues to shape and transform the curriculum and the mission of the interdisciplinary program in Asian studies that eventually became a self-standing department in transnational Asian studies. Over this period, we moved, for example, from classes in “Asian civilizations” to thinking about “Asia as a transnational space” and to think about connections not only with Asian American studies but also with African studies, Soviet and Russian studies, and Middle East studies, to name just a few areas.

Since moving to UC Berkeley in 2022, I have served as Equity Advisor for the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, a role that has allowed me to strategize with colleagues across campus on ways to enhance representation and diversity among students, staff, and faculty in meaningful ways. My positions as chair of Global Studies and director of the Center for Bangladesh Studies provide valuable administrative experience as well as the opportunity to reflect on Bangladesh, South Asia, and across and beyond Asia from a variety of perspectives.

I am deeply honored to have been nominated as a candidate for the AAS Vice President’s position. My sustained commitment to AAS dates to my graduate school days. In my time as a member of the South Asia Council (SAC) in 2019-2022 and as SAC chair in 2021-2022, I participated in numerous conversations, formal and informal, with AAS members (as well as lapsed and non-members) about the need to increase the visibility of South Asia, and especially of the “smaller” and poorly resourced South Asian countries, in AAS priorities, policies, and, indeed, conference panels. If elected, I would work toward the greater visibility of South Asia in AAS by supporting the objectives of the AAS project recently funded by the Swedish International Development Agency and the regular AAS-in-Asia conferences to better engage with—and seek input from—Asianists and institutions based in South and Southeast Asia. I would also support AAS’s ongoing efforts, such as through the Global Asias Initiative, to connect to new geographies, forge new connections, and engage in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary conversations that can offer us fresh new perspectives on Asia itself—from the past, from the present, from a distance, from the vantage point of historically marginalized communities and under-resourced institutions as well as through the work of historically underrepresented scholars.

Current position: Dean of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Global Chinese Studies

Institution/Affiliation: NYU Shanghai

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: China, Tibet, Inner Asia, Southeast and South Asia

Specialization or research interests: China, Islam in Asia, race and ethnicity, Inter-Asian relations

Publications

• “The Lhasa Uprisings of 1959 and 2008: Muslims in a Buddhist Land,” In Islamic Ecumene: Comparing Global Muslim Societies, ed. Eric Tagliacozzo and David S. Powers (Cornell University Press, 2023)
• Co-authored with Yurong Atwill, Sources in Chinese History: Diverse Perspectives from 1644 to the Present, 2nd Edition (Routledge, 2021).
• Islamic Shangri-la: Inter-Asian Relations and Lhasa’s Muslim Communities, 1600-1960 (University of California Press, 2018)

Service to the Profession

• Editorial Advisory Board Member, International Journal of Islam in Asia (2019-present)
• Scholar Escort, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations Congressional Staff Delegation (2016)
• Annual Conference Program Committee member, Association for Asian Studies (2011-2013)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

AAS plays a critical role in the current political moment we find ourselves. Now more than ever, we need leadership able to assist AAS in its quest to promote academic, intellectual, and scholarly engagement through a variety of diverse initiatives—both in Asia and the rest of the world. I am especially concerned about the ways that the shifting geopolitical, ethnic, and racial tensions disproportionally affect students of Asia and Asian scholars. With several decades of living, researching, and working across Asia, I am particularly committed to joining EIAC to facilitate robust responses to those threats affecting students and researchers based in Asia. 

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Skidmore College

Discipline: Ethnomusicology

Area or countries of interest: Mongolia, China

Specialization or research interests: Music, ethnic politics, listening, China-Mongolia border, gender, cultural appropriation, transnationalism, bowed instruments

Publications

• “Music and Ethnic Identity in Inner Mongolia.” In Mongolian Sound Worlds, edited by Jennifer Post, Sunmin Yoon, and Charlotte D’Evelyn (University of Illinois Press, 2022).
• “Khöömii, Chooryn Duu, and Dissonant Heritage in Inner Mongolia, China.” Asian Music 52, no. 2 (2021): 139-69.
• “Grasping Intangible Heritage and Reimagining Inner Mongolia: Folk-Artist Albums and a New Logic for Musical Representation in China.” Journal of Folklore Research 55, no. 1 (2018): 21-48.

Service to the Profession

• Morin Khuur Center of North America Board Member (2022-present) and Biennial Conference Organizer (2021, 2023)
• Secretary, Association for Chinese Music Research (2008-2014)
• Founding Member and Editorial Staff, Society for Ethnomusicology Student News (2008-2011)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a research specialist of Inner Mongolia and Chinese Inner Asia, I would look forward to balancing the needs of the various East and Inner Asian specialists represented by this council. I am interested in recruiting new AAS & EIAC members and amplifying interdisciplinary scholarship, especially in fields such as the performing arts, visual arts, popular culture studies, media studies, gender studies, and diaspora studies. I am hard-working, collaborative, and collegial and look forward to serving the East and Inner Asia Council however I can!

Current position: Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature

Institution/Affiliation: University of California at Davis

Discipline: Chinese literature and film

Area or countries of interest: China

Specialization or research interests: Chinese literature, Chinese cinema, Hong Kong cinema, narrative study, poetry, cultural theory, comparative literature, East-West comparative poetics, globalization study

Publications

• Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Visual Culture: Envisioning the Nation (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021)
• Lyric Poetry and Solidarity Society in Hong Kong in the 1950s (一九五〇年代香港詞壇與堅社) (Chung-hwa Book Co.中華書局, 2022)
• From Historicity to Fictionality: The Chinese Poetics of Narrative (Stanford University Press, 1994);  Korean edition: Ghil, 2001; Chinese edition: Beijing University Press, 2012.

Service to the Profession

• General Editor, “Critical Interventions” book series, University of Hawaii Press (2009-2019)
• International Advisory Board member, Journal of Asian Cinema (current)
• Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, University of California at Davis (2016-2019)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As I see it, the AAS is a unique international organization that builds bridges and crosses borders in the advancement of our knowledge of Asia. It fosters an inclusive, free-spirited, multi-disciplinary, and diverse environment for educating people about Asia and the world. The organization should continue to help its members to prosper as teachers and scholars. It should do its best in facilitating intellectual stimulation and scholarly exchange among all members in the growing and dynamic field of Asian studies.

Current position: Elizabeth C. Ducey Professor of Anthropology

Institution/Affiliation: Reed College

Discipline: Anthropology

Area or countries of interest: China, Tibet, Mongolia, Himalayan region

Specialization or research interests: I work in China and Tibet, on issues of border/frontier relations, feminist/queer and critical anthropological approaches to race, ethnicity and gender relations, economic anthropological approaches to state-led capitalism and development, the anthropology of religion and ritual, specifically histories and cultural politics of lay Buddhist and Buddhist monastic practices, political anthropological approaches to rethinking states and empires.

Publications

• Co-editor and author, with Franck Bille and Lisa Min, [Redacted]: Ethnography Under Political Repression (Polity Press, 2024)
• The Battle for Fortune: State-led Development, Personhood and Power Among Tibetans in China (Cornell University Press and Weatherhead East Asian Institute, 2018)
• “The Sociopolitical Lives of Dead Bodies: Tibetan Self-Immolation as Mass Media,” Cultural Anthropology 30, no. 3 (August 2015)

Service to the Profession

• Chair, E. Gene Smith Book Prize in Inner Asian Studies selection committee (2023)
• Inner Asia Book Review Editor, Journal of Asian Studies (2019-2022)
• Program Officer, Society for East Asian Anthropology, AAA, (2010-2012)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I have served in various capacities to highlight and elevate Inner Asian studies in the AAS and in the AAA (American Anthropological Association). Most recently, I served three years as Inner Asia Book Review Editor for the Journal of Asian Studies, and chaired the evaluation committee for the E. Gene Smith book prize in Inner Asian Studies. I strongly believe that, especially given recent historical and political developments in Asia, it is very important to promote critical scholarly work in Inner Asian regions. As Book Review Editor for the Journal of Asian Studies, I also worked hard to diversify representation of book authors and reviewers by reaching out to, recruiting, and mentoring non-white, non-western scholars.

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Santa Barbara

Discipline: Literary Studies, Religious Studies

Area or countries of interest: China and anywhere touched by Literary Sinitic, from Dunhuang to Japan to Vietnam to the United States

Specialization or research interests: Medieval Chinese literature and religion, Buddhist poetics, comparative literature, translation studies, manuscript studies, digital humanities

Publications

• Poet-Monks: The Invention of Buddhist Poetry in Late Medieval China (Cornell University Press, 2024)
• Co-editor (with Jeffrey Tharsen and Jing Chen), “Digital Methods and Traditional Chinese Literary Studies,” special issue of the Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 5.2 (2018).
• “The Medieval Chinese Gāthā and Its Relationship to Poetry.” T’oung Pao 103.1–3 (2017): 94–154.

Service to the Profession

• East Asia section editor, Journal of the American Oriental Society (2024–present)
• Steering committee member, American Academy of Religion seminar, “Language, Poiesis, and Buddhist Experiments with the Possible” (2022–2027)
• Executive committee member, Western Branch of the American Oriental Society (2019–2022)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

In this moment of crisis, as humanities programs are dismantled at the recommendation of consulting groups and the development of AI threatens to undermine the value of writing and language study, the AAS has a crucial role to play in ensuring the livelihood of our field. I am interested in working together with AAS colleagues to develop strategies for confronting these challenges head on. Bringing more than a decade of service experience with me, I hope to call attention to the diversity of voices communicating in Literary Sinitic (Classical Chinese), the radical possibilities opened up by careful attention to linguistic and bibliographic details, the new research horizons charted by rapidly-developing digital tools, and the necessity of fairness and justice in the structuring of our academic programs. I would be honored to serve on the East and Inner Asia Council in order to promote the AAS’s core mission and advocate for our field if elected.

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: National University of Singapore

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: China

Specialization or research interests: History of Middle Period China; Chinese religions;  the Mongol-Yuan and Ming Empires; socio-cultural history; border, ethnicity, epigraphic studies, etc.

Publications

• “Textual, Material, Visual: Exploring an Epigraphic Approach to the History of Imperial China,” Journal of Chinese History, 7.1 (2023): 73-99.
• “Cultivation, Salvation, and Obligation: Quanzhen Daoist Thoughts on Family Abandonment,” History of Religions 62.2 (2022): 115-155.
• In the Wake of the Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China, 1200-1600 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018).

Service to the Profession

• Editorial Board, Journal of Chinese History (2024-present)
• Program Committee, The Third Middle Period China Humanities Conference (220-1600), Yale University (2023)
• Deputy Head, Department of History, National University of Singapore (2020-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I envision AAS as the leading organization in rigorous global scholarly exchanges and communications. Drawing on my twenty years of experience studying and working at five universities in the U.S. and Asia (Peking University, Yale University, Kyoto University, the University of Pennsylvania, and National University of Singapore), I am committed to supporting the East and Inner Asia Council in actively sponsoring promising young scholars from Asia to attend AAS conferences in North America, and vice versa. Another way to encourage a global organization is to facilitate multilingual panels at the annual AAS conference—something I have helped organize in the Third Middle Period China Conference. I am excited about the opportunity to join the East and Inner Asia Council and advance these initiatives that enhance mutual understanding among scholars and, more broadly, societies across the Pacific Ocean.

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Hong Kong

Discipline: Chinese Literature and Socio-cultural History

Area or countries of interest: China

Specialization or research interests: Gender and Sexuality in Traditional Chinese Literature, History, and Culture.

Publications

• 《戲外之戲：清中晚期京城的戲園文化與梨園私寓制》(Drama Beyond the Drama: The Private Apartment System and Beijing Theatre Culture, 1790-1911) (Hong Kong University Press, 2017)
• Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004)
• 《明清社會性愛風氣》 (Sex and Sensibility in Ming and Qing Society) (Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, 2000); translated into Japanese and Korean

Service to the Profession

• Member, International Advisory Board, Asian Studies Review (2018-present)
• Member, Board of Directors, CHINOPERL Journal of Chinese Oral & Performing Literature (2019-present)
• Fellow, Hong Kong Academy of Humanities (2019-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

In serving the AAS on the East and Inner Asia Council (EIAC) I will seek to support all five overarching goals of our Association’s 2022-26 Strategic Plan. Given my location in Hong Kong and experience in East Asia, I am best placed to focus on growing AAS engagement in Asia, including in areas currently underrepresented. Now that I am relatively free of administrative obligations, I also look forward to working for the growth and maintenance of our membership, as well as supporting AAS’ ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. These are goals that support my own commitment to collaborative intellectual work advancing respect for peoples of all societies, regionally and internationally.

Current position: East Asian Studies Librarian

Institution/Affiliation: University of Massachusetts Amherst

Discipline: Librarianship

Area or countries of interest: Japan, Korea, Taiwan

Specialization or research interests: History of Japanese toilets, representations of trauma/war in picture books for children, Japanese librarians during times of war and conflict, libraries’ contributions to extensive reading in CJK languages

Publications

• “From Reading Guidance to Thought Control: Wartime Japanese Libraries.” Library Trends 55, no. 3 (April 12, 2007): 551–69.
• “Banned books in the hands of Japanese librarians: From Meiji to postwar.” In Negotiating Censorship in Modern Japan, pp. 93-111 (Routledge, 2013).
• “The Coming of Age of Japanese Library Services to the International Community: The View from North America.” Journal of College and University Libraries 70 (2004): 42-48.

Service to the Profession

• Council on East Asian Libraries, Committee on Public Services (chair, 2002-2005, 2014-2017)
• Bibliography of Asian Studies Advisory Board (2005-2015)
• North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

These are very difficult days for young scholars trying to make a living in academia. Funding is tight, tenure-stream jobs are in short supply, expectations are soaring, but we are also seeing a monumental shift in the way scholarship is being conducted and made available to the public. AAS is working hard to put policies and support in place to make it possible for the this generation of young scholars to be able to conduct their research, network, and communicate globally in and about Asia. As a librarian, my job has always been to connect readers to the materials they need. Service to the AAS is exactly the same thing.

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Carnegie Mellon University

Discipline: Japan Studies

Area or countries of interest: Japan

Specialization or research interests: Modern and contemporary Japanese literature, the history of writing in East Asian, literary criticism

Publications

• “Written Language and Contemporary Japanese Literature—Thinking About Orthography, Thinking About Narrative,” in Nande Nihon kenkyū suru no / Why Study Japan?, eds. Sachi Schmidt-Hori and Wendy Matsumura (Bungaku tsūshin: October 2023)
• “Shingata corona sōdō kara Nihon AIDS bungaku o kangaeru” [Thoughts on Japanese AIDS Literature during the Coronavirus], Gendai shisō (Tokyo: May 2020)
• “Nihongo hyoki no architecture / The Architecture of Written Japanese,” bilingual serialized essay published at hituzigusa, Hituzi shobo (2022-present)

Service to the Profession

• Organizing Committee, Graduate Student Workshop, International Conference on Japanese Language Education (ICJLE) (August 1-3, 2024)
• Co-organizer with Raja Adal (University of Pittsburgh), Unicode and the Humanities (February 2-3, 2024)
• Steering committee, Center for the Arts and Society, Carnegie Mellon University (2024-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

One of the most exciting developments in East Asian Studies has been the increased ability for scholars based outside of East Asia to communicate in real time with scholars in East Asia, and vice-versa. Better facilitation of these connections, which dovetails nicely with the Association for Asian Studies’ mission to foster “international intellectual exchange” and to promote “network building,” should be something the Northeast Asia Council continues to build and develop.

Current position: Professor of Political Science and International Studies

Institution/Affiliation: Washington College

Discipline: Political Science

Area or countries of interest: Japan, East Asia

Specialization or research interests: Japanese politics and foreign policy; East Asian military security, including how changing regional demographics (such as rapidly aging and shrinking populations, youth bulges, and gender imbalances) affect the regional security environment.

Publications

• “Implications of Changing Global Population Sizes & Aging on National Security.” Japan Spotlight (January/February 2024): 37-40.
• “The Rising Security Challenge of East Asia’s ‘Dual Graying’: Implications for U.S.-Led Security Architecture in the Indo-Pacific.” Asia Policy 18: 2 (April 2023): 75-100.
• Japan’s Security Renaissance: New Policies and Politics for the 21st Century (Columbia University Press, 2017).

Service to the Profession

• Executive (Co)Editor, Asian Security (2018-present)
• Member, East-West Center Washington Council on Indo-Pacific Relations (2022-present)
• Board member, Undergraduate Education division, American Political Science Association (2005-2007)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I believe that it is important for AAS leadership to continue to strive for representation across disciplines and to seek to address imbalances in conference participation. Especially for more junior scholars, I see the AAS as a place to offer community and support for country-specific study, including through AAS research travel grants. For more senior scholars, I believe the field of Asian Studies benefits also from those seeking to understand a specific country or phenomenon in a broader regional context and/or an interdisciplinary context, which has been the direction of my scholarship for my last two peer-reviewed books.

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Davis

Discipline: Literary studies

Area or countries of interest: Japan

Specialization or research interests: Modern Japanese literature and film; Gender, sexuality, and literature; Feminism; Early twentieth-century sexology; Kimono and material culture 

Publications

• Reading the Kimono in Twentieth-Century Japanese Literature and Film (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2023).
• Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese Literature and Culture (Stanford University Press, 2010).
• “The Husband’s Chastity: Progress, Equality and Difference in 1930s Japan,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38, no. 2 (2013): 327-352.

Service to the Profession

• Director of Undergraduate Studies (UCD Comparative Literature: 2017-19; Indiana University East Asian Languages and Cultures: 2014-16; 2011-12)/Undergraduate Faculty Advisor for Japanese (UCD East Asian Languages and Cultures: 2020-21 and 2018 Winter)
• UC Davis Academic Senate Faculty Distinguished Research Award Committee (2017-19)
• East Asian Studies Center Executive Committee (Indiana University: 2008-09)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a scholar of modern Japanese literature and other multidisciplinary fields, I’m excited to see the ways in which East Asian Studies have increasingly become both interdisciplinary and interregional. As academics, we might focus on one specific discipline or region in our own research, but our studies are enriched by understanding connections and influences, both synchronic and diachronic, beyond disciplinary borders or geographic areas. I also feel that our awareness of present global concerns, everything from climate change to social inequities, will continue to be a critical part of academic inquiry and a means to revisit established scholarly “norms.” Not all scholarship focuses on the present, of course, but current global challenges are important to our engagement as scholars of East Asia.

As a teacher, my goal has always been to help students become excited about expanding their knowledge of the world and inspire them to have confidence in their own interpretations. As a mentor (and mentee) within academia, I see success in mentorships when they are based on mutual learning and support, as well as on a strong awareness of common goals.

I have worked in various institutions: a small private liberal arts college on the East Coast, a Midwest R-1 public university, and currently the University of California, Davis, where I have appointments in two departments. As a minority and a woman, and with my background at different institutions, I would bring a range of service experiences to this position on the Northeast Asia Council. I have served as Director of Undergraduate studies and a member of a Graduate studies committee, led national searches for academic positions, and directed or co-directed conferences/symposium-type events. At the college/university level, I have served on committees related to fellowships, research awards, overseas study, East Asian exchange, an East Asian Studies Center, a Humanities Program, emeriti affairs, diversity issues, and libraries.

Current position: Associate Professor Japanese Culture and Language; Chair, Department of World Languages and Cultures

Institution/Affiliation: Cal State Monterey Bay

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Japan

Specialization or research interests: Modern Japanese history, Okinawa studies, food studies, Pacific studies, cultural history, U.S.-Japan relations

Publications

• “Your Local Chinese Place Has a ‘Shelter-in-Place Dinner Special.’” Gastronomica 1 August 2020; 20 (3): 30–32.
• Co-author, with Lex McClellan-Ufugusuku and Drew Richardson, “The 50th Anniversary of the Koza Uprising.” Public History Weekly 9 (2021): 6.
• “From Tokyo to Wounded Knee: Two Afterlives of the Sunagawa Struggle,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture 10, no. 2 (Winter 2017).

Service to the Profession

• Associate Director, Okinawa Memories Initiative (2017-Present)
• Director, Global Base Studies Project (2023-Present)
• Reviewer, Journal of Contemporary History (2020)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As an educator working at a Pacific-facing institution and as someone who has researched Okinawa for many years, I am excited to see Asian Studies blur the lines with Oceanic and Pacific Studies, and I see how this new direction has offered a new range of classroom and research materials.

As a department chair at a medium-sized public university, I actively address the budget and enrollment challenges many institutions face and believe there are opportunities for AAS to build and further collaborate with underserved institutions and communities. To bring more students into our field, I aim to help connect more institutions serving working-class populations with opportunities in Asia, particularly Japan, where I have developed a wide and active network of university and civic partners. In the Japanese Studies classroom and as an organizer and leader of field research in Japan, I have seen the positive impacts of close mentorship with students and how such experiences help propel their post-secondary educations and career aspirations.

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Syracuse University

Discipline: Communication and media studies

Area or countries of interest: Korea

Specialization or research interests: Alterity in Korean media culture; Transnational audience reception of Korean popular culture (fandom, diaspora)

Publications

• “Theorizing cultural appropriation: Complications of globalization and power in hybrid South Korean media.” Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context 17, no. 1 (2024): 25-50.
• “‘Feminists really are crazy’: The Isu Station incident and the creation of androcentric, misogynistic community on YouTube.” Journal of International & Intercultural Communication 16, no. 2 (2023): 108-124.
• Editor, Mediating the South Korean other: Representations and discourses of difference in the post/neocolonial nation state (University of Michigan Press, 2023).

Service to the Profession

• Vice President, Korean American Communication Association (current)
• Chair, Critical & Cultural Studies Division, National Communication Association (2021)
• Chair, Asian/Pacific American Communication Studies Division (2016)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a scholar whose disciplinary home is primarily in communication and media studies, my nomination is a bit of an unusual fit for the Northeast Asia Council, yet I accept the nomination primarily because my nomination signals a willingness to stretch beyond usual disciplinary boundaries in order to (1) value media scholars in the study of transnational East Asian media flows such as hallyu, (2) to value intersectional research that critically examines difference in East Asian contexts and their diasporas, and (3) to value Global Asias and the crossroads of Korean and Korean American Studies. If elected, my intention would be to create space for underrepresented disciplines and scholars to engage in productive dialogue with the field so that it accounts for the increasingly fuzzy boundaries of area studies in a global world. As a member of the council, I would act in the fiduciary interests of the association while seeking to expand its scope so that underrepresented scholars can find support and community, which allows the field to more fully represent the dynamism and heterogeneity of East Asia.

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Michigan

Discipline: Political Science

Area or countries of interest: Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong

Specialization or research interests: Authoritarian politics in North East Asia, colonial history and legacy, conflict and violence

Publications

• With Cecilia Hyunjung Mo and Christopher Paik, “Can a Sense of Shared War Experience Increase Refugee Acceptance?” Journal of Conflict Resolution (forthcoming)
• With Wenhui Yang, “How Natural Resources Affect Corruption in China,” World Development 175 (2024): 106471.
• With Sunkyoung Park and Hyun Joo Yang, “In Strongman We Trust: The Political Legacy of the New Village Movement in South Korea,” American Journal of Political Science 67, no. 4 (2023): 850-866.

Service to the Profession

• Associate Editor, Journal of East Asian Studies
• Associate Editor, Journal of Public Policy
• Co-organizer, Mini-Conference on Asian Political History at  APSA Annual Meeting

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I firmly believe that East Asian studies have gained significant momentum within the broader social sciences, including Political Science, Sociology, and Economics, and are becoming increasingly vital in fields that have traditionally been Western-centric. I have actively advised and mentored numerous young scholars, encouraging them to study East Asia to contribute to general theoretical advancements and expand empirical understanding in their respective disciplines. Furthermore, I have organized several workshops and served on the editorial boards of journals specializing in East Asian studies, including my current role with the Journal of East Asian Studies. Serving on the Northeast Asia Council of the AAS would be a privilege and an honorable opportunity to promote further advancements and enhance the representation of East Asia in social sciences.

Current position: Associate Professor of East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature

Institution/Affiliation: Brown University

Discipline: Literature

Area or countries of interest: Japan, Korea, Vietnam

Specialization or research interests: Modern Japanese and Korean literature; queer culture and history; gender and sexuality; colonialism in the context of East Asia

Publications

• A Century of Queer Korean Fiction (Modern Language Association, 2023)
• “朝鮮戦争期のジェンダーと帝国主義の記述–––佐多稲子の場合” [Writing Gender and Imperialism during the Korean War: The Case of Sata Ineko.] Japanese translation by Osaki Harumi. In Iida Yūko, et. al. ed.『プロレタリア文学とジェンダー: 階級•ナラティブ•イン ターセクショナリテ』[Proletarian Literature and Gender: Class, Narrative and Intersectionality] (Seikyūsha, 2022), pp. 177-197.
• “Forms of Attachment: Ardent Female Intimacies in the 1920s.” In Heekyoung Cho, ed., Routledge Companion to Korean Literature (Routledge, 2021), pp. 473-487.

Service to the Profession

• New England Representative, AAS Council of Conferences (2016-2019)
• Chair, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, East Asian Studies, Brown University (2023-present)
• U.S. Student Fulbright National Screening Committee (several years)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

With academic freedom under attack at universities around the world, and DEI initiatives increasingly imperiled in the United States, I hope the AAS can continue its emphasis on fostering research excellence, international exchange and public outreach, but also double down on a commitment to free inquiry, the fair and equitable treatment of all academic workers around the world, and the promotion of diversity and inclusion through paradigms that are especially meaningful to the societies we study in Asia. The AAS has in recent years worked to expand representation in Asia itself and shown solidarity with oppressed people worldwide—work I hope its leadership continues to prioritize. Enabling a wide range of scholars—at all ranks of the profession and from many different backgrounds—to find common cause as well as achieve their professional goals is a vision the leadership and governance structure of AAS should embrace tightly.

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Montreal

Discipline: South Asian Studies

Area or countries of interest: South Asia, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka. Bangladesh, Southeast Asia, Singapore

Specialization or research interests: Hindi drama and theatre, Cultural Identity, Gender and women’s studies, Discourses of otherness and marginalization, Bollywood film, Environmental and cultural discourses, South Asian religions and cultures, Religion and Politics

Publications

• Cultural Identity in Hindi Plays: Poetics, Politics and Theatre in India (Oxford University Press, 2023)
• Editor, Rethinking the Body in South Asian Traditions (Routledge, 2021)
• Editor, The Other in South Asian Religion, Literature and Film: Perspectives on Otherism and Otherness (Routledge, 2014)

Service to the Profession

• Past President, Canadian Society for the Study of Religion (2024-2026)
• President, Canadian Society for the Study of Religion (2022-2024)
• Series Editor, Routledge Series on South Asian Culture (2020-2025)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

In my view, one of the most exciting developments in South Asian Studies is the recent decolonial studies on issues related to caste, women, and minorities as well as the renewed attention to pressing questions of climate change. There were three fascinating panels on caste, and several panels on women’s issues and the environment, at the last AAS conference in Seattle. I believe that it would be important to have more South Asia panels on these questions, as well as new border-crossing panels on social justice, diversity and inclusion, and climate change across Asia, in collaboration with the other councils of the AAS.

Over the past 12 years, I have supervised seven graduate students, who have completed their studies successfully. I believe that successful teaching and mentoring implies putting students first, motivating them to develop their full potential, and enabling them to succeed. I also encourage my students to take on positions as graduate teaching and research assistants, as this provides invaluable professional experience.

Regarding my organizational and administrative experience, I served as President of the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion from 2022 to 2024, and am currently serving as Past President of the CSSR. I am also serving as Series Editor of the Routledge Series on South Asian Cultures. Most recently, I helped to organize Congress 2024 and served as Local Area Coordinator for Congress 2024 of the Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences, which is the largest conference of the humanities and social sciences in Canada.

I have been a member of the Association for Asian Studies for over 20 years. I have helped organize and chair several AAS panels and have presented papers, chaired sessions, and attended regularly the AAS Annual Conferences over the past 20 years. With your support, I would like to continue serving the Association for Asian Studies to contribute to the success of the Association and the success of the South Asia Council.

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Jahangirnagar University

Discipline: Anthropology

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

Specialization or research interests: 1947 Partition of British India, Bengal Borderland, Memory, Amnesia and History, South Asian Studies,  Border and Borderland Studies

Publications

• Partition as Border-Making: East Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh (Routledge, 2022)
• “Passage Through Partition: Stories of Five Families” in Migration, Memories, and the “Unfinished” Partition (Routledge, 2024)
• “The Living Labyrinth of ‘Prolonged Partition’” in Revisiting Partition: Contestation, Narratives and Memories (Primus Books, 2022)

Service to the Profession

• Chair, Department of Anthropology, Jahangirnagar University (2019-2022)
• Editor, Nrivijnana Patrika (in Bengali) (2017-2018); Manuscript Reviewer: Cambridge University Press, London (2024), Routledge India (2023), University Press Limited, Dhaka (2022)
• Jointly organized an International Web Symposium on “Fight for Rights of Bengali Muslim Women in the Post-Partition Era,” International Society of Bengal Studies (2022)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I have been teaching in Bangladesh for 29 years in the Department of Anthropology, Jahangirnagar University, serving as Chair and senior faculty. I am the author of Partition as Border-Making: East Bengal, East Pakistan, and Bangladesh (Routledge, 2022), which has made a space in the blurred borderline of Anthropology and History and represents a recent focus on Bangladesh within South Asian Studies. My book proposes that the history of Bangladesh needs to be expanded from the 1971 Liberation war against Pakistan to a longer duration history that reaches back to the 1947 British partition of Bengal into Hindu-majority West Bengal and Muslim-majority East Pakistan (later Bangladesh). Because of this new approach, informed by my own biography, the book has found a crossover audience in India, especially Kolkata. While I was a graduate student in England, I found courses on South Asia inherit colonial-Indological hangovers, and are focused on a discussion of caste and village studies that does not take into account the experience of Muslim Bengal. In my teaching and research I aim to evolve this epistemic tradition, in dialogue with scholars from Pakistan and India. I am currently a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for South Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and also interact with the Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies.

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: James Madison University

Discipline: Geography

Area or countries of interest: Nepal, Tibet, Himalaya, Highland Asia, South Asia

Specialization or research interests: Border studies, international development, transportation and energy infrastructure, disasters and humanitarian aid, climate change adaptation

Publications

• “From Goats to Gold Stars: Consumption, Bureaucracy, and Territory in the Nepal-China Borderlands.” Territory, Politics, Governance (2024).
• With A. Lord. “Trans-Himalayan Power Corridors: Infrastructural Politics and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Nepal.” Political Geography 77 (2020).
• With A. Lord and B. Beazley. “‘A Handshake across the Himalayas:’ Chinese Investment, Hydropower Development, and State Formation in Nepal.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 57, no. 3 (October 2016): 403-432.

Service to the Profession

• Executive Council Member, Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies (2014-2022)
• Editorial Board Member, Roadsides journal (2019-current)
• Founding Co-Director, Nepal and Himalayan Geographers Group (2016-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

My research, teaching, and service is boundary crossing in both disciplinary and regional ways. On the South Asia Council, I aim to amplify voices and highlight perspectives from Nepal, Tibet, and the greater Himalaya region. This highland space is a geographical crossroads and a historically social, cultural, and economic intersection between South Asia and East and Inner Asia as well as Southeast and Southwest Asia. By taking the Himalaya as a bridge rather than a border, I will help advance the AAS’s objective to expand and integrate regional knowledges about Asia and build connections to wider global area studies.

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Virginia

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: South Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan

Specialization or research interests: Modern South Asia; Legal, Political, Diplomatic, Intellectual, and Social History

Publications

• Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia (Harvard University Press, 2023)
• Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India (Harvard University Press and Permanent Black, 2011)
• “Toward Mass Education or an ‘Aristocracy of Talent’: Nonalignment and the Making of a Strong India,” in Gyan Prakash, Michael Laffan, and Nikhil Menon eds., The Postcolonial Moment in South and Southeast Asia (Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 183-200

Service to the Profession

• Organized two conferences on religious freedom (2018) and the problem of belonging (2021) in South Asia, both of whose papers were published as edited volumes by Routledge.
• Editorial Board, Asian Affairs (2017-present)
• Reviewer for over 20 journals, 5 book publishers, and fellowship competitions such as the NEH, ACLS, and the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Interdisciplinarity—the ability to speak to readers beyond the confines of one’s own discipline and to learn from other disciplines—has been key to my teaching and research. I would like to contribute towards, and build an environment that fosters such interdisciplinarity, and that enables future generations of scholars to work under conditions of security of tenure and academic freedom. I realize this is very ambitious under present circumstances, but I don’t see any alternative for the humanities.

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: William Paterson University of New Jersey

Discipline: Anthropology

Area or countries of interest: South Asia, India

Specialization or research interests: Caste based artisanal labor, food politics, ethnonationalism, and most recently, sanitation.

Publications

• “Racialization and ethnicization: Hindutva hegemony and caste.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 45, no. 2 (2021): 298-318.
• “Cultural Identity and Beef Festivals: Towards a ‘Multiculturalism against Caste.” Contemporary South Asia 26, no. 3 (2018): 287-304.
• The Culturalization of Caste in India: Identity and inequality in a Multicultural age (Routledge, 2011).

Service to the Profession

• Editorial Advisory Board, Caste: A Global Journal of Social Exclusion (2020-present)
• Elected member, Committee on Minority Issues in Anthropology, American Anthropological Association (2011-2014)
• Editorial Board, Transformations: Journal of Inclusive Scholarship & Pedagogy (2008-2013)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

South Asian studies has grown in intellectual significance over the last two decades in ways that address the underrepresentation of South Asianists as noted in the strategic plan of the AAS. Some of the most significant developments have been in exploring South Asian identities and politics in the diasporas and advancing our knowledge of the resilience and frailties of democracy through studies of South Asian societies and states. An exciting possibility now exists for more South Asian scholars to shape public perceptions of Asia and Asians, contribute to public policies that impact Asian in the diasporas, and to collaborate with a wide range of publics to bring issues of social justice as a central concern to all. As a leader at my university for almost two decades, I have directed the general education program for several years, been a faculty senate chair during a period of financial and enrolment crisis, co-founded and sustained the Council on equity and justice and efforts for making DEI meaningful to all our students and staff, and worked to make intellectual life possible at a public institution catering to first generation college goers at a majority-minority institution.

Current position: Jarislowsky Democracy Chair and Associate Professor of Politics and Public Administration

Institution/Affiliation: Toronto Metropolitan University

Discipline: Politics

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

Specialization or research interests: Democracy, inequality and development; parties, movements, institutions, law and constitutionalism; economic reform, social welfare and foreign policy

Publications

• Divided We Govern: Coalition Politics in Modern India (Hurst & Company/ Oxford University Press, 2015)
• Editor, The Indian Ideology: Three Responses to Perry Anderson (Permanent Black, 2015)
• Co-editor, with Sanjay Reddy, John Harriss and Stuart Corbridge, Understanding India’s New Political Economy: A Great Transformation? (Routledge, 2011)

Service to the Profession

• Associate Editor for South Asia and the Himalayas, Pacific Affairs (2018-2023); editorial board member (2018-present)
• Associate Editor, Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian Politics (2022-present)
• Member, Faculty Advisory Council, India China Institute, New School (2006-2008; 2013-2019)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

It is a privilege to be nominated to serve on the South Asia Council. I bring many years of experience organizing seminars, lectures, and conferences​, and collaborating with diverse colleagues across various disciplines in​ international networks. If elected, I would seek to strengthen connections and opportunities between scholars in North America, Europe, and South Asia, and to foster intellectual exchanges across the traditional regions of the AAS. The Association has a particularly important role to play, given the increasingly difficult political context many scholars confront in pursuing their research and teaching, ​​especially more vulnerable colleagues and those based at smaller institutions with fewer resources​ in the subcontinent.

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of British Columbia

Discipline: Department of Asian Studies and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies

Area or countries of interest: Himalaya, Nepal, South Asia

Specialization or research interests: Indigeneity, Indigenous environmentalism, Indigenous Peoples, Climate Change, Diaspora, Sherpa, Himalayan environment

Publications

• With Eubanks, C. “We Are (Are We?) All Indigenous Here, and Other Claims about Space, Place, and Belonging in Asia.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 4, no. 2 (2018): vi-xiv.
•  “Ethnographies of the Sherpas in the High Himalaya: Themes, trajectories, and beyond.” In Routledge Handbook of Highland Asia (Routledge, 2022): 182-194.
• With Chakraborty, R. and Rampini, C. “Mountains of inequality: encountering the politics of climate adaptation across the Himalaya.” Ecology and Society 28, no. 4 (2023).

Service to the Profession

• Editorial Board, European Bulletin of Himalayan Research (2019-present)
• Fellow, Society for Applied Anthropology (2018-present); John Bodley Student Travel Award Committee Chair (2016-present)
• Executive Council Member, Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies (2014-2018)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

My vision for AAS leadership and governance is one that is invested in building relationships that support health and wellbeing of our members, especially those who have been overlooked by traditional practices of Euro-Western academia. As an Indigenous woman, I am committed to supporting Indigenous scholars from Asia.

Current position: Assistant Professor of Critical Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Institution/Affiliation: Cal Poly Humboldt

Discipline: Anthropology/Ethnic Studies

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia (Philippines)

Specialization or research interests: Philippine Studies, gender & sexuality studies, digital media, feminist technoscience, performance studies, affect, race and ethnicity, urban studies

Publications

• “Introduction: STS in the Philippines,” with Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez. Philippine Studies: Historical & Ethnographic Viewpoints 71 no. 1 (2023): 1-16.
• “‘I Look at How They Write Their Bio and I Judge From There’: Language and Class Among Middle-Class Queer Filipino Digital Socialities in Manila.” International Journal of Communication [S.l.] 17 (March 2023): 16.
• “Sociotechnical Infrastructures: Tracing Gay Dating App Socialities in Manila,” in Beauty and Brutality: Manila and its Global Discontents. Martin F. Manalansan IV, Robert G. Diaz, and Rolando Tolentino, eds. (Temple University Press, 2023).

Service to the Profession

• Advisory board, Philippine Studies Group (2017-present)
• Communications Chair, Southeast Asian Section, Association for Asian American Studies (2018-present)
• International Advisory Board, Journal of Social Health, Research Center for Social Sciences and Education, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines (2018-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a member of the Southeast Asia Council, I will support creative engagements in advancing international intellectual exchange and network building that supports the research, teaching, and development of Asian Studies through our established institutions and various publics. I believe that the future and growth of this field depend upon expansive and inclusive access to knowledge producers and creative experts not only in Global North sites but throughout various centers of community education around the world. I look forward to contributing my transnational and multidisciplinary experience to enhance the council’s charge and continue its work in highlighting the work of young scholars of Southeast Asia.

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, Philippines

Specialization or research interests: History of gender and sexuality, history of anthropology

Publications

• “‘From Savages to Soldiers’: Igorot Bodies, Militarized Masculinity, and the Logic of Transformation in Dean C. Worcester’s Philippine Photographs.” Philippine Studies 71, no. 2 (2023): 245-274.
• “Masculinity and Misperformance: The Death of William Jones among the Ilongots, 1909.” In Knowledge, Identity, and Rights: Studies on Philippine Indigeneity, edited by Leah Abayao, Jimmy Fong, and Carolyn Podruchny (University of Hawai’i Press, forthcoming).
• Cuevas, Fernandez, and Olvida, “Where Peasants are Kings: Food Sovereignty in the Tagbanua Traditional Subsistence System.” Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies 8, no. 1 (2015): 27-44.

Service to the Profession

• Steering committee, UW-Madison Center for Southeast Asian Studies (current)
• Co-Chair, Graduate Committee, Cornell Southeast Asia Program (2017-2018)
• Member, Graduate Committee, Cornell Southeast Asia Program (2016-2023)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

The increasing interface between our concerns as scholars of Southeast Asia with those of ethnic and diasporic studies is of particular interest to me as a historian of the region, and which I find one of the most exciting directions in the future of our field. Our concerns as area scholars need to continue to respond to the concerns of the Southeast Asian diaspora, and by the same token, the concerns of the diaspora require also a deep engagement with the historical and contemporary contexts of its places of origin. Enriching these mutual concerns ought to be a crucial part of our pedagogy and mentorship on the graduate and undergraduate level, which is the best place for our field to practice a broader engagement with Southeast Asian pasts and interconnected present. Most formative of my experience as a scholar has been my long participation in the Graduate Committee of Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program, organizing not only our speaker series, but more importantly our graduate conference, which brought together young scholars from across the region and the United States. Meeting other young scholars from the region has been a source of both intellectual inspiration and continuing collaboration in my own work, which I wish also to encourage within the AAS through the efforts of the Council.

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: National University of Singapore

Discipline: Anthropology

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Political ethnography of social movements in Burma

Publications

• Rights Refused: Grassroots activism and state violence in Myanmar (Stanford University Press, 2023)
• “Refusing Rohingya: Reformulating Ethnicity Amid Blunt Biopolitics.” Current Anthropology 64.4 (2023): 432-453.
• “Necroeconomics: dispossession, extraction, and indispensable/expendable laborers in contemporary Myanmar.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 49.7 (2022): 1466-1496.

Service to the Profession

• Co-Chair, Burma Studies Group (2019-2022)
• Knowledge manager, Burma Studies Group (2019-present)
• Editorial collective, Anthropological Theory (2023-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

One of the greatest parts of AAS is how it allows for deepening of connections within a country silo (e.g. anthropologists, historians, and humanities scholars working on Burma can share data, perspectives, methods, etc), but there are fewer initiatives for lateral connection (across countries—although the Theravada studies working group / daily conference that sometimes occurs is a nice exception); it seems that there are opportunities for growth to build connections between scholars across SEA, whether through thematic groups (e.g. political ethnographers of SEA working group) or merely through social events (SEAC sponsored reception / happy hour on Thursday or Friday night at AAS)

My most successful mentorship experiences have involved designing systems and institutions that permit many people to benefit. For example, during my three years (2019-2022) as co-chair of the Burma Studies Group (BSG), the Myanmar military attempted a coup, an act which had drastic negative effects on Burmese scholars. In addition to working to support scholars at risk, I became aware of how many younger Burmese scholars needed assistance to navigate a new institutional landscape (whereas their research enterprises and NGOs had earlier hosted academics from outside, this was no longer possible). I designed a mentorship program that recruited Burma studies scholars and linked them with Burmese scholars who were trying to apply to higher education institutions and now required support and assistance in crafting successful applications (given that different programs require significantly different narratives – e.g. a Masters wants a life story / future trajectory, whereas a PhD only wants a description of the academic project). The program successfully connected fifteen scholars with fifteen mentors, and is in the process of being institutionalized at the University of British Columbia’s Myanmar Initiative (as the Burmese PhD student assisting with admin at UBC had benefited from the BSG mentorship initiative back in 2021).

As the BSG co-chair I contributed, in addition to the mentorship initiative described above, the following new initiatives: adding a graduate student / young scholar prize (the Okell Paper Prize); instituting a twice-yearly newsletter; presiding over new fund-raising scheme (instituting dues-paying for faculty members); organizing panels for submission to AAS conferences. I also was during that period and continue to be responsible for the BSG website, which primarily entails managing New Publications, which means publishing and circulating weekly a webpage with three new articles, books, podcasts, etc. I am also currently a member of the Editorial Collective at the journal Anthropological Theory, where I am responsible for co-editing Anthro Theory Commons, AT’s short-form theory space. My primary responsibilities are managing the peer review process for submitted articles, soliciting book reviews, conducting interviews with AT authors, and managing AT social media (Twitter and Facebook).

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Grinnell College

Discipline: Sociology

Area or countries of interest: Philippines, Southeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Global and transnational sociology, social movements, immigrant and diaspora politics, race and ethnicity, media discourse, mixed-methods

Publications

• Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora (University of Chicago Press, 2024)
• “U.S.-Philippines Relations and the Transnational Repression of Filipino American Activists during the Marcos Dictatorship,” in Transnational Repression in the Age of Globalization, edited by Dana Moss and Saipira Furstenberg, (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), pp. 187-208
• “The Nexus of Assimilation and Transnationalism Among Filipino Migrants,” in Plural Entanglements: Philippines Studies, edited by Dada Docot, Stephen B. Acabado, and Clement C. Camposano (Bughaw [an imprint of Ateneo de Manila University Press], 2023), pp. 400-424

Service to the Profession

• Vice-Chair, Philippine Studies Group, Association for Asian Studies (2022-2023)
• Advisory Board, Philippine Studies Group, Association for Asian Studies (2017-2024)
• Council Member, Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, American Sociological Association (2023-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

The most exciting and significant developments in Southeast Asian studies have been the emergence of scholars whose research encourages sensitivity to global nuances, pushes the boundaries of knowledge, and ventures into unexplored intellectual terrain using various theories and methodologies. Because of this, I see growth in scholarship on subjects and objects that have been traditionally marginalized in mainstream analysis. Successful teaching and mentoring for me is grounded in my belief that the creation of knowledge is based on a dynamic partnership between the teacher and student, where I help students appreciate the interconnectedness of individual experiences and larger social realities, so they understand perspectives that often challenge their views. I bring to the SEAC experience based on my meaningful involvement in various initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: California State University, Long Beach

Discipline: Asian and Asian American Studies

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Religion, language, migration, Cambodian diaspora

Publication

 “Khmer Theravada Buddhism.” In Asian American Religious Cultures: Volume Two, edited by Jonathan H.X. Lee, Fumitaka Matsuoka, Edmond Yee, and Ronald Nakasone (ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2015): 210-213.

Service to the Profession

• Co-site chair for the Association for Asian American Studies conference (2022-2023)
• Academic Senate alternate, CSULB, (2023-2024)
• Orange County K-12 curriculum on Cambodian Americans to be implemented across California (2022-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Some of the most exciting developments within Southeast Asian studies are the intersections between environmental studies, critical refugee studies, and Asian American studies. That said, this is where I see potential growth that we can address at each of our own institutional contexts. For example, I am at an institutional where the teacher-scholar model is valued, thus when I teach courses in Southeast Asian studies, I attend to the local Asian American communities in Southern California. I bring experience as a site co-chair for the Association for Asian American Studies as well as shared governance as an alternate in the university academic senate.

Current position: Professor / Director

Institution/Affiliation: Northern Illinois University

Discipline: Anthropology / Southeast Asian Studies

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, Vietnam

Specialization or research interests: Transnationalism, Mobility, Gifting, Imaginaries, Exchange, Money, Value, Embodiment, Affect, Memory, Networks, Remittances, Migration, Diaspora, Ethnicity, Labor, Development, Displacement, Technology, Transportation, Automobility, Consumption, Finance, Infrastructure, Emergences, Markets, Southeast Asia, Asian America

Publications

• Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam (Cornell University Press, 2019)
• Co-editor, with Bill Maurer and Smoki Musaraj, Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Inclusion & Design (Berghahn Press, 2018)
• “Driving is Terrifying: Auto-Mobile Horizons, Projections and Networks in Vietnam and ASEAN.” Journal of Cultural Economy 16, no. 1 (2023): 62-80.

Service to the Profession

• Executive Committee, AAS Vietnam Studies Group (2019-2022)
• Executive Committee and Mentorship Coordinator, AAAS Social Science Caucus (2022-24)
• Board Member, War Legacies Project (2014-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I have long engaged in intersectional conversations around transnational Asian, intra-Asian studies, and Asian American studies, which in my opinion, cannot be analytically separated. There is an important intellectual and activist genealogy of scholars spanning area studies and ethnic studies who have mobilized their knowledge to expose and challenge inequalities in and violences towards the Global South shaped by longer histories and infrastructures of colonialism and imperialism. As a member of the AAS Southeast Asia Council I will be a strong advocate for (re)connecting interdisciplinary Southeast Asian studies frameworks with relevant transpacific approaches committed to analytically redressing socioeconomic injustices within, between, and beyond the region.

Current position: Senior Lecturer

Institution/Affiliation: Universiti Malaya

Discipline: Anthropology and Gender Studies

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, The Philippines

Specialization or research interests: Human and more-than-human relationships, gender and sexual minorities; masculinity, Sabah studies (marginalization and mobility), minority groups (irregular migrants and Indigenous communities in Borneo)

Publications

• Irregular migrants and the sea at the borders of Sabah, Malaysia: Pelagic Alliance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
• “The Sea is Indigenous ‘Land’ Too.” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 37, no. 1 (2022): 85-112.
•  “Romance Through Digital Avatars: Online Courtship, Representation and “Catfishing” Amongst Irregular Female Migrants in Sabah.” In New Media in the Margins: Lived Realities and Experiences from the Malaysian Peripheries (Springer Nature Singapore, 2023), pp. 67-90.

Service to the Profession

• Deputy Coordinator of the Gender Studies Programme, Universiti Malaya (2022-present)
• Co-Convener, “Queer Worldmaking Amidst and Beyond Religious Conservatism” workshop with FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (2024-2025)
• Co-Organizer, “2022 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School” (2022)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a Feminist Anthropologist of mixed indigenous descent from the Malaysian Borneo, my vision for leadership and governance within the Association for Asian Studies’ Southeast Asia Council is one rooted in compassion, nurturance, and inclusivity. From my rich organizational or administrative experience, I aim to foster a space where diverse voices, including those from marginalized and oppressed communities, are not only heard but actively valued and integrated into decision-making processes within different facets of the academy. Embracing the notion of decolonialization, I recognize that the most exciting and significant developments in Southeast Asian Studies is coming from Global South scholars, such as myself, who are challenging colonial legacies ( I often center this within my own work as well) and lending a voice to the shifting momentum of speaking out and boldly addressing often sidestepped issues impacting all persons of color. By prioritizing these perspectives, whilst embracing compassionate, nurturing, and inclusive leadership, I believe we can navigate today’s alarmingly growing global crises with resilience and solidarity, paving the way for a more equitable and sustainable future for all.

Current position: Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Washington State University

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Northeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Early modern and modern Japanese social and cultural history, including aesthetics, urban history, race, private spheres, autonomy, and contemporary environmental issues.

Publications

• Japan’s Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930 (Brill, 2021).
• Honored and Dishonored Guests: Westerners in Wartime Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2017).
• The Aesthetics of Strangeness: Eccentricity and Madness in Early Modern Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2013).

Service to the Profession

• Board of Directors, Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (2020-present)
• Co-chair and co-organizer, Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast 2018 Conference, held at Washington State University
• External reviewer, Department of Religion and Culture, University of Winnipeg (2011)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I see AAS conferences as the premier platforms for Asian Studies scholarship, events that foster rich intellectual exchange and collaboration across disciplines and geographical boundaries. Through the Council of Conferences, I aim to cultivate an inclusive environment that welcomes diverse voices and perspectives. I also hope to elevate the impact of AAS conferences by innovating conference formats to enhance accessibility and participant engagement.

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Simmons University

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: China

Specialization or research interests: Early China, political history, social history, family and gender, law, medicine, texts and manuscripts, digital humanities

Publications

• “Adultery Law and State Power in Early Empires: China and Rome Compared.” Asian Journal of Law and Society, Special Issue on Comparative Legal History (Forthcoming 2024).
• “Elites’ Social Networks and Politics in the Han Empire (202 B.C.E.–220 C.E.).” Journal of Open Humanities Data 9, no. 12 (2023): 1–16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/johd.113
• “Representations of Gender in Early Chinese Medicine: A Prehistory of Fuke.” Bulletin of the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology 9 (September 2022): 89-126.

Service to the Profession

• Associate Editor, Cambridge Elements in Ancient East Asia (2024-present)
• Panel Organizer, “Gender and Politics in Chinese History: Diachronic Comparisons and Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” American Historical Association Conference 2024, San Francisco, January 4–7.
• Reviewer, Journal of Open Humanities Data

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

By serving as the New England representative of the Council of Conferences, I aim to promote cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary collaboration among institutions in New England. Working together with the current New England representative Sarah Frederick, I will work on expanding the one-person role into a group so that the workload of organizing the NEAAS will be shared across institutions. I would like to explore the possibility of having an NEAAS hosted by two institutions that are located close to each other. I also wish to take the opportunity of NEAAS to increase the visibility of Asian Studies at some small institutions where the field is in danger. 

Current position: Associate Professor of Chinese

Institution/Affiliation: Brandeis University

Discipline: Literature and cultural studies

Area or countries of interest: China

Specialization or research interests: Chinese literature and culture, Modern poetry, Critical Theory, Comparative Literature, Translation Studies, Marxism and world culture, Aesthetic modernity

Publications

• The Translatability of Revolution: Guo Moruo and Twentieth-Century Chinese Culture (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018)
• “The Promethean Translator and Cannibalistic Pains: Lu Xun’s ‘Hard Translation’ as a Political Allegory.” Translation Studies 6, no. 3 (2013): 324-338.
• Translator,《本雅明传》(Benyamin zhuan). Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life, by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 2022)

Service to the Profession

• Member, Scientific Advisory Board, Institute of Advanced Study, Nantes, France (2021-present)
• Editorial board member, Xinshi pinglun (2015-present)
• Organizer, chair and presenter, “Literary Reconfigurations of the Ancient in East Asian Modernity.” A three-day seminar at the Annual Meeting of ACLA, Harvard University, April 17-20, 2016. 

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I accept this nomination because I want the AAS to be an inclusive community of multilingual scholarship and an open forum for critical intellectual debates at this particular historical juncture of global crises. I believe that the New England AAS conference is well positioned to embody this vision on a regional scale.

Current position: Professor of Comparative Politics

Institution/Affiliation: Soka University of America

Discipline: Political Science

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, Indonesia

Specialization or research interests: Separatist conflicts, democracy, and minority self-government in special autonomous regions

Publications

• “Indonesian Autonomies: Explaining Divergent Self-Government Outcomes in Aceh and Papua,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 52:1 (2022): 55-81 (with Hipolitus Wangge)
• Fighting Armed Conflicts in Southeast Asia: Ethnicity and Difference (Cambridge University Press Element, 2020)
• Moving within Borders: Addressing the Potentials & Risks of Mass Migrations in Developing Countries (Palgrave, 2024) (with William Ascher)

Service to the Profession

• Secretary, WCAAS (2019-present)
• Organizer, WCAAS Annual Conference (2018)
• Editor, Palgrave Series on Politics, Economics, and Inclusive Development (2014-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As CoC representative, I will seek to continue efforts to better link AAS and the regional conferences. This includes outreach efforts beyond the United States, with potential regional meetings in Canada and Mexico, and including more participants from Asian countries.

I also seek to encourage the participation of social scientists and experts on Southeast Asia (as well as Central Asia) in Asian studies. Greater diversity will strengthen AAS, but will also help make for more grounded social science research.

Current position: Profesor-investigador

Institution/Affiliation: Centro de Estudios de Asia y Africa, El Colegio de Mexico

Discipline: Asian Studies

Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Separatism and violence, reconciliation, Indonesia and Timor-Leste, regional history and politics

Publications

• Enfrentar al Leviatan: Soberania impugnada en Indonesia Oriental (El Colegio de Mexico, 2023)
• “Indonesia 2023: Elecciones inminentes e incertidumbre interna, pero creciente importancia regional, internacional y económica.” Anuario Asia Pacifico, 2024.
• “We have a lot of names like George Floyd: Papuan Lives Matter in comparative perspective.” In Who is the Asianist? The Politics of Representation in Asian Studies, editors Will Bridges, Nitasha Tamar Sharma, and Marvin D. Sterling (Association for Asian Studies, 2022)

Service to the Profession

• President, WCAAS (2019-2020)
• Board member, WCAAS (2019-present)
• Conference organizer, WCAAS (2019)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am interested in expanding the scope and participation of the WCAAS and the AAS in general in Latin America and elsewhere, including hosting another WCAAS in the near future and perhaps other kinds of AAS events. I would also like to see the AAS working together with other regional organizations such as ALADAA as well as other Latin American institutions that have Asian Studies programs or individual scholars who study Asia. Thank you for your consideration.

Current position: PhD Candidate

Institution/Affiliation: UC Santa Barbara

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: East Asia, Japan, Okinawa

Specialization or research interests: Okinawan tourism, labor, indigenous histories, cultural performances, public memory, colonial legacies, global capitalism

Presentations

• “Defiant Indigeneity towards Fraught Tourism.” Paper presented at Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference (2022)
• “Dinosaur-Infested Paradise Jungle: JUNGLIA and the Issue of Ecotourism in Okinawa.” Paper presented at Research on East Asia: UCSB Graduate Student Conference (2024)

Service to the Profession

• Treasurer, UCSB Asian Pacific Islander Graduate Student Association (2023-2024)
• Graduate Representative, UCSB History Colloquium Committee (2021-2022)
• Team Lead, Okinawa Memories Initiative (2017-2021)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I’m excited and grateful for the opportunity to serve on the Diversity and Equity Committee. If elected, I would work to widen publicity and outreach regarding opportunities for scholars of color to do research, present research, and network with others. As a queer, student of color, I especially hope to advocate the breaking of structural and economic barriers that might limit scholars in our field from doing truly brilliant research and collaborative work, especially when it comes to funding difficulties that limit junior scholars and graduate students. I am especially interested in widening opportunities for students not from the Global North to access AAS events and mentorship.

Current position: PhD Candidate

Institution/Affiliation: University of Washington

Discipline: Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies

Area or countries of interest: Hong Kong and its diasporic communities

Specialization or research interests: Gender, decoloniality, and visual culture in Hong Kong and other Sinophone spheres

Publications

• With Sasha Su-Ling Welland, “Wandering Geographies: Aesthetic Practice along China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” Feminist Studies 47, no.2 (2021): 372–416.
• “Seed and Sediment: On Memory, Hope, and Hong Kong.” Asian Art Museum (2022)
• “Negotiating Gender: Shirley Tse and the Politics of Representation in the Art World of Hong Kong,” Hong Kong Visual Arts Yearbook (Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2020), pp. 26-48.

Service to the Profession

• Graduate Representative, University of Washington Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Department Advancement Committee (2016-2020)
• Graduate Representative, University of Washington Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Departmental Committee (2022)
• Volunteer Legal Interpreter (Cantonese and Mandarin), Chinese Information and Service Center, Seattle, WA (2017-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

AAS is a critical space of dialogue, exchange, and connection for a worldwide community, brought together by our mutual interest in the study of Asia. I am eager to assist with expanding this community and making it more equitable by identifying ways to make access to AAS and its resources available to more scholars, artists, and activists from minoritised backgrounds. I am also interested in finding ways to support scholarship and creative work that are emerging from relatively overlooked parts of Asia, so as to cultivate dialogues and perspectives that can broaden our vision of this area of the world and the field of Asian Studies.

Current position: PhD candidate

Institution/Affiliation: Emory University

Discipline: Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Area or countries of interest: East Asia, Korea

Specialization or research interests: Transgender and queer history in East Asia; Contemporary Queer Movement in East Asia; Labor, especially sex work

Publication

“Staying Backward with the History of Camptown Trans Sex Work.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 10.1 (2023): 23-27.

Service to the Profession

• Key Organizer, Korean Transgender Human Rights Organization Jogakbo (2015-2017)
• Key Organizer, Sex Worker Liberation Movement Scarlet Chacha (in S. Korea) (2023-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I will contribute to AAS to keep its core values of diversity and equity as the source of knowledge production and community building. The vision of my academic and activist life is to help build a bridge that links different communities across the borders of geographies and disciplines. It includes creating a safe space of conversation in which no one feels unprotected, undervalued, or marginalized due to their own social positions related to race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality. I respect, and owe as well, what DEC has done in AAS since 2020, and hope to be a part of the vessel for promoting diversity and inclusiveness together.

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: UC Davis

Discipline: Asian American Studies, East Asian Studies, Human Rights Studies

Area or countries of interest: Korea, Mongolia, East Asia

Specialization or research interests: Race and ethnicity, undocumented im/migration, war and militarism, gender and sexuality, social movement

Publications

• Co-author, with Hee Jung Choi, “Incomplete of Extraordinary Koreans?: ‘Multicultural Soldiers’ and the Racialized Reconstruction of Authentic Koreanness.” The Journal of Asian Studies (forthcoming, 2025).
• “This is What We Wanted to Learn!: Anti-Racist and Anti-Colonialist education with 1st Gen Korean Seniors in a Time of Asian Hate and Racialized Dread.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 46, no. 1 (2024): 118-134.
• “An Ambivalent Magic: Undocumented Asian Immigrants and Racialized ‘Illegality’ in the US Imperial Project.” Amerasia Journal 47, no. 2 (2022) :267-282.

Service to the Profession

• Outstanding Faculty Research Award Committee, Association of Asian American Studies (2023-present)
• Book Award Selection Committee, American Educational Studies Association (2019-present)
• Research Committee, Korean Association of Women’s Studies (2022)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Given the broad disciplinary and geographical interests of its membership, it is essential for the AAS to be respectful of the people’s diverse scholarly perspectives and practices shaped by various markers such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, class, religion, and legal status. I have a compelling interest in making sure that people from all backgrounds—particularly those from historically underrepresented groups—perceive access to the AAS, and thus, the association serves all parts of the community equitably. As a scholar whose research, education, and organizing/service are centered on precarious undocumented im/migrants and their racialized, classed, gendered, and sexualized experiences in the Asia-Pacific, I have employed interdisciplinary, community-engaged, and transnational training to improve minoritized people’s lives. I have committed to expanding equity, racial justice, and social justice in the academy and beyond through my various service initiatives, and I hope to continue this commitment as a Diversity and Equity Committee member at AAS.

Current position: Operations Leader, Japan Past & Present

Institution/Affiliation: UCLA

Discipline: History

Area or countries of interest: Japan, Northeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Medieval/premodern Japanese history and culture, artisans, social history, economic history, digital humanities, project management, professional development

Publications

• “On Kami and Avatars: Social Media Literacy and Academics as Public Intellectuals.” In Introduction to Digital Humanities – Religion, Vol. 6: Across Asia: Studying Religions Digitally. Eds. Cornelis van Lit and James Harry Morris, (Degruyter, 2023), pp. 257-287.
• 「海外における日本中世史研究の動向―若手研究者による研究と雇用の展望」 (The State of the Field for Medieval Japanese History Overseas: Research by Early Career Scholars and the Job Market). In『海外の日本中世史研究：「日本史」・自国史・外国史の交差』 (Overseas Research on Medieval Japanese History: the Intersection of “Japanese History” in Japan and Abroad). Eds. Xiaolong Huang and Yasufumi Horikawa (Bensei Shuppan, 2023), pp. 101-115.
• “Towards a Digital Future in East Asian Studies: Reflections from 2023.” Journal of Asian Studies Forum, Digital Humanities and/in Asian Studies. (forthcoming)

Service to the Profession

• Operations Leader, Japan Past & Present (2021-present)
• Evaluator, The Toshizo Watanabe Study Abroad Scholarship Program U.S.-Japan Council (2020-2024)
• Project Leader, East Asia-related Job Market Data Reports and Visualizations (2020-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

To me, the Diversity and Equity Committee represents an opportunity to advocate for what membership in the AAS means and to create opportunities for the field to evolve alongside its scholars and students, who are facing new, old, and increasingly formidable challenges. I have spent the last several years as contingent faculty, considering how to serve and support early career scholars caught in the unstable machinations of higher education in times of crisis; working with nonprofits that support every level of the field from undergraduates to senior faculty and independent scholars; and, for the last fifteen years, creating open-access tools and platforms to help address resource and information disparities for those seeking diverse careers in Asian Studies. I am therefore eager to leverage the affordances of an organization like AAS to enact positive change and bring new voices to the table. This can only be done through transparency of process, seeking input from membership on their needs, and creating actionable plans for the future.

Current position: Assistant Professor

Institution/Affiliation: Chinese University of Hong Kong

Discipline: Religious Studies

Area or countries of interest: China, Hong Kong, Sinophone diasporas, East Asia

Specialization or research interests: Religion and politics, religion and gender, religion and social movements, Sinophone studies

Publications

• “Diffusion, Polyphony, and Diversity: An Introduction to Religion, Politics, and Identity in Hong Kong since 2014.” Journal of Asian Studies (2024).
• “‘Gods Feast on Holy Smoke, Not Tear Gas!’: Religious Diffusion, Infrapolitics, and Identity Formation in Hong Kong.” Journal of Asian Studies (2024)
• “Beyond Sing Hallelujah to the Lord: Diffused Religion and Religious Co-Optations through Hong Kong.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 90, no. 4 (2023): 937–953.

Service to the Profession

• Co-editor, special issue on religion, identity, and social movements in Hong Kong, Journal of Asian Studies
• Steering Committee, Indian and Chinese Religions Compared Unit and Chinese Religions Unit, American Academy of Religion
• Book Review Editor, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Trained in religious studies, I have long noticed how East Asia in particular has often been left out of decolonial conversations as a historical and distant other. With a Sinophone studies approach, I will emphasize multiple orientalisms and imperialisms within Sinophone Asia (and East Asia at large) and highlight the marginalized within the marginalized and diasporic communities. I will further advocate for a transnational perspective to spotlight events, peoples, and voices neglected in the West and also suppressed in Asia and bridge Asian studies and wider theoretical fields.

Current position: Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies

Institution/Affiliation: Duke University

Discipline: Cultural Anthropology; Japanese Studies

Area or countries of interest: Japan

Specialization or research interests: Anthropology of contemporary Japan, digital ethnography, digital culture, youth culture, gender, diaspora, race and ethnicity, Afro-Japanese encounters

Publications

• “The World as Photo Booth: Women’s Digital Practices from Print Club to Instagram in Japan.” Mechademia 16, no. 1 (2023): 119-143.
• “Black Japanese Storytelling as Praxis: Anti-racist Digital Activism and Black Lives Matter in Japan.” In “Who Is The Asianist?” The Politics of Representation in Asian Studies, edited by William Bridges, IV, Nitasha Sharma, and Marvin Sterling (Association for Asian Studies, 2022) pp. 139-158.
• “Digital Sociality in COVID-19 Japan.” Anthropology News (2021).

Service to the Profession

• Mentor and Former Graduate Academic Coordinator, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (2017-present)
• Invited/Guest Speaker and Consultant, Diversity and Positionality in Japanese Studies/East Asian Studies (2021-present)
• Chair, organizer, and discussant, “Women of Color in Japanese Studies: Intersectional Voices and Calls for Action” roundtable at AAS Annual Conference (2024)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a member of the Diversity and Equity Committee (DEC), I will collaborate with fellow committee members and AAS Leadership and Governance in developing programming and mentorship opportunities for people of marginalized/underrepresented identities in Asian Studies. I specifically will propose collaborations with initiatives centering on young scholars of color who are interested in pursuing academic and professional careers pertaining to Asian Studies, such as the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF), Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT), and the National Association for Black Engagement with Asia (NABEA). My position as a current member of NABEA and an alumna of MMUF and IRT marks me as well-suited for this task. I will also work with the planning team for the Annual Conference of AAS in issuing a call for roundtables on themes pertaining to diversity and equity, an initiative inspired by audience feedback received during and after an AAS 2024 roundtable in which I served as organizer, chair, and discussant, titled “Women of Color in Japanese Studies: Intersectional Voices and Calls for Action.” I look forward to aiding AAS in fostering community and inclusivity within Asian Studies—a mission that has informed my own scholar-activism as a Dominican American ethnographer of Japan.

Current position: Associate Professor

Institution/Affiliation: SUNY-Stony Brook University

Discipline: Ethnomusicology

Area or countries of interest: Thailand, Southeast Asia

Specialization or research interests: Thai music and politics, sound studies, protest, Cold War history, urban space, race and gender

Publications

• Bangkok After Dark: Maurice Rocco, Transnational Nightlife, and the Making of Cold War Intimacies (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2025)
• Bangkok Is Ringing: Sound, Protest, and Constraint (Oxford University Press, 2019)
• “Sound and Movement: Vernaculars of Sonic Dissent” (Social Text, 2018)

Service to the Profession

Board Member, AAS Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Group (2018-2024)

Vice president, Mid-Atlantic Conference for the Society for Ethnomusicology (2020-2022)

Faculty Member, New York Southeast Asia Network Public Universities Consortium (2021-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I believe deeply, and am firmly committed, to diversity and equity in the Association for Asian Studies. Both my scholarship and mentorship have been focused on diversifying Asian studies as both field and society, especially for the past 5-10 years. The study of race in particular is a vital frontier for the field. And of course, the society will benefit enormously from professional diversification.

The AAS Board of Directors proposes creation of the new category of Patron Member, marked in bold below:

Membership in the Association shall be divided into the following classes:

(a) Life Member—Person who contributes $2,500 or more to the Association.

(b) Honorary Member—Person selected to this status by the Board of Directors.

The above two classes of members are exempted from payment of annual dues. They shall receive life subscriptions to the printed Journal of Asian Studies, so long as it is provided by the Association.

(c) Regular Member—Person who pays Regular Member dues.

Regular members shall receive all member benefits including the printed Journal of Asian Studies, so long as it is provided by the Association; in addition, they may receive other publications on terms to be determined by the Board of Directors.

(d) Associate Member—Spouse or partner of a Regular Member, whose membership is current during the same time frame. The fee paid by the Regular Member is to be based on the higher income of the two. Associate members have the same benefits as regular members but are not mailed the printed Journal of Asian Studies.

(e) Patron Member: A membership for individuals who are willing to contribute above their normal dues amount of $300 to support student, low income, and Low and Lower Middle Income Countries members.

All members in good standing in classes (a) through (e) have voting rights in Association elections. “Good standing” is lost once the membership reaches its expiration.

The AAS Board of Directors proposes additions to Bylaws Article 10 (Nominating Committee), marked in bold below:

(a) The Nominating Committee shall approve a list of nominees to include one or more persons for the office of Vice-President, at least seven persons for each of the area councils, one to three persons for each of the electing regional conferences, and one or more nominees for student representative and three to seven nominees for professional representative(s) for the Diversity and Equity Committee (DEC). Before presenting their lists of nominees to the Nominating Committee, the councils, and the Diversity and Equity Committee shall have ascertained whether the nominees are members in good standing with voting rights.  

(b) The Council of Conferences shall submit to the Nominating Committee one to three candidates for each of the eligible regional conference slates as recommended by these eligible conferences. The Nominating Committee shall make its selection of nominees from the list submitted by the Council of Conferences.

(c) The Nominating Committee reviews and officially approves the nominees submitted by the area councils and the Diversity and Equity Committee. Each area council shall submit to the Nominating Committee at least seven candidates and at least five alternates. The Diversity and Equity Committee shall submit to the Nominating Committee at least two candidates for student representative and three to seven candidates of varying rank and affiliation, including adjunct, non-tenure-track, and independent. The number of professional positions to be filled annually depends on the rotations in any given year. The DEC must ensure that, at all times, at least one member of the committee holds a professional rank of adjunct, non-tenure-track, or independent. Members of the Association for Asian Studies are invited to submit nominations to area councils and the Diversity and Equity Committee for consideration during an annual open call for any of these offices, other than membership on the Council of Conferences.

The AAS Board of Directors proposes additions to Bylaws Article 11 (Elections), marked in bold below:

(a) The list of candidates shall be distributed by the Executive Director to all members entitled to vote no less than 60 days before the closing of the ballot. Each member entitled to vote shall be provided access to an electronic ballot. The ballot shall be so prepared that it is confidential and yet will enable the Executive Director to prevent irregularities. The voting process shall be monitored by the Executive Director, or persons duly designated, and the results shall be announced after the conclusion of the election.

(b) Each member in good standing with voting rights is entitled to vote for one nominee for Vice-President, for three nominees for one of the four area councils (East and Inner Asia Council, Northeast Asia Council, South Asia Council, Southeast Asia Council), for one nominee in any of the other three area councils, for one nominee for the conference of their choice for the Council of Conferences, and for one nominee per category (student or professional) for the Diversity and Equity Committee. The three candidates receiving the highest number of votes for each area council shall have been elected to that council for a three-year term. Please note that area council election rules may be modified by the board, in consultation with the affected council, to ensure that a designated subarea will be represented by at least one council member. The candidate receiving the highest number of votes for each of the eligible regional conference and Diversity and Equity Committee slates shall have been elected to the Council of Conferences for a three-year term and the Diversity and Equity Committee for a one or three-year term, depending on the position.

(c) In case an elected individual becomes unable to serve at close of elections, the position shall be filled by the person who received the next highest number of votes for that position.

(d) Persons elected to the Board of Directors or to the councils may not immediately succeed themselves for another term on the Board or on that council.

The AAS Board of Directors proposes the addition of a new clause to Bylaws Article 12 (Area Councils):

(j) All elected area council representatives must remain AAS members for the duration of their three-year term of service.

The AAS Board of Directors proposes changes to Bylaws Article 12 (Council of Conferences), marked in bold below:

(e) The Council of Conferences 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.

(h) All elected Council of Conferences representatives must remain AAS members for the duration of their three-year term of service.

The AAS Board of Directors proposes additions to Bylaws Article 21 (Diversity and Equity Committee), marked in bold below:

(a) The AAS Diversity and Equity Committee (DEC) shall advise the Board of Directors of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) on matters relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The DEC will work directly with the AAS Board of Directors, and through the Board, liaison with the Councils, the Program Committee, the Editorial Board, and the Journal of Asian Studies.

(b) The responsibilities of the DEC will include proposing new programs that advance the cause of diversity, equity, and inclusivity in Asian Studies, providing feedback on existing programs and initiatives, and representing membership views on these issues to the Board.

(c) A student representative is elected annually to serve a one-year term and five professional representatives are elected for three-year staggered terms.

(d) The DEC 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.

(e) All elected DEC representatives must remain AAS members for the duration of their one- or three-year term of service.

The AAS Board of Directors proposes the addition of a new Bylaws Article, as written below:

The Councils, Committees, and Board shall be empowered to fill any vacancy in the membership of their respective elected committees or appointed positions under their purview by designating any member who would under normal circumstance be eligible for that position to serve as a member ad interim until replaced by a member elected in accordance with customary procedures at the next practicable annual election.

The AAS Board of Directors proposes deleting language from Section 9 of the AAS Constitution (marked in bold and struck through below), as the information is in the AAS Bylaws, which is the more appropriate document for such details.

(a) The AAS Diversity and Equity Committee (DEC) will advise the Board of Directors of the Association for Asian Studies on matters relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion. (b) DEC representatives shall be nominated and elected under procedures specified in the Bylaws.

(c) The DEC shall be composed of six members and should aim to embody diversity of disciplinary specialization and geographic region, gender, race, age, and rank. DEC members will include:

● One adjunct/non-tenure track/contingent faculty
● One graduate student
● Four additional members of varying rank and institutional affiliation

All committee members are to have a current AAS membership.

(d) The leadership of the DEC shall be structured according to the following:

● A Chair is a member of the committee and appointed by the members of the committee. The Chair will serve a two-year term and will sit on the Board of Directors for this two-year period.
● A Vice Chair is a member of the committee and appointed by the members of the committee to serve a one-year term and succeed to the Chairship.