Vice President Nominees
Represented Area: South Asia
Kamran Asdar Ali
Current position: Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Texas, Austin
Discipline: Anthropology
Country or area(s) of interest: South Asia, Pakistan
Specialization: Gender, Sexuality, Popular Culture, Labor History, Urban Studies
Publications
“On Female Friendships and Anger.” In Vazira Zamindar, Asad Ali, eds. Love, War, and Other Longings: Emergent Cinema in Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2020.
“The Enemy Within: Communism and the New Pakistani State.” In Gyan Prakash, Nikhil Menon, and Michael Laffan, eds. Postcolonial Moment in South and Southeast Asia. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2018.
Communism in Pakistan: Politics and Class Activism 1947-1972. London: I.B Tauris Publishers, 2015.
Service to the Profession
Contributing Editor, Comparative Studies in South Asia, Middle East and Africa. 2016-present
Co-Organizer (with Yasmin Saikia, Willem Schendel, Dina Siddiqi, and Shelley Feldman),Workshop, Pakistan/Bangladesh/India: Building a field of scholarship and dialogue on 1971. BRAC Development Institute Dhaka, Bangladesh. March 16-17, 2011
Elected Member American Anthropological Association, Committee on Human Rights. 2004-2007
Personal Statement
I am a cultural anthropologist by training who has conducted field research in Mexico, Egypt, and Pakistan. My work has focused on gender and health issues, urban studies, popular culture, and labor history. In the last two decades while focusing on Pakistan for my research, I have been sensitive to the historical confluences and exchanges between various geographical regions in the global south. My sense of a comparative framework builds partly on a shared history of the colonial encounter, modernity, nationalism, and urbanity and is deepened by the larger cultural framework that influences social life in these regions. As we rethink the traditional maps of trade and cultural exchange, we may remind ourselves of the complex history of the Indian Ocean itself. This rethinking is influenced by the historic and contemporary linkages between South Asia, East Asia, and the Far East. It is this perspective that I bring to my understanding of South Asia and Asia in general, a comprehension that values the uniqueness and particularity of the region while being equally appreciative of the broader connections various regional geographies and cultures have to each other. For example, due to my more recent work on working class history in South Asia, I was invited to a conference at Hokkaido University in Sapporo (Japan) for a discussion on the larger influences of the Russian Revolution in Central, South, and East Asia. Similarly, I am currently collaborating with a senior scholar at a German university to edit a special issue of a journal on comparing social movements in South Asia, East Asia, and the Far East during the 1960s. However, in a less comparative mode, in recent years I have been writing on Pakistani art forms and cinema from the 1950s and 1960s. Research on cinema in Pakistan is in its nascent phase and Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell University, Art History) and I have been invited to submit a manuscript on Pakistan Cinema to the Asia Shorts book series of the Association for Asian Studies.
From 2011-2017, I was the Director of the South Asia Institute (SAI) at the University of Texas, Austin (Title VI funded National Resources Center). As a director I worked with approximately fifty affiliated faculty members who conducted research across the entire South Asian region (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal). Since the Institute was closely associated with the Asian Studies program at UT, one of my aims as director was to enhance the understanding of the spatial and temporal connections between South Asia and other regions of Asia. I was specifically committed to the intellectual strength of the scholarly expertise that linked the pre-modern to modern Asia through the study of history, religion, languages, politics, culture, and society. Hence, in order to bring the historical and the contemporary together, my efforts consisted of working with the faculty to blend the various thematic and intellectual strands that make up the diverse region that all of us collectively study.
From 2011-2017, I also was the President of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS), an Overseas Research Center which is part of a consortium that promotes research and cultural exchange between the U.S. and Pakistan. One of the main tasks I performed during my tenure as AIPS President was to create opportunities for junior scholars and graduate students to conduct research in Pakistan (through new funding opportunities), organize workshops where they could present their work, and also provide them with academic mentorship through our broad membership. More recently, on leave from UT, Austin, I served as the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS, one of Pakistan’s premier private universities.
It is indeed an honor to receive the nomination to be a candidate for the Vice President’s position for the Association for Asian Studies. As a candidate I offer my administrative experience (as SAI director, as AIPS President, and as Dean of a School), my ability to bring scholars from various disciplines and regions into a productive intellectual dialogue, and my own long-term commitment to mentor and encourage younger scholars in different fields of study
Philip Lutgendorf
Current position: Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies, Emeritus
Institution/Affiliation: University of Iowa
Discipline: cultural history, literature, cinema, religious studies
Country or area(s) of interest: South Asia
Specialization: Cultural history of North India; popular and devotional Hindi literature; performance, cinema and mass media; tea promotion and consumption
Select Publications
The Epic of Ram by Tulsidas, translated by Philip Lutgendorf. Cambridge, MA: Murty Classical Library of India/Harvard University Press, Vols.1&2 2016, Vols. 3&4 2018; Vol. 5 2020 (Vols. 6&7 forthcoming).
Hanuman’s Tale: The Messages of a Divine Monkey. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
The Life of a Text: Performing the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Service to the Profession
President, American Institute of Indian Studies, 2010-2018
Chair, Department of Asian and Slavic Languages & Literatures, U. of Iowa, 1995-2001, 2004-2007
South Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies, 2000-2003
Personal Statement
Growing up in New York City, the child of European immigrants, I became unaccountably fascinated with Asian cultures—initially, of China, Japan, and the Himalayas. In college I majored in comparative religions, especially Islam and Sufi traditions, but then took a life-changing trip to India that eventually led me to a South Asian area studies program and a scholarly career focused on storytelling—oral, written, and performed through various media.
In thirty-three years at a public university, I taught language, literature, and cultural history, introducing students to the epics of South and Southeast Asia and emphasizing their multivalence. Dismayed by the absence of popular “Bollywood” film in cinema studies curricula, in the 1990s I began teaching courses on its history, conventions, and transnational appeal. In nine years as a department chair, I worked to protect and foster Asian language programs from administrators who seldom saw beyond Euro-America and regularly devalued us as a “service unit.” I also served as President of the American Institute of Indian Studies, from whose Hindi language program and fellowship support I had benefited, and on the Executive Committee of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, which supports and advocates for 28 centers.
AAS has likewise loomed large in my career. I had my first scholarly publication in its journal, served on its South Asia Council, and have rarely missed a national meeting, relishing the opportunity to reconnect with colleagues, discover new scholarship, and experience the synergy of border-crossing and interdisciplinary panels. The current pandemic underscores our interconnectedness, but also the potential of xenophobic nationalism to fuel discrimination toward Asian peoples. Looking with hope to a post-COVID world, I would, if elected, work to sustain AAS’s role in advancing pedagogy and research, including digital scholarship. I am especially concerned to promote racial and ethnic diversity among Asia scholars, and to advocate for the future of language teaching—the training that opened doors to Asia for many of us—and its often overworked, under-recognized faculty.
China and Inner Asia Council Nominees
Christopher P. Atwood
Current position: Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Mongolia, Chinese Inner Asia
Specialization or research interests: Mongolian state building in historiographic, environmental, and religious perspective
Publications
Editor and translator, The Rise of the Mongols: Five Chinese Sources. Indianapolis: Hackett, in press
“Yuan Dynasty” in Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire, eds. Michal Biran and Kim Ho-dong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press.
Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. New York: Facts-on-File, 2004.
Service to the Profession
John K. Fairbank East Asian History Prize Committee, American Historical Association, 2019-21.
Gene Smith Inner Asian Book Prize Committee, Association for Asian Studies, 2011-2013.
Inner Asian Book Review Editor, Journal of Asian Studies, 2003-2008.
Anke Hein
Current position: Associate Professor in Chinese Archaeology
Institution/Affiliation: University of Oxford, School of Archaeology
Discipline: Archaeology
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: prehistoric and early historic archaeology, esp. western China, technology (esp. ceramics), culture contact, migration, identity formation, human-environment interaction
Publications
With Ole Stilborg. “Ceramic production techniques and principles of raw material selection in prehistoric northwest China: a preliminary view based on material from the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm.” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 23 (2019): 104-115.
The Burial Record of Prehistoric Liangshan in Southwest China: Graves as Composite Objects. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017.
“The Problem of Typology in Chinese Archaeology.” Early China 39 (2016): 21-52.
Service to the Profession
Treasurer of the Society for East Asian Archaeology, 2016-present
Series Editor of the Archaeology of East Asia Sub Series of BAR Publishing, 2018-present
Organizing Committee of The Art and Archaeology of Ritual and Economy in East Asia: Festschrift Workshop and Symposium in Honor of Lothar von Falkenhausen, UCLA, 5-6. June 2019 (organizational work from 2018, editorial work on the Festschrift ongoing)
Leigh K. Jenco
Current position: Professor of Political Theory
Institution/Affiliation: London School of Economics
Discipline: Political Science
Area or countries of interest: China, Taiwan
Specialization or research interests: Late imperial and modern Chinese political thought; global intellectual history; Chinese political philosophy
Publications
“Chen Di’s Record of Formosa (1603) and an Alternative Chinese Imaginary of Otherness,” The Historical Journal (forthcoming).
“Can the Chinese Nation Be One? Gu Jiegang, Chinese Muslims, and the Reworking of Culturalism,” Modern China 45, no. 5 (November 2019).
Changing Referents: Learning Across Space and Time in China and the West. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Service to the Profession
AAS Program Committee Member, 2021-2023
Associate Editor, American Political Science Review, 2016-2020
Principal Investigator, East Asian Uses of the European Past, Humanities in the European Research Area Collaborative Grant Project; grant agreement no. 649307, 2016-2019
Chloe Starr
Current position: Professor of Asian Theology and Christianity
Institution/Affiliation: Yale University
Discipline: Chinese Studies/ Religious Studies
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: Chinese Theology and Literature
Publications
Chinese Theology: Text and Context. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
Red-light Novels of the Late Qing. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
Reading Christian Scriptures in China. T&T Clark, 2007.
Service to the Profession
Executive Council Member, World Sinology Conference, Beijing, 2017-present
Series Co-Editor. Leiden and Boston: Brill, Religious Studies in Contemporary China Collection, 2015-present
Conference Organizer, Chinese Theologies, Yale University, summer 2020, 2021, 2022
Michelle C. Wang
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Georgetown University
Discipline: Art History
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: Buddhist and silk road art
Publications
“The CDC’s Misappropriation of a Chinese Textile, and Why It Matters.” Hyperallergic. May 11, 2020.
Maṇḍalas in the Making: The Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018.
“The Thousand-armed Mañjuśrī at Dunhuang and Paired Images in Buddhist Visual Culture.” Archives of Asian Art 66.1 (2016): 81-105.
Service to the Profession
Editorial Board, Archives of Asian Art, 2019-present
Central Steering Committee, From the Ground Up: Buddhism and East Asian Religions, 2018-present
Board of Directors, T’ang Studies Society, 2018-present
Wasana WONGSURAWAT
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Chulalongkorn University
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Transnational China, the Chinese Diaspora, Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: History of the Chinese Diaspora, China’s influence in Southeast Asia
Publications
The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019
Editor. Sites of Modernity: Asian Cities in the Transitory Moments of Trade, Colonialism and Nationalism. Singapore: Springer, 2016.
Editor, with Vu Tuong. Dynamics of the Cold War in Asia: Ideology, Identity and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Service to the Profession
Member of the AAS Southeast Asia Council (SEAC) 2019-2020 and organizer of the “Rising Voices from Southeast Asia” panel for AAS 2020
Member of the secretariat of the consortium for Southeast Asian Studies in Asia (SEASIA) and organized the biannual conference in Bangkok in 2017 (SEASIA2017)
Shellen Xiao Wu
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: history of science, China and the world
Publications
Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1919. Weatherhead East Asian Institute Publication series, Stanford University Press, 2015.
“The Search for Coal in the Age of Empires: Ferdinand von Richthofen’s Odyssey in China, 1860-1920,” The American Historical Review, 119, No. 2 (April 2014): 339-362.
“Saving China through Science,” Nature, part of essay series for the 150th anniversary celebration of Nature’s founding, October 1, 2019. (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02937-2)
Service to the Profession
Co-founder of Gender Equality in Asian Studies, group affiliated with the Association for Asian Studies, 2014-present
Treasurer/Secretary for the Historical Society for Twentieth Century China, 2012-2014
Board member of the Historical Society for Twentieth Century China, 2019-present
Northeast Asia Council Nominees
Jessamyn R. Abel
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Asian Studies Department, Pennsylvania State University
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Japan
Specialization or research interests: infrastructure, technology, international relations, sports (Olympics)
Publications
“Information Society on Track: Communication, Crime, and Japan’s First Bullet Train.” Forthcoming in Journal of Japanese Studies 47, no. 2 (Summer 2021).
“The Power of a Line: How the Bullet Train Transformed Urban Space.” positions: asia critique 27, no. 3 (August 2019): 531-555.
The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933-1964 (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015).
Service to the Profession
Editorial collective member, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Fall 2014-present; special issue co-editor for vol. 6, no. 2 (fall 2020).
Co-director, Summer Institute on Infrastructure in Asia, June 2018
Co-organizer “Utopias on Display” workshop, April 2016
Chris Hanscom
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles
Discipline: literary studies
Area or countries of interest: Korea
Specialization or research interests: modern Korean fiction
Publications
The Affect of Difference: Representations of Race in East Asian Empires, co-edited with Dennis Washburn. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016.
The Real Modern: Literary Modernism and the Crisis of Representation in Colonial Korea. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013.
Imperatives of Culture: Selected Essays on Korean History, Literature, and Society from the Japanese Colonial Era, co-edited with Walter Lew and Youngju Ryu. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013.
Service to the Profession
Korean Language and Literature Executive Committee, Modern Language Association, 2015-present (Chair, 2019-20)
Texts and Translations Editorial Board, Modern Language Association, 2014-2018
Board Member, Committee on Korean Studies (AAS), 2009-2012
Cheehyung Harrison Kim
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Hawaii at Manoa
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Korea
Specialization or research interests: modern Korea, North Korea, labor, socialism, everyday life, urbanism, transnationalism
Publications
Heroes and Toilers: Work as Life in Postwar North Korea, 1953-1961. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
“North Korea’s Vinalon City: Industrialism as Socialist Everyday Life.” positions: asia critique 22.4 (2014): 809-836.
“Total, Thus Broken: Chuch’e Sasang and North Korea’s Terrain of Subjectivity.” Journal of Korean Studies 17.1 (2012): 69-96.
Service to the Profession
Editor, Korean Studies journal, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Member, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Council, University of Hawaii
Overseas Researcher, National Institute for Korean History, South Korea
Sonja M. Kim
Current position: Associate Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies
Institution/Affiliation: Binghamton University, State University of New York
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Korea
Specialization or research interests: History of medicine, gender
Publications
Imperatives of Care: Women and Medicine in Colonial Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019.
“Women, Gender and Social Change in Colonial Korea.” In Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean History, edited by Michael J. Seth, 141-152. London: Routledge, 2016.
“‘Limiting Birth’: Birth Control in Colonial Korea.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Society: An International Journal 2, no. 3 (2008): 335-359
Service to the Profession
Elected Member, Executive Board, Committee on Korean Studies, Association for Asian Studies, 2010-2013 (Secretary, AY 2012-2013).
Editorial Board, Uisahak (Korean Journal of Medical History), 2009-present
Faculty core member, Center for Korean Studies, Binghamton University, 2010-present
Suzy Kim
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Korea, East Asia, Global Asias
Specialization or research interests: transnational feminisms; global Cold War; revolutions and social movements
Publications
Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013)
Guest editor, “(De)Memorializing the Korean War: A Critical Intervention,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review No. 14 (March 2015)
Guest editor, “Cold War Feminisms in East Asia,” positions: asia critique, Vol. 28, No. 3 (August 2020)
Service to the Profession
Editorial Collective, positions: asia critique, 2015-Present
NEAC Distinguished Speakers Bureau, 2017-2019
AAS James B. Palais Book Prize Committee, 2015-2017 (Chair, 2016-2017)
Steve Ridgely
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Wisconsin, Madison
Discipline: Modern Japanese Literature
Area or countries of interest: Japan, East Asia
Specialization or research interests: modern Japanese literature, cultural politics, critical theory
Publications
Japanese Counterculture: The Antiestablishment Art of Terayama Shūji. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
“Past, Present, and Future at Expo 70,” JapanAmerica: Points of Contact, 1876-1970. Ithaca, NY: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 2017, pp. 120-31.
“Tanizaki and the Literary Uses of Cinema,” The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 3:2 (2012), pp. 77-93.
Service to the Profession
Chair, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, UW-Madison, 2017-2020
Director, Center for East Asian Studies, UW-Madison, 2015-2017
Referee for Princeton University Press, Columbia University Press, Wesleyan University Press, Cornell East Asia Series, Brill, positions: asia critique, The Journal of Japanese Studies, Modern Asian Studies, Japan Forum
Jolyon Thomas
Current position: Assistant Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Pennsylvania
Discipline: Religious Studies
Area or countries of interest: Japan, Northeast Asia, South and Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: Modern Japanese religions, media (esp. manga and anime), politics and law (esp. religious freedom and education)
Publications
Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2012.
“Big Questions in the Study of Shinto” (Review of Breen, John; Teeuwen, Mark, A New History of Shinto and Hardacre, Helen, Shinto: A History and Scheid, Bernhard, ed., with Kate Wildman Nakai, Kami Ways in Nationalist Territory: Shinto Studies in Prewar Japan and the West and Takenaka, Akiko, Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar and Teeuwen, Mark; Breen, John, A Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital and Zhong, Yijiang, The Origin of Modern Shinto in Japan: The Vanquished Gods of Izumo.) H-Japan, H-Net Reviews. November, 2017. https://networks.h-net.org/node/20904/discussions/837862/review-jolyon-thomas-studies-shinto
Service to the Profession
Steering Committee Member, Japanese Religions Unit, American Academy of Religion, 2015–2021
Co-editor, New Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions (expected publication 2023)
Editorial Consultant, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 2018–2022
South Asia Council Nominees
Amrita Basu
Current position: Paino Professor of Political Science and Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies
Institution/Affiliation: Amherst College
Discipline: Political Science
Area or countries of interest: India
Specialization or research interests: religious nationalism, populism, social movements, women’s activism
Publications
Violent Conjunctures in Democratic India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Contentious Politics Series, 2015.
Editor. Women’s Movements in the Global Era: The Power of Local Feminisms. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2010, second edition, 2016.
“How the Rudolphs’ on Gandhi Help Make Sense of Modi,” in John Echeverria-Gent and Kamal Siddiqi eds., Situating Knowledge Amidst Change: Political Analysis, India, and the Rudolph Legacy. Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
Service to the Profession
Editor for South Asia, Journal of Asian Studies, 1995-2001
American Institute of Indian Studies: Vice-President, 2014-2016; Executive Committee, 2013-2017, Board of Trustees, 2011-2013
Association for Asian Studies: Program Committee, 2006-2008; South Asia Council, 1990-1993
Anne M. Blackburn
Current position: Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Cornell University
Discipline: History of Buddhism
Area or countries of interest: Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Burma.
Specialization or research interests: History of Buddhism at the intersection of literary studies, intellectual history, and political economy, with a particular interest in Buddhist circulations (intellectual, monastic institutional, political, and trade) involving locations now known as Sri Lanka, India, Burma, and Thailand.
Publications
With Michael R. Feener, editors. Buddhist and Islamic Orders in Southern Asia: Comparative Perspectives. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018.
“Buddhist Connections in the Indian Ocean: Changes in Monastic Mobility 1000-1500.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58 (2015): 3: 237-266.
Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, in the series Buddhism & Modernity, 2010.
Service to the Profession
Director, Cornell South Asia Program, and National Resource Center PI for Syracuse-Cornell NRC Consortium, 2013-2018
Vice-President, American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies, 2017-present
South Asia Summer Language Institute (SASLI) Board of Trustees, 2004-2018
Purnima Bose
Current position: Professor, English and International Studies; Chairperson, International Studies
Institution/Affiliation: Indiana University, Bloomington
Discipline: English and International Studies
Area or countries of interest: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan
Specialization or research interests: post-colonial studies; conflict and military occupation; nationalism
Publications
Intervention Narratives: Afghanistan, the United States, and the Global War on Terror. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020.
“Kashmir, Article 370, and the Afterlife of Colonial Martial Race Theory.” Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, 13.1 (March 2020): 27-46.
With Mona Bhan. “Canine Counterinsurgency in Indian-occupied Kashmir.” Critique of Anthropology, 40.3 (September 2020): 341-363.
Service to the Profession
Article Reviewer, Journal of Asian Studies, 2017-2018
Editorial Board, SAGAR, 1997-2020
Founding Editorial Member SAMAR, 1992-1994; Editorial Associate, 1994-2002
Ayesha A. Irani
Current position: Associate Professor of Asian Studies
Institution/Affiliation: University of Massachusetts Boston
Discipline: South Asia Studies; Religious Studies; Islamic Studies
Area or countries of interest: India; Bangladesh; Arakan; the Bay of Bengal; South Asia, more broadly
Specialization or research interests: Islam in South Asia; religious conversion; translation studies; Islamic Bangla literature
Publications
The Muhammad Avatāra: Salvation History, Translation, and the Making of Bengali Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2021.
“From Manuscript to Print: Islamic Bangla Literature and the Politics of the Archive,” Religions of South Asia 12, no. 3 (2018): 351–381.
“The Prophetic Principle of Light and Love: Nūr Muḥammad in Early Modern Bengali Literature.” History of Religions 55, no. 4 (2016): 391–428. Special Issue edited by Wendy Doniger, “Muslim-Hindu Literary Encounters in Early Modern South Asia: Conversations with Aditya Behl.”
Service to the Profession
Member, RISA Steering Committee, American Academy of Religions
Member, Board of Trustees, American Institute of Bangladesh Studies
EAP 683: Rāmamālā Library Manuscript Project, 2013 Award–Pilot Project, Endangered Archives Programme, British Library, London, U.K.; January 2014–August 2014: https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP683. Co-applicant with principal applicant: Dr. Benjamin Fleming, University of Pennsylvania, and other co-applicants Dr. Thibaut d’Hubert, University of Chicago, and Saymon Zakaria, Bangla Academy, Dhaka.
Jinah Kim
Current position: Professor of History of Art & Architecture
Institution/Affiliation: Harvard University
Discipline: Art History
Area or countries of interest: South Asia (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar), Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia)
Specialization or research interests: art of the book in South Asia, Buddhist art and architecture, material culture studies
Publications
Garland of Visions: Color, Tantra, and a Material History of Indian Painting. Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming 2021.
With Todd Lewis, eds. Dharma and Puṇya: Buddhist Ritual Art of Nepal. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2019.
Receptacle of the Sacred: Illustrated Manuscripts and the Buddhist Book-cult in South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
Service to the Profession
Vice President, American Council for Southern Asian Art, 2018-2022
Organizer, Nepal Mandala in Early Modern Global Asia, symposium held at Harvard, December 5-7, 2019 (https://dharmapunya2019.org/symposium/index.html)
Co-organizer with Laura Weinstein (MFA), the ACSAA 18th biennial symposium held at Harvard, October 12-15, 2017
Wazhmah Osman
Current position: Assistant Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Temple University
Discipline: Media/Communication Studies, Anthropology, Gender/Sexuality, Race/Ethnic Studies
Area or countries of interest: South, Central, and West Asia
Specialization or research interests: Asian race discrimination in the U.S., western media development and imperialism in South Asia
Publications
Brought to You by Foreigners, Warlords, and Activists: Television and the Afghan Culture Wars. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, Geopolitics of Information, 2020.
With Crews, R. D. Afghanistan: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press (under contract)
“Racialized agents and villains of the security state: How African Americans are interpellated against Muslims and Muslim Americans.” Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas 5, no. 1-2 (2019): 155-182.
Service to the Profession
Board of Directors, Afghanistan Journal
Board Member, Middle Eastern Studies Association Queer Studies Working Group, 2018-present
Reviewer: Modern Asian Studies, Social Science Research Council’s IDRF Applications, Public Culture, International Journal of Communication, Leeway Foundation, Global Fusion: A Global Media and Communication Conference
Rina Verma Williams
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Cincinnati
Discipline: Political Science
Area or countries of interest: South Asia, India
Specialization or research interests: identity politics, women and gender, religion and nationalism; democracy and political parties; legal systems
Publications
With Sikata Banerjee. “Making the Nation Manly: The Case of Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013) and India’s Search for Regional Dominance in an Era of Neo-Liberal Globalization.” Studies in South Asian Film and Media 10, no. 2 (2019): 179-93.
With Sayam Moktan. “Hinduism: India, Nepal, and Beyond.” In Oxford Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion. Oxford University Press, 2019.
With Nandini Deo. “Hinduism and Democracy: Religion and Politicized Religion in India.” In Shiping Hua, ed. Routledge Handbook of Asian Politics. Routledge Press, 2018
Service to the Profession
Associate Editor for South Asia, Journal of Asian Studies, 2019-present
Member, Fellowship Selection Committee, American Institute for Indian Studies, 2018-20
Advisor, Pew Research Center, Survey of Religion, Nationalism and Social Issues in India, 2018-present
Southeast Asia Council Nominees
Jenny Goldstein
Current position: Assistant Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Cornell University, Department of Global Development
Discipline: Geography
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Myanmar)
Specialization or research interests: political ecology, socio-ecological change, digital media and governance, politics of health
Publications
With Faxon, H.O.“New data infrastructures for environmental monitoring in Myanmar: Is digital transparency good for governance?” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space (2020). https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2514848620943892
With L. Graham, S. Ansori, Y. Vetrita, A. Thomas, G. Applegate, A.P. Vayda, B.H. Saharjo, M.A. Cochrane. “Beyond slash-and-burn: The roles of human activities, altered hydrology and fuels in peat fires in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography (2020). doi:10.1111/sjtg.12319
“The Volumetic Political Forest: Territory, Satellite Fire Mapping, and Indonesia’s Peatland Burning.” Antipode (2019). doi.org/10.1111/anti.12576
Service to the Profession
Executive Board Member, American Institute for Indonesian Studies, 2019-present
Core Faculty Member, Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2017-present
Editor, The Nature of Data: Environments, Infrastructures, Politics, edited volume under contract with University of Nebraska Press
Eunsook Jung
Current position: Assistant Dean
Institution/Affiliation: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Discipline: Political Science
Area or countries of interest: Indonesia, Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: Islam and Politics
Publications
“Mobilizing on Morality: Conservative Islamic Movements and Policy Impacts in Contemporary Indonesia” The New Santri: Challenges to traditional religious authority in Indonesia, edited by Norshahril Saat and Ahmad Najib Burhani. Singapore: ISEAS Yusof-Ishak Institute, forthcoming October 2020.
“Campaigning for All Indonesians: The Politics of Healthcare in Indonesia.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 38, No.3 (2017): 476-494.
“Islamic Organizations and Electoral Politics in Indonesia: The Case of Muhammadiyah.” South East Asia Research 22, No.1 (2014): 73-86.
Service to the Profession
Treasurer of Indonesia and East Timor Studies Committee (IETSC) of the Association for Asian Studies, 2012-2015
Board Member of Indonesia and East Timor Studies Committee (IETSC) of the Association for Asian Studies, 2011-2015.
Steering Committee, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016-present
Doreen Lee
Current position: Associate Professor of Anthropology
Institution/Affiliation: Northeastern University
Discipline: Anthropology
Area or countries of interest: Indonesia and Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: Indonesian activism and history, youth culture, urban social movements, urban infrastructure, debt and exchange.
Publications
“Dissident Writing and the Intimacy of the Archive in Authoritarian Indonesia.” In The Intimate Life of Public Dissent: Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Harini Amasurya et al. University College London Press, 2020.
Activist Archives: Youth Culture and the Political Past in Indonesia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.
“Absolute Traffic: Infrastructural Aptitude in Urban Indonesia.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) 39, Issue 2 (2015): 234-250.
Service to the Profession
AAS Kahin Book Prize Committee member, 2020
Indonesia and Timor Leste Studies Committee (ITLSC) Board Member, 2015-2020
ITLSC Paper Prize Committee, 2018
Sango Mahanty
Current position: Director, Resources, Environment and Development Program, Crawford School of Public Policy
Institution/Affiliation: The Australian National University
Discipline: Human Geography
Area or countries of interest: Cambodia, Vietnam
Specialization or research interests: Environmental change, political ecology, borderlands, frontier markets.
Publications
“Contingent Sovereignty: Cross-Border Rentals in the Cambodia-Vietnam Borderland,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108, no. 3 (2018): 829-844, doi:10.1080/24694452.2017.1374162
“Shadow Economies and the State: A Comparison of Cassava and Timber Networks on the Cambodia-Vietnam Frontier,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 49, no. 2 (2018): 193-215, doi:10.1080/00472336.2018.1545917
With Milne, S. Conservation and Development in Cambodia: Exploring Frontiers of Change in Nature, State and Society. Earthscan/Routledge, 2015.
Service to the Profession
Editorial work: Journals: Society and Natural Resources; Conservation and Society (current); Presses: ANU E-Press Society and Environment series (current editorial board member)
Regular organizing committee member for ANU’s annual Vietnam Update series (last held in 2018)
Organizing committee for ANU’s Cambodia Update (current, planned for September 2020, but rescheduled to 2021 due to COVID-19)
Sarah Milne
Current position: Senior Lecturer
Institution/Affiliation: College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University (ANU)
Discipline: Human Geography
Area or countries of interest: Mainland Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia, more recently the role of China in the region
Specialization or research interests: Environmental politics and policy in Cambodia, especially relating to conservation areas; also property rights, forest loss, land relations, state-society relations
Publications
With Loughlin, N. “After the grab? Land control and regime survival in Cambodia, post-2012.” Journal of Contemporary Asia (2020). DOI: 10.1080/00472336.2020.1740295
“Cambodia’s unofficial regime of extraction: Illicit logging in the shadow of transnational governance and investment.” Critical Asian Studies 47, no. 2 (2015): 200-22.
With Sango Mahanty, editors. Conservation and Development in Cambodia: Exploring Frontiers of Change in Nature, State and Society. Routledge, Oxon., 2015.
Service to the Profession
Co-hosted and organized a workshop for scholars and practitioners at the ANU in September 2019 on Land governance and the research-policy interface in the Asia-Pacific region.
Currently on the organizing committee for ANU’s first ever Cambodia Update. Originally scheduled for 2020, now postponed due to COVID.
Editorial Board, Environment and Society
Juno Salazar Parreñas
Current position: Assistant Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Cornell University
Discipline: Science and Technology Studies; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Anthropology
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia (Malaysia and Singapore; island Southeast Asia)
Specialization or research interests: human-animal studies, environmental studies, political economy, feminist science studies
Publications
Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.
“The Materiality of Intimacy: Rethinking ‘Ethical Capitalism’ through Embodied Encounters with Animals in Southeast Asia.” positions: asia critique 24, no. 1 (2016): 97-127.
“The Job of Finding Food is a Joke: Orangutan Rehabilitation, Work, Subsistence, and Social Relations.” In How Nature Works, edited by Sarah Besky and Alex Blanchette. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019.
Service to the Profession
Editorial Board Associate Editor, Current Anthropology, 2019-2021
Program Committee Member, American Society for Environmental History Meeting, 2020
Program Chair and Member-at-Large, General Anthropology Division, American Anthropological Association Meeting, 2016 and 2017
Christina Schwenkel
Current position: Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Riverside
Discipline: Anthropology
Area or countries of interest: Vietnam, Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: urban infrastructure, design, memory and materiality
Publications
Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020.
“Haunted Infrastructure: Religious Ruins and Urban Obstruction in Vietnam.” City & Society 29, no. 3 (2017): 413-434.
The American War in Contemporary Vietnam: Transnational Remembrance and Representation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
Service to the Profession
Co-editor-in-chief, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 2018-present
Director, Program in Southeast Asian Studies (SEATRiP), University of California, Riverside, 2016-2020
Executive Committee Member, Vietnam Studies Group, Association for Asian Studies, 2015-present
Council of Conferences Nominees
Mid-Atlantic Region (MARAAS)
Shawn Bender
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Dickinson College
Discipline: East Asian Studies
Area or countries of interest: Japan, East Asia
Specialization or research interests: Anthropology of health, aging, and technology; contemporary Japanese society; ethnomusicology
Publications
Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
Service to the Profession
Conference Manager, 48th Annual Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies Conference, Dickinson College, 2019
President, Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies, 2018-2019
Treasurer, Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies, 2008-2016
Mahua Bhattacharya
Current Position: Professor, Japanese and Asian Studies
Institution/Affiliation: Elizabethtown College
Discipline: Japanese Language and Japanese Studies
Area or countries of interest: Japan, India
Specialization or research interests: Japanese language pedagogy and Japanese language ideology; Japanese popular culture; Japanese cultural history; East Asian International Relations
Publications
“Language Ideology and its Manifestations: Exploring Implications for Japanese Language Teaching,” in “Diversity, Inclusion, and Professionalism in Japanese Language Education:” Special Issue of AATJ Journal Japanese Language and Literature (Fall 2020).
“Calcutta in Colonial Transition,” review article for special issue of International Quarterly of Asian Studies (Heidelberg, Germany) titled “The Politics and Poetics of Urban Space in Asia,” Vol. 50 No. 3-4 (Dec. 2019).
“Imagining ‘Home’: Discovering Multiples Selves and Homes through Travel,” in Gabriel Ricci (Ed.), Travel, Tourism and Identity: Culture and Civilization, Vol.7. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015.
Service to the Profession
President, MARAAS, 2019-2020; Program Chair of 2021 MARAAS annual meeting
Vice President, MARAAS, 2018-19
Program Chair, MARAAS annual meeting, 2018
Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs (MCAA)
Taylor Easum
Current position: Assistant Professor of History
Institution/Affiliation: Indiana State University
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: Urban space and comparative colonialism in Asia; Heritage and historical preservation in Asian cities; Regionalism and conflict in SE Asia.
Publications
“Local Identity, National Politics, and World Heritage in Northern Thailand.” Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, no. 27 (February 28, 2020).
“Networks Beyond the Nation: Urban Histories of Northern Thailand and Beyond.” In Routledge Handbook of Urbanization in Southeast Asia, 191–201. Routledge, 2018.
“Imagining the ‘Laos Mission’: On the Usage of ‘Lao’ in Northern Siam and Beyond.” The Journal of Lao Studies, Special Issue (2015): 6–23.
Service to the Profession
Chair, Council on Thai Studies (COTS), 2019
Executive Board Member, MCAA, 2015-present
Board Member, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia Studies Group (TLC), 2014-2016
Aminda Smith
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Michigan State University
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: China and East Asia
Specialization or research interests: Social and cultural history of Chinese Communism, history of gender and sexuality, global history of left movements
Publications
With Sun Peidong. “Building a New Shanghai: Political Rhetoric and the Reconstruction of the Shanghai Racecourse, 1949 – 1965.” Chinese Historical Review, volume 26, issue (April 2019).
Thought Reform and China’s Dangerous Classes: Reeducation, Resistance, and the People. Rowman and Littlefield, 2013.
“Thought Reform and the Unreformable: Reeducation Centers and the Rhetoric of Opposition in the Early People’s Republic of China.” Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 4 (November 2013).
Service to the Profession
Co-Director, The PRC History Group and Editor at the PRC History Review, 2013-present
Program Chair, MCAA, 2019
Series Co-Editor, Cambridge University Press Book Series, Studies in the History of the People’s Republic of China, 2019-present
Kendra Strand
Current position: Assistant Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Iowa
Discipline: Literature and Visual Culture
Area or countries of interest: Japan
Specialization or research interests: premodern Japanese poetry, travel writing, mapping practices, cultural geography, manuscript studies, history of the book, paleography, text and image.
Publications
An Unfamiliar Place: Landscape, Poetry, and Power in Medieval Japanese Travel Writing (monograph in progress).
“Souvenirs for the Capital: A Travel Journal by Sōkyū.” Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques, 71.2 (June 2017).
“Jingū: Narratives of Motherhood and Imperial Rule in Early Japan.” In Claire Phelan and Dana Cooper, eds., Motherhood in the Ancient/Classical World. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Service to the Profession
Panel Chair, Statemaking and Storytelling at the Margins: Travel, Contact, and Border Construction in Medieval Japanese Narrative. American Association of Japanese Teachers. Boston, MA (March 19, 2020; cancelled due to COVID-19).
Conference Organizer, Travel is Home: Travel and Landscape in Japanese Literature, Art, and Culture. Sponsored by The Japan Foundation, and the University of Iowa International Programs, Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, Division of World Languages Literatures and Cultures, and Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. University of Iowa, Iowa City (April 4-6, 2019).
Committee Member, Student Research Paper Awards, Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs, Summer 2017
Asian Studies Conference Japan (ASCJ)
Karl Friday
Current position: Professor of Premodern Japanese History
Institution/Affiliation: Saitama University
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Japan, Korea
Specialization or research interests: premodern history; social history; warrior history & culture
Publications
The Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History. Routledge, 2017.
Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850. Westview Press, 2012.
The First Samurai: The Life & Legend of the Warrior Rebel, Taira Masakado. John Wiley & Sons, 2008.
Service to the Profession
Vice President, Asian Studies Conference in Japan Executive Committee, 2017-2019
Member, Advisory Board, Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University, 2016-present
External Program Reviewer for Associated Kyoto Program, Kyoto, Japan, Feb. 2016
Christian Hess
Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Sophia University, Faculty of Liberal Arts
Discipline: Modern Chinese History
Area or countries of interest: China, Japan
Specialization or research interests: Urban History, Japanese Imperialism in China, History of Transportation and Mobility
Publications
“Sino-Soviet City: Dalian Between Socialist Worlds, 1945-1955” Journal of Urban History 44, no.1 (January 2018): 9-25.
“Securing the City, Securing the Nation: Militarization and Urban Police Work in Dalian, 1949-1953” in Toby Lincoln and Xu Tao, eds., The Habitable City in China: Urban History in the Twentieth Century (Palgrave, 2017): 71-90.
“Revolutionary Real Estate: Envisioning Space in Communist Dalian” in J. Cook, J. Goldstein, and S. Schmalzer, eds. Visualizing China: Image, History and Memory in China, 1750-Present (Lexington, 2014): 185-202.
Service to the Profession
Executive Committee Member, Asian Studies Japan Conference, 2013-present
Webmaster Asian Studies Japan Conference, 2013-2017
Organizer, International Symposium, “Empire and Aftermath: New Perspectives on the Legacies of the Japanese Empire,” Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture, June 19, 2015.