We are pleased to announce the slate of candidates for the fall 2019 AAS elections. The online ballot will open in September, and all current AAS Members will receive an email with instructions for accessing it. Election day (when the ballot is closed and votes counted) will be in early November. Newly elected representatives will take office immediately after the annual conference in March 2020.
Our sincere thanks to all candidates for accepting nominations to represent their respective areas and councils.
Vice President Nominees (Represented Area: Southeast Asia)
Hy V. Luong — Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Country/area(s) of interest: Vietnam
Specialization(s): Discourse, ideology, political economy; gender and family; rituals, gift flows, social capital; migration and rural economy
Personal Statement:
I am strongly committed to dialogue, mentoring, and research collaboration across disciplines and national boundaries. I have served on many committees and international project teams of the Social Science Research Council for two decades and a half, as well as on the AAS Southeast Asia Council. In those capacities, I have worked effectively with colleagues in other disciplines in North America and Asia. In 2007, in order to bridge different traditions of inquiry and in collaboration with Vietnamese colleagues, I organized a major international conference on the anthropology of Vietnam, with 140 invited participants from sixteen countries and four continents. We encouraged comparative dialogue by inviting prominent discussants specializing in other parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa. At the University of Toronto, I founded the collaborative Master’s program in Asia-Pacific Studies, which provides inter-disciplinary and trans-regional training for students from the social sciences, the humanities, and a number of professional schools.
In 1987, I was the first anthropologist from a U.S. institution allowed to do fieldwork in Vietnam despite an U.S. embargo on the country at the time. In order to examine the interplay of local sociocultural dynamics and global processes, for three decades, together with research team members, I conducted intensive and comparative fieldwork in seven communities in three main regions of Vietnam, and adopted a longitudinal approach by re-studying these communities over time. I have situated my work within larger historical, regional, and global contexts by co-authoring publications with colleagues working on East Asia.
I am honored to be nominated as a candidate for the position of AAS Vice-President. I strongly support AAS’s efforts to engage Asian colleagues in scholarly dialogue, such as AAS-in-Asia, and to provide mentoring to younger researchers through dissertation workshops and similar initiatives. I also believe in the important role of AAS and its members not only in advancing academic knowledge of Asia and Asia’s connections to the rest of the world, but also in policy dialogues on the complex global issues and challenges that we face today.
James Rush — Professor of History, Arizona State University/Interim Director, Center for Asian Research
Country/area(s) of interest: Southeast Asia
Specialization(s): colonial and modern Indonesian history; modern Asian biography; civil society leadership and activism.
Personal Statement:
Like many AAS members, I came to the study of Asia by way of inspiring teachers who opened Asia to me as a college student. This led me to the Peace Corps in Malaysia and then to graduate school and to Harry Benda, Indonesia, Islam, and even to opium. My path has been unconventional. I have been a residential college dean, the Southeast Asia associate for twelve U.S. universities affiliated with the Universities Field Staff International (USFI), and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s liaison to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation in the Philippines. And for nearly thirty years now, I have been teaching at Arizona State University.
Although I am primarily a historian of Southeast Asia, my work with the Magsaysay Foundation led me to meet and write about a great many twentieth-century civil-society leaders, humanitarians, public intellectuals, and artists from across the region, from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to Japan, China, and Korea. I treasure this experience for enriching my engagement with all of Asia.
This embrace of Asia as a whole is something that draws me to the AAS. As an officer, I will seek to foster the interplay of junior and senior scholars as well as the interplay of disciplines, countries, and areas. I will strongly support AAS-in-Asia and the work of our regional councils. And I will endeavor to promote openness and consensus when controversies arise.
The big issue before us is the assault on truth itself. I believe that scholarship and scholarly organizations such as ours are essential bulwarks against the false narratives sweeping Asia and our own lives and politics. Only knowledge can stem the tide. As an officer of the AAS, I will strive to leverage the resources and authority of the Association to advance a literate, knowledge-based discourse about Asia in public arenas everywhere.
Northeast Asia Council
Christopher Bondy — Senior Associate Professor of Sociology, International Christian University
Country/area(s) of interest: Japan
Specialization(s): buraku issues, education, social movements, minority issues
Dafna Zur — Assistant Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies, Stanford University
Country/area(s) of interest: Korea
Specialization(s): Colonial period children’s literature, postcolonial literature of North and South Korea literature, popular science and literature, popular culture
Gregory Smits — Professor of History and Asian Studies, Pennsylvania State University
Country/area(s) of interest: Japan, broadly defined
Specialization(s): History of earthquakes in Japan / History of the Ryukyu islands and nearby areas
Lori Watt — Associate Professor of History and International & Area Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
Country/area(s) of interest: Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Micronesia
Specialization(s): decolonization studies, political and social history of East Asia
Youngmin Choe — Associate Professor, Korean Studies/EALC, University of Southern California
Country/area(s) of interest: Korea
Specialization(s): Korean film studies and visual culture, tourism and mobility, emotions
Alice Y. Tseng — Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Boston University
Country/area(s) of interest: Japan
Specialization(s): art, architecture, and visual culture of modern Japan; history of institutional buildings, collections, and exhibitions
Christina Laffin — Associate Professor of Literature, University of British Columbia
Country/area(s) of interest: Japan
Specialization(s): Medieval Japanese literature; women’s and gender history; socialization and education of women; travel writing; noh drama.
China and Inner Asia Council
Yi-Li Wu — Center Associate, Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies/(pending)Associate Professor, Departments of History and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan
Country/area(s) of interest: China
Specialization(s): Medicine, body, and gender
Elanah Uretsky — Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Brandeis University
Country/area(s) of interest: China
Specialization(s): Health, governance, gender, and sexuality, ethnic minorities, African migrants
Kimberley Ens Manning — Principal, Simone de Beauvoir Institute; Associate Professor, Political Science, Concordia University
Country/area(s) of interest: China
Specialization(s): Gender (including transgender rights), social movements, social welfare, equity
Peter J. Carroll — Associate Professor of History, Northwestern University
Country/area(s) of interest: China
Specialization(s): modern Chinese history; urban history; gender/sexuality; social and cultural history; nationalism
Ching Kwan Lee — Professor of Sociology, University of California-Los Angeles
Country/area(s) of interest: China, East Asia, Africa
Specialization(s): development, global China, labor, political sociology
Man Xu — Associate Professor of History, Tufts University
Country/area(s) of interest: China
Specialization(s): Women’s history in Pre-modern China; family and kinship; local society, material culture, and gender
Meg Rithmire — Associate Professor of Political Science, Harvard Business School
Country/area(s) of interest: China, as well as Southeast Asia
Specializations(s): urbanization, property rights, state-business relations, capitalism in Asia, inequality
Southeast Asia Council
Sinae Hyun — Assistant Professor of History and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Country/area(s) of interest: Southeast Asia (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Burma/Myanmar), East Asia (China, Korea)
Specialization(s): Cold War studies, nationalism and nation-building, ethnic minority and borderland, Thailand political history, police and policing, military politics and national security
Ehito Kimura — Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Hawai’i at Manoa
Country/area(s) of interest: Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand)
Specialization(s): Political Change, Democratization, Territorial Politics, Transitional Justice
Jonathan Padwe — Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Country/area(s) of interest: Cambodia, Vietnam, Mainland Southeast Asia
Specialization(s): Environmental anthropology; landscape; war and violence
Olga Dror — Associate Professor of History, Texas A&M
Country/area(s) of interest: Southeast Asia
Specialization(s): Political religions, youth, Vietnam War
Cherubim A. Quizon — Associate Professor of Anthropology, Seton Hall University
Country/area(s) of interest: Southeast Asia, Philippines, Eastern Indonesia
Specialization(s): ethnography and material culture; Bagobo and related textiles in Mindanao, Borneo/Kalimantan and Eastern Indonesia; Bagobo Nikkei-jin; cultural history of banana fiber garments; indigenous peoples and the state
Erik Martinez Kuhonta — Associate Professor of Political Science, McGill University
Country/area(s) of interest: Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia
Specialization(s): Political development, state formation, political parties, democratization, political economy, religion
South Asia Council
Shenila Khoja-Moolji — Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Bowdoin College
Country/area(s) of interest: South Asia, in particular Pakistan
Specialization(s): interplay of gender, Islam, and politics in the context of South Asia
Saleema Waraich — Associate Professor of Art History, Skidmore College
Country/area(s) of interest: South Asia
Specialization(s): Visual Cultures of the Mughal Empire, British Colonialism, Nationalisms in South Asia (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh); Architectural Preservation and Conservation Practices; Postcolonial Theory
Nusrat S Chowdhury — Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, Amherst College
Country/area(s) of interest: South Asia, Bangladesh
Specialization(s): Political Anthropology, popular sovereignty, political communication, crowds and protest, surveillance technologies
Deven M. Patel — Associate Professor of South Asian Language, Literature, and Literary History and Chair, South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Country/area(s) of interest: South and Southeast Asia
Specialization(s): literary histories of classical Indian works (Sanskrit, Prakrit, and early forms of regional Indic languages); Indian philosophy (especially Buddhist), the intersection of visual and literary culture in medieval India; and classical and contemporary poetics and literary theory.
Manan Ahmed — Associate Professor of History, Columbia University
Country/area(s) of interest: South Asia, Indian Ocean
Specialization(s): Islam in South Asia, Indian Ocean World, Intellectual History in Early Modern Era
Alka Patel — Associate Professor of Art and Architectural History, UC-Irvine
Country/area(s) of interest: South Asia, Persianate World (i.e. Iran & Central Asia), Inner Asia
Specialization(s): Art and architecture of the 9th-18th centuries in South Asia and the Islamic world
Thibaut D’Hubert — Associate Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilization, University of Chicago
Country/area(s) of interest: Bengal
Specialization(s): Indic and Perso-Arabic poetics, Middle Bengali philology, scribal practices, traditional South Asian hermeneutics, literary multilingualism, and the history of translation
Council of Conferences
New York Regional (NYCAS)
Phillip B. Guingona — Assistant Professor of History, Wells College
Country/area(s) of interest: Southeast Asia (especially Philippines), China
Specialization(s): World history methods, diaspora, urban history, Sino-Philippine relations, cultural history, sports history.
Tiantian Zheng — SUNY Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, SUNY Cortland
Country/area(s) of interest: China
Specialization(s): labor migration, gender and sexuality, disease transmission, social stratification and marginality
Hiromi Dollase — Associate Professor of Japanese (Literature),Vassar College
Country/area(s) of interest: Japan
Specialization(s): modern Japanese literature, women’s literature, girls’ study, magazine culture, manga, popular culture
Southeast Regional
Marcy L. Tanter — Professor of English (Literature), Tarleton State University
Country/area(s) of interest: Northeast Asia / Korea
Specialization(s): 20th-21st century Korean literature / poetry related to the Gwangju Democratic Revolution / pop culture, esp K-dramas / history of Korea / American and British lit of the long 19C / women’s poetry / WW1
Patricia Schiaffini-Vedani — Senior Lecturer of Chinese Language and Literature, Honors Faculty, Director of the Texas State in Beijing Program, Texas State University
Country/area(s) of interest: China/Tibet
Specialization(s): Modern Chinese Literature, Literature of China’s ethnic minorities, Sinophone Tibetan Literature, Tibetan children literature
Aryendra Chakravartty — Assistant Professor of History, Stephen F. Austin State University
Country/area(s) of interest: South Asia
Specialization(s): Colonialism and Empire, Modern South Asia, Regionalism and Belonging, Migration, History-writing
Southeast Regional
Catherine L. Phipps — Associate Professor of History, University of Memphis
Country/area(s) of interest: Japan, Northeast Asia
Specialization(s): Maritime history, modern imperialism, historical geography
Lane J. Harris — Associate Professor of History and Department Chair, Furman University
Country/area(s) of interest: China
Specialization(s): Late Qing and Republican Chinese history, state-making, institutional history, overseas Chinese
Krista Van Fleit — Associate Professor of Chinese Studies (Dept. of Languages, Literatures and Cultures), University of South Carolina
Country/area(s) of interest: China and India
Specialization(s): modern Chinese literature and film, Indian film, China India connections