AAS Fall 2021 Election Nominees

We are pleased to announce the slate of candidates for the fall 2021 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 recorded) will be in November. Newly elected representatives will take office immediately after the Annual Conference in March 2022.

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

Vice President Nominees

Represented area: China & Inner Asia

Jean C. Oi

Current position: William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics, Department of Political Science; and Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies
Institution/Affiliation: Stanford University
Discipline: Political Science
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: Political Economy

Publications

  • “Future of Central-Local Relations,” in Thomas Fingar and Jean C. Oi, eds., Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future (Stanford University Press, 2020), pp. 107-127.
  • Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform (University of California Press, 1999).
  • State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government (University of California Press, 1989).

Service to the Profession

  • Member, AAS Program Committee (2017-2018)
  • Chair, AAS China and Inner Asia Council (2002-2003)
  • Member, AAS Program Committee (2001-2003)

Personal Statement

Asia’s ascendance is shifting the global center of gravity. The need for rigorous and engaged Asia scholarship is more critical than ever. As such, the role of the AAS as a premier association where all disciplines can feel at home and where researchers of all scholarly perspectives can convene to interact, debate, promote cross-cultural understanding, and address pressing problems is ever more vital.

If elected as the AAS Vice President, I will steer the Association through its next chapter of development to ensure that all scholars—regardless of whether they are in the humanities, social sciences, or even scientific and medical fields—deem our conferences, meetings, and workshops as important platforms to present their work, exchange ideas, and meet experts in their areas of research. This is especially critical for those of the younger generation who increasingly focus on their disciplines rather than on area expertise. All should see the AAS as relevant as disciplinary associations. And even more so as Asia gains in importance, our responsibility to educate scholars who not only possess mastery over their disciplinary knowledge but also area expertise seems increasingly critical.

I bring to this role over three decades of experience in advancing social science research on contemporary China, and a track record of building platforms for Asia education, research, and engagement that benefit scholars, students, and professionals across disciplines.

My research focuses on comparative politics, Chinese political economy, corporate restructuring, and governance in Asia. A believer in comparative studies, I convened and edited volumes with former students and colleagues from Asia on corporate restructuring in China, Japan, and Korea. Currently, I am interested in China’s expanding role on the global stage, particularly its Belt and Road Initiative. I have conducted fieldwork in China since the mid-1980s and have written extensively on China’s rural politics, central-local relations, and how China’s political and economic institutions have adapted to the tensions and opportunities wrought by the country’s dramatic transformation.

Area studies, with its in-depth, multidisciplinary perspective, offers invaluable insights into trends and pressing problems that traditional fields often miss. As such, I have consistently attempted to make China studies an essential part of mainstream political science research. For example, the 2019 “Getting China Right” conference that I co-organized with other political scientists from Duke, Harvard, MIT, and the University of Michigan convened dozens of China politics scholars to devise and engage in a new phase of Chinese politics research that has great potential to generate fresh theories and methodological insights within the discipline of political science. This cooperative effort was also intended to ensure that the next generation of scholars will integrate rigorous area expertise with disciplinary theory.

At Stanford, I have pushed for a renewed focus on China studies. I am the founding director of the China Program at Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. As the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU), I helped build a “home away from home” in Beijing for all faculty and students from Stanford’s seven schools. SCPKU serves as a unique hub for interdisciplinary gatherings with Chinese and international colleagues. From 1998 to 2005, I directed Stanford’s Center for East Asian Studies. During my tenure in that role, I led the effort to renew the Center’s interdisciplinary master’s program through the Faculty Senate, pressed for the hiring of several historians to teach Chinese studies and Japanese studies, and secured funding for Stanford’s first two postdoctoral fellowships in Chinese studies. In the process, I also led the effort to establish undergraduate internships and study opportunities in China, Japan, and Korea—a program that has now grown into other parts of Asia as well as Latin America. Each of these organizations are intended to influence current students and future generations of leaders in their disciplines to engage not only with China, but with Asia in general.

My commitment to the AAS is reflected in my service to the organization. I served as a member of CIAC (2001-2003) and then as its Chair (2002-2003). My belief in the importance of inclusive programming also led me to take on responsibilities on the Annual Conference Program Committee (2017-2018).

My service to the profession includes membership on the editorial boards of various academic journals, including Asian Survey, Asia Pacific Business Review, The China Journal, and The China Quarterly. When the future of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP) was at risk after losing its U.S. university-based sponsor, I worked with colleagues in the Department of Asian Languages at Stanford and lobbied the university to serve as a temporary coordinator to save this premier Chinese language program where so many of us, as well as our teachers, learned Chinese. As complicated as this effort was, it is rewarding to know that students, academics, and professionals will continue to gain advanced Chinese language competency at IUP.

As I reflect on these unprecedented times during the COVID-19 pandemic, I also feel more committed than ever to the AAS’s mission and its pledge to build diversity and equity in Asian studies. The pandemic has ignited global attention to systemic social and racial injustices, including those directed at Asian Americans and people of Asian descent. But social turmoil has also weakened barriers of inertia and resistance, opening new ways of thinking and doors into the future of academic work, teaching, and research. I would be honored to build upon that momentum and serve you at the AAS as we chart the Association’s future course.

Carlos Rojas

Current position: Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Duke University
Discipline: Cultural Studies
Area or countries of interest: China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the global Chinese diaspora
Specialization or research interests: Modern Chinese literature, cinema, and visual cultural

Publications

  • Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Transformation in Modern China (Harvard University Press, 2015).
  • The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures, Carlos Rojas and Andrea Bachner, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2016).
  • Yan Lianke, The Four Books: A Novel, Carlos Rojas, translator (Grove/ Atlantic Press, 2015).

Service to the Profession

  • President, Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (2015-2017)
  • Member, AAS China and Inner Asia Council (2015-2019; Council Chair, 2017-2018)
  • Member, AAS Program Committee (2018-2019)

Personal Statement

During the past year and a half, we have witnessed one of the most complicated and far-reaching public health crises of the modern era. Apart from the multifold impact that the pandemic has had on the general population (including the threat of illness and death, financial insecurities, and issues relating to elder care, childcare, and mental health), the pandemic has had more specific implications for many AAS members. For instance, travel restrictions have significantly constrained many members’ ability to conduct research and have also impacted students’ ability to study abroad. As it becomes clear that the results of the pandemic will continue to be felt for years to come, AAS will have a responsibility to try to help the community adjust to the new status quo—including not only minimizing as much as possible on-going disruptions, but also helping members capitalize on the new opportunities that have emerged (including a growing appreciation of possibilities relating to remote learning and conferencing).

Having first taught for several years at the University of Florida, I am currently Professor of Chinese cultural studies at Duke University, with a secondary appointment in the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, and have worked extensively in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. I am the founding co-director of the Humanities Research Center at Duke Kunshan University, and previously served as president of the Association for Chinese and Comparative Literature. I work primarily on China and the global Chinese diaspora, and have authored, edited, and translated 27 books—including 7 co-edited volumes with 6 different co-editors. Much of my research is deeply collaborative, and I am particularly committed to developing transnational scholarly networks.

I am honored to have been nominated as a candidate for the position of AAS Vice-President.

I have been involved with the AAS throughout my career and have served on both the Program Committee and on the China and Inner Asia Council (CIAC), which I also chaired. During my tenure on these two committees, we successfully proposed several revisions to the Annual Conference protocols designed to promote greater equity and diversity (including pushing for more accessible on-site childcare, while also tweaking the panel application form to help ensure greater diversity among presenters). If elected, I would continue to promote the Association’s commitment to diversity and equity. Finally, on a lighter note, I am an enthusiastic runner and, if elected, would propose a new tradition of an informal 5K fun run/walk (weather permitting)—to offer conference attendees an alternative way to network, socialize, and relax!


China & Inner Asia Council Nominees

Ja Ian Chong

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: National University of Singapore
Discipline: Political Science
Area or countries of interest: China, Hong Kong, Taiwan; Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand; Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: Nationalism, state formation, identity, contentious politics, regional security cooperation and competition, major power rivalry, historical international relations

Publications

  • External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia, Thailand, 1893-1952 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
  • With Todd H. Hall, “The Lessons of 1914 for East Asia Today? Missing the Trees for the Forest,” International Security, Volume 39, Number 1 (Summer 2014): 7-43
  • “Popular Narratives versus History: Implications for an Emergent China,” European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 20 No. 4 (December 2014): 939-64

Service to the Profession

  • Editorial Board, Asian Survey, 2019–present
  • International Advisory Board Member, Bristol Studies in East Asian International Relations Book Series, 2017–present
  • Associate Editor, International Studies Review, 2012–2015

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I see the role of AAS and CIAC as enabling and supporting members to do our best work as scholars studying complex and sometimes difficult subjects in a diverse and plural world, a reality that many of focusing on China and Inner Asia have to regularly address. Defending and enhancing academic freedom is key to scholarship and the production of knowledge and are goals to which I am deeply committed and have sought to advance alongside my research and teaching. I work on China’s external relations—particularly with Southeast and Northeast Asia—and take a special interest in issues of nationalism, institutions, and cross-border interactions both historically and in the contemporary period, topics on which I have published. Intellectually, I am deeply committed to conversations, exchanges, and mutual learning across regions, disciplines, and methodologies, which has greatly benefitted my own research and I believe can support the work of CIAC and AAS members.

Hilde De Weerdt

Current position: Professor of Chinese History
Institution/Affiliation: Leiden University, the Netherlands
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: China, also Korea, Japan, Central Asia, South, and Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: The social and cultural history of imperial Chinese state infrastructures and processes of mediation between central and local organization (in earlier work bureaucratic infrastructures such as the civil service examinations and official communication channels, in new work material infrastructures such as roads, bridges, and city walls).

Publications

  • Co-editor with Julius Morche, Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800-1600 (Amsterdam University Press, 2021).
  • Translated and co-edited with Glen Dudbridge and Gabe van Beijeren, The Essentials of Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
  • “Considering Citizenship in Imperial Chinese History,” Citizenship Studies 23:3 (2019), 256-76.

Service to the Profession

  • Association for Asian Studies, Program Committee (2017-19) & Digital Technologies Expo, Program Committee Chair (2019-20)
  • Journal of Asian Studies, Associate Editor (pre-twentieth-century Chinese and digital humanities), 2015-present
  • International Institute for Asian Studies, Academic Committee, Leiden, 2014-17

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I have been a member of AAS since the mid 1990s, and at all stages of my career, as a graduate student, postdoc, librarian, and beginning and mid-career academic, I have benefited in a variety of ways from the association’s regional and annual conferences, workshops, grant and employment services, newsletters and updates, and wide-ranging publication initiatives. I would like to help ensure that the AAS continues to grow its arsenal of professional services to its diverse constituencies in an inclusive manner, in the US and locally in Asia. I would like to work for an organization that develops its programming in interaction with members of all ranks and fields, that advocates for and celebrates different forms of scholarship (and their clashes), and that provides a supportive environment and pro-active platform to foster the employment, research, teaching, and outreach of Asian Studies colleagues in North America and globally. To achieve these goals I also aim to represent the relevance and importance of Asian Studies and enhance its visibility in international higher education and public fora.

Jeehee Hong

Current position: Gretta Chambers Associate Professor of East Asian Art History
Institution/Affiliation: McGill University
Discipline: Art History
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: Middle-period Chinese art and visual culture; visual episteme; locality of art and visual culture

Publications

  • Theater of the Dead: A Social Turn in Chinese Funerary Art, 1000-1400 (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016).
  • “Crafting Boundaries of the Unseeable World: Dialectics of Space in Bhagavat Sutra Repository,” Art History, vol. 40, issue 1 (2017)
  • “Changing Roles of the Tomb Portrait: Burial Practices and Ancestral Worship of Non-Literati Elite in North China (1000-1400),” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, vol. 44 (2014, published in 2016).

Service to the Profession

  • Regional Editor, Encyclopedia of Ancient History: Asia and Africa (Wiley Publishing, 2019-in progress)
  • Co-organizer (with Sonya Lee), CHINA, ART, HISTORY: NEW ORIENTATIONS: An International Conference in Honor of Professor Wu Hung (University of Chicago, Nov 3-5, 2016)
  • Chair, New Readings of Song-Yuan Paintings: The Social Dimension (Association of Asian Art Annual Meeting, March 26-29, 2015)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

My chief concern for the nominated leadership at AAS is with strengthening our organization’s commitment to underrepresented and/or emerging scholars (in both intellectual and social terms) across the world. As a Korean-born academic who works on Chinese art of the middle period, I have made my career navigating professional intersections between geographies, genres, and disciplines. This has enriched my awareness of the vagaries – and the possibilities – of genuine communication betwixt scholars of various cultural backgrounds and academic pedigrees. Insuring that AAS remains an organization open to students as well as professionals would be a key mandate for my tenure.

Lisa Indraccolo

Current position: Associate Professor of Chinese Studies
Institution/Affiliation: Institute of Humanities, Tallinn University, Estonia
Discipline: Chinese Studies
Area or countries of interest: China, Japan
Specialization or research interests: Early Chinese philosophy, Classical Chinese rhetoric, conceptual and intellectual history of premodern China, China-Japan early cultural exchanges and contacts

Publications

  • “Argumentation and Persuasion in Classical Chinese Literature.” In Joseph Bjelde, David Merry, and Christopher Roser, eds., Essays on Argumentation in Antiquity (Springer, forthcoming August 2021)
  • “Political Rhetoric in the Hán Fēizǐ 韓非子 – A structural analysis of Chapter 12 ‘Shuìnán’ 說難.” Asiatische Studien/Études asiatiques, 74:3 (2021): 655–686.
  • “Textual Criticism of the Gongsun Longzi: The Daozong and Shuofu editions.” T’oung Pao, 99: 4-5 (2013): 249–267.

Service to the Profession

  • Vice Secretary General and Board member of the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS) (2020–present)
  • Board member of the European Association for Chinese Philosophy (EACP) (2019–present)
  • Responsible of the Asia Studies Module and member of the Admission Committee of the “Liberal Arts in the Humanities” B.A. programme, Tallinn University (2021–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I firmly believe in intercultural and cross-disciplinary communication as a vibrant source of personal and intellectual growth, and in establishing fruitful, long-lasting ties based on mutual respect and understanding, fairness, and friendship. As an active and enthusiastic AAS member (2012–) based in Europe with strong ties with major European associations in the field of Chinese and Asian Studies, I have long been advocating the crucial importance of assuming a global perspective, actively integrating it into our approaches to education and research. I am a reliable, dedicated colleague with a strong work ethic. I am fully committed to provide a contribution to strengthening scientific collaboration, and to fostering inclusiveness and communication at all levels among different academic communities and disciplinary fields, in the respect of their diversity in terms of academic and institutional practices, languages, and social, cultural, and historical backgrounds.

Stephen R. Platt

Current position: Professor of History
Institution/Affiliation: University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: 19th-century China in a global context (though currently working on a book set in WWII)

Publications

  • Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018).
  • Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).
  • Provincial Patriots: The Hunanese and Modern China (Harvard University Press, 2007).

Service to the Profession

  • NEH Fellowships review panelist for East Asia (multiple occasions)
  • Fellow, National Committee on US-China Relations Public Intellectuals Program (and past advisory committee member)
  • Ad hoc referee for Late Imperial China, Journal of Asian Studies, Frontiers of History in China, Journal of Chinese Military History, Harvard University Asia Center, etc.

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

If elected to the CIAC, I would welcome the chance to give back to the AAS by helping to encourage the next generation of Asia scholars, to embrace the diversifying nature of our discipline, and to support deep, well-researched scholarship that can enrich the understanding of China not just for scholars but for the general public as well.

Janet Theiss

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Utah
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: Gender and law in late imperial and modern China, comparative gender history

Publications

  • Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China (University of California Press, 2004).
  • Co-author with Barbara Molony and Hyaeweol Choi, Gender in Modern East Asia, China, Korea, Japan: An Integrated History (Westview Press, 2016).
  • “Elite Engagement with the Judicial System in the Qing and its Implications for Legal Practice and Legal Principle.” In Chen Li and Madeleine Zelin, eds., Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s (Brill, 2015).

Service to the Profession

  • Founding Director, The Asia Center, University of Utah, 2005-2017 (Title VI National Resource Center for Asian Studies, 2010-present)
  • Late Imperial China: Co-Editor 2006-2012, Associate Editor 2013-present
  • Joseph Levenson book prize committee, Association for Asian Studies, 2017-19

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As Asian Studies scholars, we are compelled to engage both with domestic issues of gender and racial inclusion, anti-Asian racism, and higher education access and equity and with transnational issues like U.S-China tensions and political crises in places like Myanmar, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang. Such issues present challenges for research, teaching, and academic career-building. But they also offer us opportunities to demonstrate to our students and the broader public the critical importance of in-depth understanding of Asia. The AAS must continue to bring diverse voices into difficult conversations about the challenges we face, foster a supportive academic community responsive to shifting member needs and interests, and serve as the collective voice of Asia scholars in the public sphere to affirm the values we share.

Winnie Wong

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley
Discipline: History of Art
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: Modern and contemporary Chinese art, labor, urbanism and migration, authorship and intellectual property; Sino-Western relations and history

Publications

  • Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade (University of Chicago Press, 2014).
  • “Reconsidering the 2006 MIT Visualizing Cultures Controversy: National Histories, Visual Cultures, and Digital Dissent,” co-edited with Jing Wang, positions: asia critique, February 2015.
  • Co-editor with Mary Ann O’Donnell and Jonathan Bach, Learning from Shenzhen: China’s Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Urban Model (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

  • Preserving intellectual dialogue and cultural exchange.
  • Improving racial and gender inequities in the field.
  • Fostering disciplinary and intellectual inclusiveness.
  • Supporting creative and empathetic research, writing, and teaching practices.

Northeast Asia Council Nominees

Celeste Arrington

Current position: Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
Institution/Affiliation: George Washington University
Discipline: Political Science
Area or countries of interest: Korea, Japan, Northeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: Comparative policy processes, state-society relations, law and social change, media systems, lawyers, human rights, transnational activism, disability rights, tobacco control

Publications

  • Co-editor with Patricia Goedde, Rights Claiming in South Korea (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
  • “Insider Activists and Secondhand Smoke Countermeasures in Japan,” Asian Survey 61, no. 4 (July/August 2021).
  • “Cause Lawyering and Movement Tactics: Disability Rights Movements in South Korea and Japan,” with Yong-il Moon, Law & Policy 42, no. 1 (Jan. 2020).

Service to the Profession

  • Association of Korean Political Studies: Board Member and Program Chair for APSA (2020-2023)
  • Asian Survey: editorial board member (2019-present)
  • George Washington Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS): core faculty and steering committee member (2016-present)
Maren Ehlers

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Japan
Specialization or research interests: Social and local history of early modern Japan, poverty and social marginality

Publications

  • Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018).
  • “Bodies, Society, and Smallpox Vaccinations in Echizen Province.” Module for the NEH-funded digital humanities project “Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History” by Kate McDonald and David Ambaras. Forthcoming in 2021.
  • “Mountain Demons from Mito—The Arrival of Civil War in Echizen in 1864.“ In The Meiji Restoration: Japan as a Global Nation, Harald Fuess and Robert Hellyer, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 113-136.

Service to the Profession

  • John Whitney Hall Book Prize Committee, Association for Asian Studies, 2020
  • Prize committee for the Early Modern Japan Network AAS Conference Travel Awards, 2018-present

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

The AAS as an academic organization has the power to assist Asian Studies scholars in all stages of their career. If I’m elected, I will urge AAS to continue to speak up collectively against threats to academic freedom as well as marginalization of Asian Studies scholars, both in- and outside the association. I will also advocate listening to and addressing the concerns of the upcoming generation of scholars in an increasingly difficult job market environment.

Yulia Frumer

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Johns Hopkins University
Discipline: History of Science and Technology
Area or countries of interest: Japan/Northeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: The broadly defined area of my specialization in research and teaching is history of East Asian science and technology (early modern and modern), particularly in Japan. Methodologically, I explore processes of decision-making, focusing on historical construction of cognition and emotions. My research also requires me to engage with topics of design, science fiction, environment, automation, labor, identities, and science policy.

Publications

  • Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2018).
  • “Translating Words, Building Worlds: Meteorology in Japanese, Chinese, and Dutch,” Isis, Volume 109, Number 2 (June 2018): 1-7.
  • “Cognition and Emotions in Japanese Humanoid Robotics,” History and Technology, Volume 34, issue 3 (2018): 1-27.

Service to the Profession

  • Joint Atlantic Seminar in East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (JAS EASTM), Organizer of the Inaugural Meeting 2021.
  • International Conference for History of Science in East Asia (ICHSEA) 2019, Program Committee Member, and Zhu Kezhen Prize Committee.
  • Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), Program Committee, 2019-2021 (chair 2020, including virtual forum); Internationalization Committee, 2013-2015.

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I believe that AAS leadership’s role is to foster members’ sense of belonging to academic community by providing a supportive environment for academic growth, and by giving stage to members who may not “look like” traditional figures of academic authority—either in the U.S. or in Asia. To bolster members’ wellbeing and reduce burnout, I will work to promote alternative modes of scholarship that nurture collegial human relationships, such as small-scale workshops, writing retreats, or unconventional panel formats. I am also committed to finding ways to reward “slow scholarship,” especially for junior scholars on dissertation or tenure clocks.

Kevin Gray

Current position: Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Sussex
Discipline: International Relations
Area or countries of interest: North and South Korea
Specialization or research interests: Political economy of development, geopolitics, labor and social movements, political systems

Publications

  • With Jong-Woon Lee, North Korea and the Geopolitics of Development (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
  • Labour and Development in East Asia: Social Forces and Passive Revolution (Routledge, 2015).
  • Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation (Routledge, 2008).

Service to the Profession

  • Co-Editor of journal Globalizations and Routledge Rethinking Globalization book series (2008-present), and editorial board member of North Korean Studies Review (2021), Rising Powers Quarterly (2016-present), Third World Quarterly (2018-present), Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power (2019-present).
  • Principle Investigator for Leverhulme Trust-funded project, “Research Network on Global Governance and the Emerging Global South,” 2011-2014. Co-organiser of related conferences in Rising Powers and South-South/North-South Cooperation, Fudan University, Shanghai, September 2013; and Furthering South-South Cooperation and the Role of the BRICS, at India International Centre, Delhi, Sept. 2014.
  • Peer review for submissions to (amongst others): British Association for Korean Studies Papers, North Korean Review, Third World Thematics, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia, Asian Journal of Political Science, East Asian Forum (various years).

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Recognizing the diverse community of scholars carrying out research on Northeast Asia and reflecting my own disciplinary background, my vision is to contribute towards the strengthening of linkages between researchers in the humanities and those in the social sciences. In doing so, my goal is to contribute towards an academic community that encourages interdisciplinary understandings of Asian societies through a dynamic, collaborative and heterogenous approach to the study of the region. Reflecting my own geographical location in Europe, I also hold a strong commitment to furthering the reach of the Association for Asian Studies beyond North America and Asia towards scholarly communities in other world regions who are engaged in Asia-related research and knowledge exchange.

Sujung Kim

Current position: Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Institution/Affiliation: DePauw University
Discipline: Religious Studies (Buddhist Studies)
Area or countries of interest: Japan, Korea
Specialization or research interests: Mythology in medieval Japanese Buddhism; social history of Korean Buddhism; visual and material culture in East Asian religions

Publications

  • Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019).
  • “Skanda, The Multifaceted God: Skanda in Korean Buddhism and Beyond,” Korea Journal of Buddhist Studies 66, 3 (March, 2021): 49–94.
  • “Seeing the Sea: Fluidity of Maritime Networks,” in The New Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions, Jolyon B. Thomas and Matthew D. McMullen eds. (University of Hawai‘i Press, forthcoming).

Service to the Profession

  • Incoming chair (elected) for Asian Studies Program at DePauw University, 2022–2024
  • Review Editor for Korean Buddhism in H-Buddhism, 2019–2022
  • Korean Religions Group Steering Committee, American Academy of Religion, 2016-2021

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a scholar of Japanese Studies who has argued for the critical need to study Japanese Buddhism in the interdisciplinary and transnational context of East Asia, what I value the most is connection. I define connection as the energy and synergy that exist between people and ideas. As a council member of AAS, I would advocate for the human connections among members in the Northeast Asia Council, as well as the intellectual connections between NEAC and AAS at large. With my broader scholarly and professional vision, I believe that NEAC will be an ideal place where I can foster these connections between scholars from different disciplinary specialties and geographical areas.

Grace En-Yi Ting

Current position: Assistant Professor of Gender Studies
Institution/Affiliation: University of Hong Kong
Discipline: Japanese literary studies
Area or countries of interest: Japan
Specialization or research interests: Japanese women writers, girls’ culture, affect, race and gender in the academy, queer Asian studies, transnational and women of color feminisms

Publications

  • “Ekuni Kaori’s Tears in the Night: The Brilliance of Queer Readings for Japanese Literary Studies.” Journal of Japanese Studies 47, no. 1 (2021): 1-27.
  • “Ogawa Yōko and the Horrific Femininities of Daily Life.” Japanese Language and Literature 54, no. 2 (Fall 2020): 551-582.
  • “Negativity and Hope, or Addressing Gender and Race in Japanese Studies.” Gender and Sexuality: Journal of the Center for Gender Studies, ICU 15 (March 2020): 67-81.

Service to the Profession

  • Society for Queer Asian Studies (affiliate of AAS), co-chair (2018-2020)
  • University of Hong Kong Committee on Gender Equality and Diversity, acting lead for Teaching and Learning Subcommittee, acting lead for Diversity Subcommittee (2020-2021)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a queer and feminist studies scholar, I hope to advocate for people of color, women, and other marginalized groups such as non-tenure-track faculty and graduate students. Situated in Hong Kong, with broader interests involving Sinophone studies and Asian American studies, I will seek opportunities to promote interdisciplinary collaboration that is provocative and productive for Japanese studies. In particular, I envision encouraging community between scholars of diverse interests to work together to address urgent problems of racism, xenophobia, and misogyny across national and linguistic borders.

Kristin Vekasi

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Maine
Discipline: Political Science and International Affairs
Area or countries of interest: Japan, China
Specialization or research interests: International political economy of Northeast Asia

Publications

  • Risk Management Strategies of Japanese Companies in China: Political Crisis and Multinational Firms (Routledge, 2019).
  • “Politics, Markets, and Rare Commodities: Responses to Chinese Rare Earth Policy.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 20.1 (2019): 2-20.
  • With Jiwon Nam, “Boycotting Japan: Explaining Divergence in Chinese and South Korean Economic Backlash.” Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 6.3 (2019): 299-326.

Service to the Profession

  • Conference organizer. “Can the US live with a nuclear North Korea?” University of Maine, October 2019.
  • Event organizer. “Trade and Foreign Investment: Which Way Forward in East Asia?” University of Maine, March 2017
  • Assisted with logistical and cultural issues for State of Maine trade mission to Tokyo, Shanghai, October, 2015; traveled as participant.

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I view the primary goal of this governance position as expanding educational and scholarly opportunities related to Northeast Asia. Professional organizations should be resources for all stakeholders, not only well-resourced ones, and as a representative of the NEAC of AAS, I would work to extend outreach and opportunities to the full diversity of individual members and their institutions through the grants. I also strongly support the recent anti-racism indicatives of the NEAC through the speaker series, and wish to continue and expand similar efforts.

Garrett L. Washington

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Japan
Specialization or research interests: Modern history of Japanese religion, modern Japanese women’s history, U.S.-Japan transnational history

Publications

  • Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan (University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming January 2022).
  • Christianity and the Modern Woman in East Asia (Brill, 2018).
  • “Preaching Modern Japan: National Imaginaries and Protestant Sermons in Meiji and Taishō Tokyo,” in David Yoo and Albert Park, eds. Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian America (University of Hawaii Press, 2014).

Service to the Profession

  • Panel Organizer: “Rethinking Education and Women’s Empowerment in Imperial, Occupied, and Postwar Japan,” Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Washington D.C., March 22-25, 2018
  • Ad-hoc Peer Reviewer for Journal of Japanese Studies, Japanese Studies, U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal (2018-2021)
  • Book Reviewer for Journal of Asian Studies, Japanese Studies, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I envision an AAS that maintains its commitment to students and young scholars through research grants and roundtables on topics such as publishing, fieldwork, grant writing, and new research resources and methodologies that are particularly relevant to them. I envision an AAS that continues the difficult work begun last year of addressing anti-Black racism within the academy and promoting Asian studies amongst minority groups least represented among AAS membership. I envision an AAS that empowers scholars to collaborate and build community, nationally and regionally, in ways that truly elevate their research and underline their significance in their fields and in their home institutions.


South Asia Council Nominees

Lisa Björkman

Current position: Associate Professor/Senior Humboldt Fellow and Research Associate
Institution/Affiliation: University of Louisville/Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology, Halle
Discipline: Anthropology and Urban Studies
Area or countries of interest: India and South Asia
Specialization or research interests: Social and material infrastructures of urbanism and urbanization; environmental transformations and contestations; political communication and mediation; mass politics, crowds, publics, and populist democracy; brokerage/mediation and transregional trust and trade; political and social theory in its South Asian “vernaculars”; race and caste.

Publications

  • Editor, Bombay Brokers (Duke University Press, 2021).
  • Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai’s Other World-Class Histories (Association for Asian Studies, 2020).
  • Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbai (Duke University Press, 2015).

Service to the Profession

  • “Thinking with India: Comparative and Theoretical Perspectives on Politics, Democracy, and Representation.” 46th Annual Conference on South Asia preconference workshop, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2017.
  • Convener and editor for Bombay Brokers workshops and edited volume.
  • Convener, South Asia History and Anthropology Virtual Reading Group (2020-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a member of the AAS South Asia Council (SAC), I would seek to find new ways to expand the participation of scholars based in South Asia in the annual meetings of the AAS, and would seek out creative ways for research and scholarship coming out of South Asia institutions to be represented within the overall AAS planning. I would also seek out ways to bring South Asia scholarship on race and caste oppression into conversation with a broader dialogue within American universities about the pressing need for deeper historical understanding as well as concrete action against racial injustices—past and present. As a member of a faculty at a research university in the American South with an extremely diverse student body, I am especially interested in promoting diversity in South Asian Studies—particularly among Black and Latinx students—and in “South-South” collaborations between the U.S. and South Asia.

Francis Cody

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Toronto
Discipline: Anthropology
Area or countries of interest: South Asia
Specialization or research interests: Media and Politics in India; Tamil Nadu; Activism; Language and the Public Sphere

Publications

  • Co-Edited with E. Annamalai, Malarvizhi Jayanth, and Constantine V. Nakassis. Protestant Textuality and the Tamil Modern: Political Oratory and the Social Imaginary in South Asia, by Bernard Bate (posthumous) (Stanford University Press, 2021).
  • ”Populist Publics: Print Capitalism and Crowd Violence Beyond Liberal Frameworks.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East Special issue: “Media/Utopia,” edited by Arvind Rajagopal. 35, no. 1 (2015): 50-65.
  • The Light of Knowledge: Literacy Activism and the Politics of Writing in South India (Cornell University Press, 2013; Indian edition by Orient Blackswan).

Service to the Profession

  • Co-Organizer of the Toronto Tamil Studies Conference (2009-2012)
  • Editorial Board Member, American Anthropologist (2016-2021)
  • Director of Pan-Asian Seminar Series on The Political Life of Information (2019-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a member of the South Asia Council, my aim would be to enhance participation of scholars based in South Asia, especially from under-represented regions.  I would also endeavor to extend greater professional support for such participation to scholars based in less privileged institutions. As a scholar of media, I consider South Asia to be a globally dispersed region, and would like to foster dialogue among critical theoretical traditions on a global scale.

Arjun Guneratne

Current position: Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Macalester College
Discipline: Anthropology
Area or countries of interest: Nepal, Sri Lanka
Specialization or research interests: Ethnicity, nationalism, environmental conservation, history of ornithology

Publications

  • Co-editor with Anita M. Weiss. Pathways to Power: The Domestic Politics of South Asia (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2014; South Asia edition: Orient BlackSwan, 2014).
  • “The Fate of a Text: András Höfer’s Study of the Muluki Ain and the Limitations of South Asian Area Studies.” In Dev Pathak, ed., Another South Asia: Questions, Rhetoric and Quest (Primus Books, 2018).
  • “A Bird in the Bush: Dillon Ripley, Sálim Ali and the transformation of ornithology in Sri Lanka.” Nehru Memorial Museum & Library Occasional Papers, new series 59, 2015.

Service to the Profession

  • Book Review Editor for South Asia, Journal of Asian Studies (2015 –2020)
  • President, Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs (2013-14); Vice-President (2012-13)
  • Chair, AAS Annual Conference Program Committee (2013)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Although AAS does signal service to promote South Asian Studies in the U.S., especially in its journal, there is a paucity of South Asianists among its membership. If elected, I will work to promote the association among scholars of South Asia.

Hafsa Kanjwal

Current position: Assistant Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Lafayette College
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: South Asia
Specialization or research interests: Modern Kashmiri History, state-formation, colonialism/decolonization, Islam in South & Central Asia

Publications

  • “The New Woman: State Led Feminism in Naya Kashmir,” in special issue “Review of Women’s Studies on Kashmir,” Economic and Political Weekly 53, no. 47 (December 1, 2018).
  • “Protest Photography in Kashmir: Between Resistance and Resilience,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, 46, no. 3-4 (Fall/Winter 2018).
  • “Reflections on the Post-Partition Period: Life Narratives of Kashmiri Muslims in Contemporary Kashmir,” HIMALAYA: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 38, no. 2.

Service to the Profession

  • Reviewer, Nation and Nationalisms, Critique of Anthropology, HIMALAYA, Ethnography, Contemporary South Asia (2017-present)
  • Editorial Board, Journal of Critical Inquiry, National University of Modern Languages (Pakistan) (2020-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

My aim is to increase the visibility of South and Central Asian studies in the AAS, while being attentive to the ways in which area studies frameworks limit our politics and intellectual horizons. My scholarship on Kashmir and its regional, geographic, and political specificities allow me to challenge conventional area studies and geographic models. I want to play an integral part in building the South Asia Council, and in a way that is attentive to gender, caste, religious, and geographic hegemonies. This would include proposing innovative roundtables and conference panels that resonate with my vision, and build collaborative networks with South and Central Asian centers in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Shailaja Paik

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Cincinnati
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: South Asia, India
Specialization or research interests: Modern South Asia, Dalit studies, caste, women, gender and sexuality studies, social and political movements, oral history

Publications

  • Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination (Routledge, 2014).
  • “Dalit Feminist Thought,” Routledge Handbook on Gender in South Asia and the Economic and Political Weekly of India (forthcoming).
  • “Mangala Bansode and the Social Life of Tamasha: Caste, Sexuality, and Discrimination in Modern Maharashtra,” Biography 40, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 170-198.

Service to the Profession

  • Co-organizer, The Fifth International Conference on the Unfinished Legacy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, New School of Social Research, New York City, 2019.
  • Co-editor, Cambridge Companion to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Under Contract with Cambridge University Press.
  • Jury member and mentor, Navayana Dalit History Fellowship Committee, India (2021-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am deeply committed to the AAS as an international organization dedicated to the advancement of Asian Studies, which has been an important resource for my graduate studies and professional career in the U.K. and the U.S. If elected, I would work to continue AAS’s mission of international exchange, networking, publishing, and research support for students and faculty. In the current pandemic and recent political events on university campuses in India, I think the AAS has to play a significant role in promoting the intellectual and academic freedom of expression of South Asian studies scholars in the sub-continent as well as in the US. My scholarship focuses on the intellectual, social, political, and cultural histories of the subordinated Dalits (“Untouchables”) in Maharashtra, Western India and I hope to work in this spirit of social, intellectual, and cultural plurality and justice to support the mission of the AAS and most importantly to integrate South Asia more centrally in the AAS.

Ali Raza

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Lahore University of Management Sciences
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: South Asia
Specialization or research interests: Social/Intellectual History of South Asia

Publications

  • Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
  • “Provincializing the International: Communist Print Worlds in Colonial India,” History Workshop Journal 89 (Spring 2020), pp 140–153.
  • “Dispatches from Havana: The Cold War, Afro-Asian Solidarities, and Culture Wars in Pakistan,” Journal of World History 30, No. 1-2 (June 2019), pp. 223-246

Service to the Profession

  • Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Labour and Society (2019–present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As an academic working in Pakistan, I am interested in working with the SAC and AAS leadership on incorporating and addressing scholarly concerns from outside the North American and European academy. I am also keen on working on the study of Asia from an Asian perspective, which includes an emphasis on the relationship of South Asia to China and South East Asia. Finally, I am very interested in expanding AAS-in-Asia programming. At some point, I hope to see an AAS-in-Asia conference in Lahore which, along with featuring academics across Asia and beyond, also provides a platform to scholars across Pakistan (specifically from its peripheries).

Gilles Verniers

Current position: Assistant Professor and Co-Director, Trivedi Centre for Political Data
Institution/Affiliation: Ashoka University
Discipline: Political Science
Area or countries of interest: South Asia
Specialization or research interests: Indian Electoral and party politics, identity politics, Political representation, Minority Politics, Gender and Politics, State Formation in South Asia, Mixed Methods, Political Data Generation and Dissemination

Publications

  • With Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Reconfiguration of India’s Political Elite: Profiling the 17th Lok Sabha,” Contemporary South Asia 28, no. 2 (2020): 242-254.
  • With Christophe Jaffrelot, “The BJP’s 2019 Election Campaign: Not Business as Usual,” Contemporary South Asia 28, no. 2 (2020): 155-177.
  • “Conservative in Practice: The Transformation of the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh,” Studies in Indian Politics 6, no. 1 (2018): 44-59.

Service to the Profession

  • Edited a special issue of the Journal Contemporary South Asia on the 2019 Indian General Elections (with Christophe Jaffrelot)
  • Participated in the AAS-in-Asia Conference in New Delhi, hosted by Ashoka University, in July 2018 (as panelist)
  • Founder and current Director of the Trivedi Centre for Political Data (2016-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a member of AAS’ South Asia Council (SAC) established in India, I would strive to increase the involvement of South Asia-based scholars in the Association’s activities. I would also work towards developing new opportunities for scholars, especially doctoral students, located outside Asia, to conduct research in the region, in affiliation with South Asian universities and research organizations. Given the increasingly hostile political environment in which many scholars in South Asia work, I would, while keeping in mind the Association’s non-political mandate, encourage the Association and its members to extend solidarity to scholars facing State repression, violence or threats.


Southeast Asia Council Nominees

Lynette J. Chua

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: National University of Singapore and Yale-NUS College
Discipline: Law and society
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong
Specialization or research interests: Rights mobilization, legal consciousness, social movements, law and resistance

Publications

  • Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights & Resistance in an Authoritarian State (Temple University Press, 2014).
  • The Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilization and Human Rights as a Way of Life (Stanford University Press, 2019).
  • Co-author with Jack Jin Gary Lee, “Governing through Contagion,” in Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts, edited by Victor V. Ramraj (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Service to the Profession

  • President-Elect (2020-2021) and President (2022-23), Asian Law and Society Association
  • Trustee Class Representative, Law and Society Association, 2017-2019
  • Member, Editorial Board, Asian Journal of Law & Society, October 2016-present

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I would like to join the AAS leadership and governance in continuing to embrace and encourage diversity in scholarship in terms of geographical coverage, topics, and interdisciplinarity. In particular, I would like to support more outreach and mentorship to researchers from historically marginalized backgrounds and scholars who work on research subjects deemed by states or others in society to be tabooed or threatening to the status quo.

Saroja Dorairajoo

Current position: Senior Lecturer
Institution/Affiliation: National University of Singapore
Discipline: Anthropology and Sociology
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, China
Specialization or research interests: Food futures, privilege, gender, Islam in China and Southeast Asia

Publications

  • “American Muslims’ Da’wah Work and Islamic Conversion” Religions, Special Issue Racism and Religious Diversity in the United States, 11, no. 383 (July 2020): 1-17.
  • Editor, “Does Invisible Privilege Travel: Looking Beyond the Geographies of White Privilege,” Current Sociology Special Issue (July 2021).
  • Co-author with Laavanya Kathiravelu, “Making Sense of Privilege in Social Science Research in Asia.” In “Does Invisible Privilege Travel: Looking Beyond the Geographies of White Privilege,” Current Sociology Special Issue (July 2021).

Service to the Profession

  • Founder, Asian Living Institute of Food Futures, Singapore.
  • Co-organized conference on “Does Invisible Privilege Travel?: Looking beyond the Geographies of White Privilege.” Sponsored by the Asia Research Institute, Singapore, May 2-3, 2019.
  • Conference on “Anthropology of Food in China.” Co-sponsored by Northern Minzu (Beifang) University, Ningxia, China, scheduled for December 2021
Christopher R. Duncan

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Rutgers University, Newark
Discipline: Anthropology
Area or countries of interest: Indonesia, Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: Religion, Peace and Reconciliation, Indigenous Rights

Publications

  • “Coexistence not Reconciliation: From Communal Violence to Non-violence in North Maluku, Eastern Indonesia.” The Asia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology 17, no. 5 (2016): 460-474.
  • Violence and Vengeance: Religious Conflict and Its Aftermath in Eastern Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2013).
  • Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities (National University of Singapore Press, 2008).

Service to the Profession

  • Vice-President, American Institute for Indonesian Studies (2021-2024)
  • Treasurer, Indonesia-Timor Leste Studies Committee (2019-2021)
  • Board Member, Indonesia-Timor Leste Studies Committee (2004-2007)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a member of SEAC I will work to ensure that Southeast Asian Studies continues to have a robust role in the AAS and at the AAS conferences. I am particularly interested in working with SEAC and the larger AAS organization to expand opportunities for participation and collaboration with scholars based at Southeast Asian universities.

Holly High

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Sydney
Discipline: Anthropology
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, Lao PDR
Specialization or research interests: State, science, and society

Publications

  • Projectland: Life in a Lao Socialist Model Village (University of Hawai’i Press, 2021).
  • Fields of Desire: Poverty and Politics in Laos (National University of Singapore Press, 2014).
  • Editor, “The Debt Issue.” Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 20, no. 4 (2012).

Service to the Profession

  • Editor, Anthropology, Culture and Society list, Pluto Press (London), 2020-present.
  • Convener, International Lao Studies Conference 2022.
  • Co-convener, with Charles Zuckerman, “Steps Forward: Social Engineering as Policy and Practice in Lao PDR,” Panel at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Denver CO, 2019.

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Learning about, learning from, and learning with Asia is essential to any positive response to the multiple challenges our globe is currently facing: if elected to the Southeast Asia Council, a commitment to regional engagement would underpin my leadership and governance. I would also champion diversity in Southeast Asian Studies, including the contributions made to the field by women, scholars in/of the global south, and minorities. I would also support collaborations across the broad interdisciplinary reach of research in Southeast Asia, approaching the field as a rich and fertile meeting point for the sciences, arts, and humanities.

Melissa Marschke

Current position: Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Ottawa, Canada
Discipline: International Development and Global Studies
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, Taiwan
Specialization or research interests: Livelihoods, labor, precarity, modern slavery, mobility, environmental decline, resource governance

Publications

  • With Vandergeest, V., Havice, E., Kadfak, A., Duker, P., Isopescu, I., & MacDonnell, M. “COVID-19, Instability and Migrant Fish Workers in Asia,” Maritime Studies (2021).
  • With Lamb, V. and Rigg, J. “Trading Sand, Undermining Lives: Omitted Livelihoods in the Global Trade in Sand,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 109, no. 5 (2019): 1511-1528.
  • With Vandergeest, P. “Slavery Scandals: Unpacking Labour Challenges and Policy Responses within the Off-shore Fisheries Sector,” Marine Policy 68 (June 2016): 39-46

Service to the Profession

  • Associate Editor, Global Social Challenges Journal (2021-present)
  • President, Canadian Council of Southeast Asian Studies (CCSEAS) (2013-2015)
  • Conference organizer, CCSEAS 2015 (Ottawa, Canada); active member since 2005

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am committed to an inclusive AAS that includes scholars, activists and practitioners across the global South and North in a process that enables and supports robust, rich and respectful debates and learning.

Faizah Zakaria

Current position: Assistant Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Maritime Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: Environmental history, religion and ecology, politics of indigeneity

Publications

  • “Birth, Life and Afterlife of an Indonesian Graveyard: Environmental Rule and Its Discontents,” Journal of Social History (forthcoming, 2021).
  • Qingzhen from the Perspective of the Other: Consumption and Muslim Boundary-Making in Republican China, 1920-1949,” Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies 3, no. 2 (2018), pp. 21-38
  • Co-author with Humairah Zainal, “Traditional Malay Medicine in Singapore: A Gramscian Perspective,” Indonesia and the Malay World 45, no. 131 (2017), pp. 127-144.

Service to the Profession

  • Board member, National Heritage Board (Singapore), 2021-2025
  • Podcaster for New Books Network, Southeast Asian Studies channel, December 2019-present
  • Graduate Co-ordinator, Yale Indonesia Forum, 2013-2016

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am committed to building an academic community that is dynamic, inclusive and serves a larger societal purpose. As a scholar of Southeast Asia based in the region, I would like to facilitate the widening of existing networks for collaborative exchanges among SEA scholars in different parts of the world. AAS has an important role to play in providing support and mentorship to scholars of Asia, which I think should be channelled more towards managing academic precarity in these uncertain times eg. forming mechanisms for sharing resources between tenure-track scholars and those without institutional support, special grants for adjunct faculty and junior scholars, providing information on and destigmatizing alt-ac careers in Asian studies. My hope is to actively contribute to an AAS that is supportive and reflective of Asian Studies scholars worldwide, bringing academic research to bear on the needs of our times.

Taomo Zhou

Current position: Assistant Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia and China
Specialization or research interests: Socio-economic history, migration, race and ethnicity, diplomacy, Cold War

Publications

  • Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2019).
  • “Leveraging Liminality: The Border Town of Bao’an and the Origins of China’s Reform and Opening,” Journal of Asian Studies 80, no. 2 (May 2021): 337-361.
  • Co-author with Joseph Scalice, “Reinvented Revolutionaries: Indonesian and Filipino Communist Exiles in China,” Diplomatic History (forthcoming).

Service to the Profession

  • Review Editor, H-Diplo (2019-present)
  • Conference Organizer, “Bandung Humanisms: Towards a New Understanding of the Global South,” June 19-20, 2017, Nanyang Technological University; co-convenor of a related special issue of Critical Asian Studies (January 2019).
  • Conference and Seminar Coordinator (2016-2017), Exchange Coordinator (2017-2018), Final Year Project Coordinator (2020-present), History Programme, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

  1. As a Southeast Asianist born in China, trained in the U.S., and now working in Singapore, I’d like to use the resources and networks I have to promote international exchanges. (My employer, the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, is in the processing of establishing a Nanyang Southeast Asian Center, which I am part of. The SEAC would offer me a broad platform to assist the building of more trans-Pacific partnerships.)
  2. I’m interested in assisting U.S.-based scholars with accessing data in Southeast Asia in light of the travel restrictions during the pandemic.
  3. As a junior woman scholar with a young child myself, I’d like to engage in campaigns to support other parents who face extraordinary caregiving duties during COVID.
  4. I’m interested in developing workshops for junior scholars to navigate through the extremely challenging and increasingly internationalized academic job market.

Council of Conferences Nominees

Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (ASPAC)

Ina Asim

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Oregon
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: History of early modern China; archaeology, material culture, food studies

Publications

  • Mellon Project 2019: The Artful Fabric of Collecting
  • Colorful Lanterns of Shangyuan (Digital Humanities Project; web-based new version will be published fall 2021)
  • Religiöse Landverträge aus der Sung-Zeit. Heidelberg: edition forum 1993. [Würzburger Sinologische Schriften]

Service to the Profession

  • ASPAC Board member (2021-2023)
  • Board member (2008-2012; 2019-2022) and chair of the Collections Committee of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (2019-2022) at the University of Oregon
  • Member, European Association of Sinological Librarians (1994-2000)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am currently a member of the ASPAC board and see the potential service as a COC officer as a chance to confer ideas, wishes and concerns of ASPAC to the leadership of the AAS. At the same time attending the COC meeting will give me the chance to inform the board of ASPAC about new initiatives, institutional changes, or concerns of other Council sections. This service should enhance the exchange and collaboration between the different conferences and their members, which I saw was of vital importance especially during the taxing time of the pandemic. It will help to distribute information about planning and best practices as well as the constructive use of resources (finances; technology etc.) in alliance with the mission of the AAS.

Hilary Dickerson

Current position: Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Walla Walla University
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Japan, U.S.
Specialization or research interests: Transpacific exchanges between Japan and the U.S.; the Asia-Pacific War; Japanese immigration to the U.S.

Publications

  • “Atomic Legacies in Censored Print: Newspapers and the Meaning of Nuclear War,” in Legacies of the Manhattan Project: Reflections on 75 Years of a Nuclear World, edited by Michael Mays (Washington State University Press, 2020).
  • “Occupying the ‘Vacuum’: Conflicting Interpretations of Christianity in Post-War Japan.” The Journal of Social Science No. 64 (March 2008). Published by the Social Science Research Institute at International Christian University, Mitaka, Tokyo.
  • “‘Divine’ Intervention: American Religious Narratives of the Atomic Bombings, the End of the Pacific War, and the Allied Occupation.” The Journal of Social Science No. 60 COE Special Edition (March 2007). Published by the Social Science Research Institute at International Christian University, Mitaka, Tokyo.

Service to the Profession

  • Member-at-Large, Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast Board (June 2015-present); ASPAC student paper prize committee
  • Member, Teagle Grant Committee for Independent Colleges of Washington (January 2021-present)
  • Member, University Senate: Walla Walla University (Fall 2019-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a scholar of history living and working in Eastern Washington, I am excited about continuing the COC’s grant work to increase opportunities for students in K-12 classrooms and the community at large to study Asia, particularly since students in my university classes often have never studied much, if any, Asian history before. As a member of the ASPAC board since 2015, I am also committed to getting more undergraduate and graduate students involved in writing papers for regional conference presentations and to supporting graduate students from those conferences as they present at AAS.

Kristen D. Parris

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Western Washington University
Discipline: Political Science
Area or countries of interest: China, Northeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: Civil society, state building, local politics, and national identity in China

Publications

  • With Cheng Pei, “Resource Dependence and the Question of Autonomy in Environmental NGOs: Cases in China and the US,” The China Nonprofit Review 12, no. 1 (July 2020).
  • With Song Chengcheng and Wang Shizong, “All Roads Lead to Rome: Autonomy, Political Connections and Organisational Strategies of NGOs in China,” China: An International Journal, 13, no. 3 (December 2015).
  • “Transforming State through Community: A View from Zhejiang,” in Yu Jianxing and Guo Sujian, eds., Civil Society and Governance in China (Palgrave McMillan, 2012).

Service to the Profession

  • Board President, Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (2016-18)
  • Board Member, Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (2013-20)
  • Conference host/organizer, ASPAC (2014)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

My particular interest is in ensuring that ASPAC is sustainable as a regional conference into the future in the face of with generational and leadership changes over time. Of critical importance for ASPAC to maintain a lively forum for scholarly exchange among professional academics from colleges and universities across the region and beyond even as it continues to promote and support graduate student participation and professionalization. Finally, I would like to see an effort establish more effective outreach to public schools in the region.

New England Conference (NEAAS)

Sarah Frederick

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Boston University
Discipline: Literature, Film and Media, Cultural History
Area or countries of interest: Japan
Specialization or research interests: Modern Japanese literature, gender and women’s studies, media and cultural history

Publications

  • Turning Pages: Reading and Writing Women’s Magazines in Interwar Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2006).
  • “The Leisure of Girls’ and Mothers: Affective Labor, Leisure, and Taste in the Transnational and Transmedia Adaptations of Stella Dallas,” Testing the Margins of Leisure: Case Studies on Asia (Heidelberg University Press, 2019).
  • Yoshiya Nobuko, “Yellow Rose,” translation with introduction (Expanded Editions, 2016).

Service to the Profession

  • AAS NEAC Hamako Ito Chaplin Award Committee (2014-2017)
  • Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, faculty representative to consortium, including service on the executive board, search committees, and as visiting faculty (2009-present)
  • Associate Director, Boston University for the Center for the Study of Asia (2013-2015)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

After the pandemic and the need to conduct the so many of our conferences virtually, I would aim to rebuild the vibrancy of interactions among colleagues studying Asia in the northeast with a focus on the following: Many of the existing organizations in this region are centered on a particular language area or are Asia centers, and I believe that many would be interested in more opportunities to work with other Asianists in their own discipline or time period across language groups, such as groups discussing, for example, Asian popular culture, premodern Asian literature, or contemporary politics. I would like to work explicitly to provide opportunities at the regional conference for both graduate students and scholars at institutions with fewer Asianists to network with the rich scholarly community across New England, including with scholars who may not regularly attend the regional conferences. I would speak first to members for their feedback, but might achieve both of the goals above by, in addition to the traditional call for papers, formally inviting senior scholars as discussants; organizing roundtables on current state of the field areas; or, as has been done in the past, to present on specific practical tools such as digital scholarship methods.

Pu Wang

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Brandeis University
Discipline: Chinese literature and comparative literature
Area or countries of interest: China and East Asia
Specialization or research interests: Modern Chinese literature and culture in comparative frameworks; critical theory and translation studies; aesthetic modernity in the 19th and 20th centuries; intellectual history of China; comparative poetics.

Publications

  • Guest coeditor, “Old Stories, New Mediations: Transmedial Representations of the Past in Twentieth‐Century China,” special issue of Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 13.3 (2019).
  • The Translatability of Revolution: Guo Moruo and Twentieth-Century Chinese Culture. (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018).
  • “Gramsci and the Chinese Left: Reappraising a Missed Encounter,” in Gramsci in the World, eds. Roberto Dainotto and Fredric Jameson (Duke University Press, 2020), pp. 204-223.

Service to the Profession

  • Editorial board member, Frontiers of Literary Studies in China (2013-present)
  • Panel organizer at AAS and American Comparative Literature Association conferences
  • Steering committee member of the Mandel Center for the Humanities, Brandeis University (2016-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I hope to serve our more and more diverse constituency in New England and help AAS envision and implement a truly critical global outreach in this ongoing crisis of globalizaiton/deglobalization.

Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (WCAAS)

Rebecca Corbett

Current position: Associate University Librarian, Japanese Studies & Co-Head, East Asian Library
Institution/Affiliation: University of Southern California
Discipline: Japanese Studies, East Asian Studies
Area or countries of interest: Japan
Specialization or research interests: Early Modern Japanese history, Japanese women’s history

Publications

  • Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2018).
  • “Arts of the Tea Ceremony,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Art History, ed. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
  • “Crafting Identity as Tea Practitioner in Early Modern Japan: Ōtagaki Rengetsu and Tagami Kikusha.” U.S.–Japan Women’s Journal 47 (2014): 3-27.

Service to the Profession

  • Librarian Representative, North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (2020-2023).
  • Member, Committee for Japanese Materials, Council of East Asian Libraries (2020-2023)
  • Board Member, Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (2019-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a member of the AAS leadership and governance team, I will work to integrate voices of scholars in a range of positions within academia, including librarians such as myself, as well as independent scholars. I believe the AAS can and should be an inclusive organization which values diversity of background, profession, and career level. I will continue the work done in recent years by AAS leadership to address issues around sexism, gender-based discrimination, and racism within the academy, the field of Asian Studies, and at AAS Annual Conferences. I am inspired by conversations with other colleagues who have been involved in leadership and governance with the AAS and used it as a platform to initiate meaningful change.

Chris Lundry

Current position: Profesor-investigador
Institution/Affiliation: El Colegio de México
Discipline: Political Science
Area or countries of interest: Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Southeast Asia
Specialization or research interests: Comparative Politics, Revolution and Separatism, Eastern Indonesia, Human Rights

Publications

  • “Electoral Politics in Sumba: The Persistence of Tradition,” in The 2018/19 Indonesian Elections: Identity Politics and Regional Perspectives, Leonard C. Sebastian, Alexander Arifianto, eds. (Nanyang Technological University).
  • “Indonesia 2020: la preocupación por la democracia y la covid-19 arrasan el país,” Anuario Asia Pacífico (Centro de Estudios de Asia y Africa, El Colegio de Mexico).
  • “Revisiting Passabe: Lisan and Reconciliation in Timor-Leste,” Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context (Yonsei University).

Service to the Profession

  • President, Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (2019-2020)
  • Conference Chair, Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (2019)
  • Editor, Anuario Asia Pacifico, Centro de Estudios de Asia y África, El Colegio de México (2020)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

After organizing the WCAAS 2019 conference here at El Colegio de México, I am interested in maintaining these connections to WCAAS and AAS, as well as forging new ones. The international turnout was high, which shows the interest of scholars of Asia in Latin America in engaging with their colleagues in the United States and elsewhere. I would like to increase the visibility of WCAAS and AAS in Latin America and hope to spur new conversations and exchanges that demonstrate different perspectives on Asian Studies.

Steve Riep

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Brigham Young University
Discipline: Chinese Studies, Comparative Asian Literature
Area or countries of interest: China and Taiwan
Specialization or research interests: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature, Film, and Culture; disability studies and East Asian literature; ecocriticism; and war and trauma studies

Publications

  • “Body, Disability, and Creativity in the Poetry of Yu Xiuhua.” Chinese Literature Today, 7.2 (October 2018), pp. 32-41
  • “Disability in Modern Chinese Cinema.” The Oxford Handbook of Disability History, Michael Rembis, Cathy Kudlick, and Kim Nielsen, eds., (Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 407-424.
  • “Ya Xian.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 387: Modern Chinese Poets, 1950-2000, Thomas Moran and Christopher Lupke, eds., pp. 218-225

Service to the Profession

  • President, Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (2015-2016)
  • Conference Program Chair, Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, 2015
  • Executive Board Member, Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (2008-present)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am committed to building upon the strengths in diversity, inclusion, and outreach of the Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. This would include recruiting additional female and minority colleagues to join our board and identifying and addressing issues that would increase diversity in our membership and conference participants. I would work to attract greater numbers of emerging and untenured scholars to present and network at our meetings and provide increased opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to be involved in mentored leadership and conference organization responsibilities. Finally I would increase collaboration with scholars from Asia and Latin America, an area of unique strength for WCAAS, in our annual meetings and promote K-12 outreach activities at our conferences.


Diversity and Equity Committee

Graduate Students

Phianphachong Intarat

Current position: Ph.D. Candidate
Institution/Affiliation: University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Discipline: Anthropology
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, Thailand, Thai-Burmese borderlands
Specialization or research interests: Border and migration studies, feminist theory, Muslim minorities in Southeast Asia

Publications

  • “From SEZs to Thailand 4.0: Geopolitics of Borderlands in the Thai State’s Vision.” Forest and Society 2, no. 1 (2017): 65-74.

Service to the Profession

  • Panel organizer and chair, “On the Move (2): Governing the Marginality in Thailand.” AAS-in-Asia Conference, Bangkok, Thailand (July 2019)
  • Volunteer English-Thai interpreter, “Together We Farm,” a workshop series to empower Thai immigrant farmers in Hawaiʻi. The West Oahu Soil and Water Conservation District (October 2018-January 2019)
  • Secretary, Thai Studies Club at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (August 2016-July 2017)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

The Diversity and Equity Committee (DEC) is a mechanism to push forward a more inclusive and diverse environment for the AAS community. By running for a position in the DEC, I am seeking an opportunity to work as a team to deliver the DEC’s mission and provide constructive input from my standpoints of graduate student and woman of color. Moreover, I hope that my dual experiences of being in a position of power as a researcher in marginalized communities whereas belonging to the minority groups in academic professions will enrich the DEC’s work to promote diversity and equity in academic careers and knowledge production in Asian Studies.

Yasmine Krings

Current position: Teaching Fellow/Graduate Student
Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles
Discipline: Literature
Area or countries of interest: Japan
Specialization or research interests: Mixed-race studies, blackness, Japanese media, gender and sexuality

Service to the Profession

  • Organizer for the 23rd Annual UCLA Japan Studies Graduate Student Conference, “Bent out of Shape: Remolding Conceptions of Materiality and the Body in Japan (October 2018)
  • Panelist for “Asian Studies and Black Lives Matter” AAS – Digital Dialogues (July 2020)
  • Graduate Student Association Forum Representative for the Humanities Council, ASUCLA/Associated Students UCLA (October 2020-June 2021)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I would like AAS to be the kind of place that BIPOC feel welcome, comfortable, and happy to pursue their academic interests. Part of creating this atmosphere is ensuring that the organization and its members take accountability seriously. The only way forward is reckoning with the past. I promise to work my hardest to take into account the diversity of opinions and suggestions for AAS’s future and try to help lay the groundwork to make this future possible.

Mingqian Liu

Current position: Assistant Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Beijing Language and Culture University
Discipline: Cultural Heritage Development
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: Architectural and urban history, built heritage conservation, community engagement, museum studies

Publications

  • “Public Perceptions of Preservation Policies and Practices in Historic Residential Neighborhood: A Case of Dongsi, Beijing, China,” Sequitur 6, Special Issue (2020).
  • “Diversity and Inclusiveness in Community Museums: Shijia Hutong Museum, Beijing, China,” in T. Jamal, ed., Justice and Ethics in Tourism (Routledge, 2019).
  • “Bringing Together Historic Preservation and Social Governance: Community-building Efforts at the Shijia Hutong Museum in Beijing,” CAMOC Museums of Cities Review, Issue 2 (2018): pp. 30-32.

Service to the Profession

  • Graduate student representative, College of Architecture Diversity Council, Texas A&M University (2018-2021)
  • President, Preservation and Conservation Student Society, Texas A&M University (2018-2020)
  • Peer reviewer: Journal of Planning Education and Research (2021), Journal of Sustainable Tourism (2020)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

The Diversity and Equity Committee of the Association for Asian Studies aims to support the study and dissemination of knowledge related to Asian societies, history, and cultures; foster cross-cultural understanding and respect; and provide resources to support the professional advancement of all members, including scholars and students of all backgrounds and at all stages of their career, especially the historically underrepresented and underserved groups.

Guangshuo Yang

Current position: T.H. Breen Fellow
Institution/Affiliation: Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, Northwestern University
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: East Asia
Specialization or research interests: Animal studies, Buddhist animal protectionism, global environmental history

Presentations

  • “Remaking Animals: From Late Qing Draft Animal Protection to Early Republican Insect Control,” AAS Annual Conference (2021).
  • “Protecting the Mind, Civilizing the World: Buddhist Pro-Animal Activism in Republican China,” Buddhist Philosophy Unit, Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion (November 2020).
  • “A Great Leap Whither? Pondering Chinese Futurities with The Wandering Earth (2019),” in Asia:Technique Symposium, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (April 2019).

Service to the Profession

  • Panel organizer, “The Questions of East Asian Animalities: Capital, Politics, and Entangled Cultures across Species Boundaries,” AAS Annual Conference (2021)
  • Service chair, Queer Pride Graduate Students Association (2019-2021)
  • Coordinator, Mellon Cluster for East Asian Studies (2017-2018)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As social justice emerges as a defining issue of the 21st century, the AAS is uniquely positioned to lead because Asia’s rich cultures and complex histories are essential to imagining and crafting innovative solutions to social issues in the US and beyond. Given the entangled connections across the Pacific and the pressing need for mutual understanding, our Association should leverage its root in Asia Studies to promote equity in access to, and production of, knowledge about Asia. More specifically, the Association should develop programs and plans to strengthen institutional support for minority members and prospective members, especially students and early-career scholars. By empowering a new generation of socially aware scholars to be advocates for a more just society through their expertise, our Association will remain a steadfast ally and leader to the cause of diversity, equality, and inclusion.

Adjunct/Non-tenure-track/Independent Scholars

Aparna Parikh

Current position: Assistant Teaching Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Pennsylvania State University
Discipline: Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Geography
Area or countries of interest: South Asia/India
Specialization or research interests: South Asian urbanism, women in cities, nationalism, urban environments, globalization

Publications

  • “Politics of Presence: Women’s Safety and Respectability at Night in Mumbai, India,” Gender, Place & Culture 25, no. 5 (2018): 695-710
  • “Urban Commons to Private Property: Gendered Environments in Mumbai’s Fisher Communities,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 39, no. 2 (2021): 271-288.
  • With Clara Miller. “Holy Cow! Beef Ban, Political Technologies, and Brahmanical Supremacy in Modi’s India,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 18, no. 4 (2019): 835-874

Service to the Profession

  • Co-organized seminar series titled “Urban Climates: Power, Development, and Environment in South Asia” funded by the Urban Studies Foundation, with three workshops: at the University of Cambridge, Dartmouth College, and at the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers (2019)
  • Member of AAG’s Annual Meeting Climate Action Task Force (2019-2020)
  • Guest editor for themed issue titled “From the margins within: Exploring urbanism in the Global South” with ACME: An International Journal of Critical Geographies (in progress)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I envision three goals as a member of the Diversity and Equity Committee of the Association for Asian Studies. First, I will work to establish mentorship networks for graduate students, crucial given the challenges of the academic job market. Second, I will help formulate a survey assessing the “climate” of the discipline and identify (dis)connections between those within geographic subfields of Asian Studies. Finally, I am interested in setting up networks between those in Asian and Asian American studies to identify areas of confluence, especially in making connections between white supremacy, Sinophobia, and anti-Black sentiments within the Asian (American) community.

Hieu Phung

Current position: Lecturer
Institution/Affiliation: University of Michigan
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia, China, and transnational Asia
Specialization or research interests: Asian environmental history; climate and water history; premodern history of Southeast Asia, Vietnam and China

Publications

  • “Naming the Red River—Becoming a Vietnamese River.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 51, no. 4 (2020): 518-537.
  • As Hieu Phung-Corsi, “Gale Researcher Guide for: Early Vietnam.” World History Series I, edited by Julie Tatlock (Gale and Cengage Learning, 2018).
  • “Case Study: The Red River Dikes in Northern Vietnam.” The Cultural Heritages of Water will be the Tropical and Sub-tropical Eastern and Southern Eastern Asia, a Thematic Study by ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites, an advisory body to UNESCO for World Heritage) [forthcoming, 2021].

Service to the Profession

Panel co-organizer, with Dr. Eloise Wright, “The Collision of the State, the Local, and Space/Place: Historical Lessons from southwest China and northern Vietnam,” 2021 Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference (Virtual).
Panel co-organizer, with Dr. Yufen Chang, “Towards a Spatial History of Southeast Asia: The Collisions between the Chinese, Cham, and Vietnamese Kingdoms, 1000-1900,” 2020 Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Boston, Massachusetts (cancelled due to Covid-19).
Panel co-organizer, with Dr. Jack Bouchard, “Global Perspectives on Crisis and Space in Preindustrial Environmental Histories,” 2019 American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Columbus, Ohio.

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I believe that Asian studies can make a unique impact by carefully interpreting the current plea for diversity and equity rooted in the U.S. society and academia into a broader context. Engaging with the dynamic advocacy for diversity and equity in Asia can enrich the discussions in the United States as well. Using my study and work experience as a former international student and as an immigrant worker in the United States, I would work with other members of AAS Diversity and Equity initiatives to encourage deeper conversations about the different and similar implications of inclusiveness to the professional developments of our AAS members.

Tommy Tran

Current position: Lecturer
Institution/Affiliation: University of California, Merced
Discipline: Asian Languages and Cultures
Area or countries of interest: Korea
Specialization or research interests: Cheju modern history, tourism and urban development history, cultural geography

Publications

  • “Grounding History in Cheju Islanders’ Travel Literature,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 34 (2020): 46–67.
  • “Acquired Tastes: Urban Impacts on Jeju Shamanic Ritual,” The Review of Korean Studies 21. no. 1 (December 2018): 93-124.
  • “Imagining Urban Community: Contested Geographies and Parallax Urban Dreams on Cheju Island, South Korea,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review E-Journal No. 17 (December 2015): 86-113.

Service to the Profession

  • UC APISA (Asia-Pacific Islander Staff Association) draft statement committee (March 2021-present)
  • UC Merced SFCA (Staff and Faculty of Color Association) Faculty Co-Representative (March 2021-present)
  • UC Merced Valuing Black Lives Task Force Advisory Committee (September 2020-January 2021)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

A 2005 speech by former Black Panther Party member Elaine Brown left a lasting impression on my views of what should comprise meaningful approaches to diversity: rather than holding to any delusion of meritocracy that honors only those who conform to standards of respectability, to express a truly liberating ideal of diversity we must embrace all. I admit I hold a deep skepticism toward diversity committees because I feel they are simply reactive and do little more than provide institutions cover for their leadership’s failure to address systemic issues. For this reason, I intend to bring a sharp voice and I shall be direct in addressing the challenges of making meaningful initiatives for equity.

Elena Valussi

Current position: Senior Lecturer
Institution/Affiliation: Loyola University Chicago
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: China
Specialization or research interests: Late Imperial Chinese religions, Gender and Religion, Religious Daoism

Publications

  • “Men Built Religion, Women Made it Superstitious: Gender and Superstition in Republican China,” Journal of Chinese Religions 48, no. 1 (2020).
  • “Gender as a Useful Category of Analysis in Chinese Religions: With two Case Studies from the Republican Period,” in Critical Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions III: Key Concepts in Practice, ed. by Stefania Travagnin and Paul Katz (De Gruyters, 2019).
  • “War, Nationalism and the Transmission of Daoist Scriptures from China to Taiwan: The Case of Xiao Tianshi,” Asia Major 30, no.1 (2017).

Service to the Profession

  • Elected Vice-President, Society for the Study of Chinese Religions; website content manager (2020-present)
  • Co-Founder of Wisar, a website for the advancement and visibility of women in the field of Asian Religions (2018)
  • Service to the American Academy of Religion: Steering committee of Chinese Religions (2020); Co-chair of Daoist Studies Group (2012-2019); Steering committee of Daoist Studies Group (2010-2012); co-organizer of the Annual Chinese Religions Women’s Breakfast (2019)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I have been very active in the field of Chinese religions: as a scholar researching gender issues, I devote time and effort in building community among fellow researchers, organizing conferences, workshops, and panels, as well as virtual events; as a woman trying to advance the position and visibility of fellow women in our field, I have co-created a website to easily find female scholars in the field of Asian Religions, so as to counteract the lack of visibility, and the tendency to create “manels.” I have also served for a number of years in many roles at the American Academy of Religions: specifically, in terms of diversity, I created a study about the presence of women scholars at the AAR, exposing a dire lack of representation. I also have been co-organizing the Chinese Religions Women’s Breakfast. I look forward to applying my expertise in these areas at AAS. I would start by analyzing the participation of women, especially women of color, and underrepresented communities, in panels, committees, and publication enterprises like JAS, and finding creative ways to push the field to be more inclusive. I would also suggest the creation of regular events to build community during the year, and not just at AAS. Further, I would work closely with the “Gender in East Asian Studies” group, which has been active for a number of years at AAS. Finally, as a senior Lecturer on a non-tenure track line, I also want to advocate for more representation of contingent faculty in position of power at AAS.

Tenure-Track Faculty

Mahua Bhattacharya

Current position: Professor of Japanese and Asian Studies
Institution/Affiliation: Elizabethtown College
Discipline: Anthropology, Women’s Studies, Language Pedagogy
Area or countries of interest: Japan and India
Specialization or research interests: Linguistic Anthropology, Japanese language pedagogy, Japanese popular culture, Women’s studies, etc.

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
  • “Fitting In: The Joys and Challenges of Being an Indian Woman in America,” in Pande, A. (ed.), Women in Indian Diaspora: Historical Narratives and Contemporary Challenges, (Springer Press for Center for Diaspora Studies, MS University, Tamil Nadu, India, 2017).
  • “The Erasure of Marginality: Discourse of Monolingualism in Japan,” submitted for publication by Panda, Nandini B in ‘Margins’ and ‘Marginal Communities’ in the Asian Perspective: Identity and Resistance (Sage Publications).

Service to the Profession

  • Director, Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference (MAR/AAS) Consortium. Since 2020, the consortium has been in the process of bringing together five institutions—Villanova University, West Chester University, Seton Hall University, Juniata College, and Elizabethtown College—for academic collaboration and promotion of Asian Studies in the Mid-Atlantic region.
  • President, Mid-Atlantic Regional Association for Asian Studies (2019-2020)
  • Conference Manager of 49th Mid-Atlantic Regional Association for Asian Studies Conference, to be held at Villanova University October 23-24, 2021 on “Asia on the Move: From Grassroots to Global.”

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Recent atrocities against Asian Americans have exposed the fragility of the existence of Asian American identities today. While these bigoted actions have galvanized communities to protest the situation, protest alone may not be enough. A scholarly organization like the AAS has great potential to provide the supportive network that protest movements need. Not only does the AAS have the potential to raise consciousness about the true plight of these communities in America, but it can also act as an advocacy agent to facilitate a nurturing existence for these communities through diverse strategies of consciousness raising and empowerment. Firstly, it can provide intellectual support to academic programs all across the country that teach and research Asian American communities and cultures so that a more nuanced understanding of their identities can be propagated. Then, it can act as a think tank to formulate policies that combat bigotry and rhetoric created to pit one community against another. Finally, it can act as a liaison between the grassroots organizations that are fighting for their rightful place in American society, along with governmental institutions that are currently aiming at rooting out institutional racism. The exploitation and othering of the Asian American communities as “model minorities” have gone on long enough and it is time to expose the nefarious connection this othering has with the exploitation of black and brown communities by creating strategic linkages with movements that seek to create a more equitable and diverse America of which we can all be proud to belong.

John (Song Pae) Cho

Current position: Assistant Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of British Columbia, Okanagan
Discipline: Anthropology
Area or countries of interest: Korea
Specialization or research interests: Gender, sexuality, LGBT Studies, queer theory

Publications

  • “The Three Faces of South Korea’s Homosexuality: Bogal, Eban, and Neoliberal Gay.” In Queer Korea, edited by Todd Henry (Duke University Press, 2020).
  • “Luxury of Love: Gay Men in Recessionary South Korea.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 26, no. 1 (2020): 151-159.
  • “‘Deferred Futures’: Diverse Imaginaries of Gay Retirement in Post-IMF South Korea.” Culture, Theory and Critique 58, no. 2 (2017): 1-17.

Service to the Profession

  • Elected Councilor, Society for East Asian Anthropology, American Anthropological Association (2017-2021)
  • Member, College of Graduate Studies Scholarship and Awards Committee (July 2020-present)
  • Member, Admission Committee, Sarah Lawrence College (2017-2018)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

As a gay Asian man trained in LBGT/Queer and Korean/Asian Studies, I possess a deep and balanced, first-hand understanding of the social issues facing non-normative groups in the Western and non-Western worlds. My training in postcolonial feminist studies further allows me to incorporate complex perspectives on the contributions and struggles of populations that have been marginalized within modern societies. I will use this unique combination of experiences and interdisciplinary training to inform my work on the Diversity and Equity Committee.

Sarah G. Grant

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: California State University, Fullerton
Discipline: Anthropology (Cultural)
Area or countries of interest: Southeast Asia (Vietnam)
Specialization or research interests: Commodities and agriculture, environmental issues, visual culture, bureaucracy, teaching for social justice

Publications

  • “Complicated Webs: Risk and Uncertainty in the Vietnamese Coffee Industry,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review (forthcoming, 2021).
  • “What’s in a Wet Market? Critical Food Studies and Anthropology of Asia During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” in Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic, ed. David Kenley (Association for Asian Studies, 2020), pp. 179-187.
  • “Cosmopolitan Coffee Aspirations and Caffeinated Youth in Urban Vietnam,” in Aspirations of Young Adults in Urban Asia: Values, Family, and Identity, eds. Kenneth Finis, Desiree Remmert, and Mariske Westendorp (Berghahn Books, 2020), pp. 150-169.

Service to the Profession

  • Multimedia Editor, Journal of Vietnamese Studies (2018-present)
  • Executive Committee Member, Vietnamese Studies Group (2021-present)
  • President, Southwestern Anthropological Association (2018-2019)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

My vision for AAS leadership and governance is to foster a space of inclusion that embraces and facilitates diverse membership and access to participation in association activities, also among colleagues in the Global South. I believe that the future of scholarship and teaching about and within Asia is dependent on enhanced inclusivity efforts, starting with diversifying leadership and membership where diversity manifests in our many expressions of ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, class, and institutional backgrounds. Recent AAS Statements posted in #AsiaNow are one step in elevating diverse member voices with powerful statements on current issues in Asia but AAS leadership must also represent diverse voices and the range of institutional backgrounds Asian Studies scholars work within—from elite research institutions to public teaching institutions, many of which are Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), like my own.

Ramnarayan S. Rawat

Current position: Associate Professor
Institution/Affiliation: University of Delaware
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: South Asia
Specialization or research interests: Modern South Asian history, race and caste, literary and religious history, and political economy

Publications

  • “How to Write New Histories of Caste: A Dalit History of Chamars,” in S. Jodhka and J. Naudet, eds., Oxford Handbook of Caste in Modern World (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
  • Co-editor with and K. Satyanarayana, Dalit Studies (Duke University Press, 2016).
  • Reconsidering Untouchability: Chamars and Dalit History in North India (Indiana University Press, 2011).

Service to the Profession

  • Speaker, Special Plenary Session: “Race and Racisms in Asia/Asian Studies,” Association for Asian Studies, Virtual Annual Conference, March 25, 2021.
  • South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies (2017-2019)
  • American Institute of Indian Studies: Book Prize Committee Member (2013-2018); Faculty Mentor (reader and commentator) for “Transforming your Dissertation into a Book” Workshop, Annual South Asia Conference, University of Wisconsin, Madison (2013 & 2015); Fellowship Selection Committee Member (2016-2018)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

I am deeply invested in the new AAS initiative to enhance diversity and equity within our organization, and within the study of Asia more generally. I have been actively engaged in furthering institutional efforts to redress existing imbalances within the study of History and within the study of Asia for the past two decades—through my scholarship, through active collaborations with Dalit colleagues in India, and through mentorship of a diverse group of emerging scholars. In addition to my published research in the field of Dalit Studies in South Asia, I also teach courses that trace global histories of racism and exclusion, including units on Japan, India, South Africa, Brazil, and the United States. As the study of Asia continues to expand in American universities, it is essential that the AAS takes initiatives to remove structural impediments to full participation and professional growth for scholars from diverse backgrounds. Last year’s Plenary Session on Race and Racisms in Asia/Asian Studies indicated that we have more work to do in the areas of diversity, inclusion, and equity, and I would be honored and delighted to play an active role on this new committee.

Don J. Wyatt

Current position: John M. McCardell, Jr. Distinguished Professor
Institution/Affiliation: Middlebury College
Discipline: History
Area or countries of interest: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam
Specialization or research interests: Chinese intellectualism and philosophy, warfare and violence, identity and slavery

Publications

  • The Blacks of Premodern China (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010_.
  • “The Image of the Black in Chinese Art,” in The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art, ed. David Bindman, Suzanne Preston Blier, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with Karen C. C. Dalton (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press/Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, 2017).
  • “Slavery in Medieval China,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 2: The Medieval Period, AD 500-AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley L. Engerman, and David Richardson (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Service to the Profession

  • Editor, Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, Annual Journal of the Society for Song, Yuan, and Conquest Dynasties Studies (March 2009-March 2017)
  • President, Society for Song, Yuan, and Conquest Dynasties Studies (March 2009-March 2017)
  • Mentor, Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies China Studies Mentoring Project (June 2021-January 2022)

Statement of Vision for AAS Leadership and Governance

Being much heartened by the timely initiative of creating a standing committee on diversity and equity, I am honored by the prospect of contributing to the Association’s advancement of its inclusive agenda and goals. My own personal commitment to diversity and equity has been lifelong, with the career I have enjoyed made possible only through subscription to these values. Moreover, in these times of the critical importance of these principles of fairness to any progress made in the global racial reckoning that we are experiencing, I am hopeful of serving because I believe few organizations to be better poised to promote the cause of inclusion and its benefits, internationally as well as nationally, than the Association.