Faculty
A diverse group of people make up the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) and the program in Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures and Media (AMCM). A wide geographical range (from Japan to Central Asia) and research fields (from the classics to contemporary media) are covered by award-winning and highly accomplished professors. Affiliated members ensure rigorous engagement with different humanistic disciplines for graduate students. Teachers of Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, Hmong, Japanese, and Korean—all recognized for their high pedagogical skills—produce language savvy students year after year.
Regular Faculty
Shir Alon
Specialties
Modern Arabic Language and Literature; Literary theory; Modern Hebrew Literature; Postcolonial Theory and Criticism; Gender and Feminism
Patrick Chimenti
Specialties
Modern and Postwar Japanese Literature; Film History and Media Studies; Japanese Television History; Ethnography and Folklore Studies; Popular Culture, Manga, and Anime Studies; Theories of Documentary and Recording
Palita Chunsaengchan
Specialties
Film Historiography; Media Theory and the Global South; Aesthetics, coloniality and decolonization in Southeast Asia; Southeast Asian Cinema: specifically work, labor and migration; Early Thai Cinema (book manuscript)
Joseph Farag
Specialties
Palestinian Literature and Culture; Modern Arabic Literature; Postcolonial Theory and Criticism
Alia Goehr
Specialties
Ming- and Qing-period Chinese literature; Chinese Religions; The Novel & World Literature; Theories of Mind and Corporeality; Commentary Traditions
Dingru Huang
Specialties
Modern Chinese literature and media; Sinophone studies; Environmental Humanities; Posthumanism
Alexander Jabbari
Specialties
Persianate world; literary history; philology; Persian and Urdu literatures; language
Christine Marran
Specialties
Ecocriticism; Japanese literature and cinema; Critical theory and film theory; East Asian cinema; Writing Creative Non-Fiction
Jason McGrath
Specialties
Modern and contemporary Chinese literature and culture; Taiwan studies; Ecocritical theory and film studies; Chinese and international cinemas; Realism in fiction, film, and theory; Digital cinema, CGI, and animation; Chinese and Western Marxisms; Convention and intertextuality in film theory
Morgan Rouzer
Specialties
Poetics and poetry of China and Japan; Medieval Chinese poetry; Buddhism; Traditions of the supernatural in East Asia
Nida Sajid
Specialties
South Asian Literature and Culture; Intellectual History and Global Eighteenth Century; Empire and Postcolonial Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Modern Muslim World and Islam in South Asia; Material Culture and Dress Studies
Evelyn Shih
Specialties
Korean Literature, Film, and Media; Taiwanese and Sinophone Literature, Film, and Media; Media Phenomenology; Media Historiography; Affect Theory; Environmental Media; Cold War Studies; Sound Studies; Television Studies
Suvadip Sinha
Specialties
Indian Cinema; Modern South Asian Literature and Culture; Global Modernities; Philosophy of Non-human
Travis Workman
Specialties
Korean and Japanese literature; Intellectual history; Film and media; Melodrama; Humanism and its critiques; Translation
Arabic Teaching Faculty
Katrien Vanpee
Specialties
Teaching Arabic as a World Language; Classical and Modern Arabic Literature; Pre-Islamic, Classical and Modern Arabic Poetry; Arabic - English Poetry Translation; Cultural Heritage of the Arabian Peninsula; Nabati Poetry
Ali Mohamed
Specialties
Teaching Arabic as a foreign language; Arabic pedagogy; Qura'nic studies; Medieval and modern Muslim intellectual history; Islam and modernity; Islam in an age of globality; Global studies; Translation studies
Chinese Teaching Faculty
Yufen Chang
Specialties
Chinese Pedagogy; Chinese Linguistics; Second Language Acquisition
Hai Liu
Specialties
Linguistics; Teaching Chinese as a second language; Classical Chinese and literature
Pei-Chun Shih
Specialties
Chinese Language; Teaching Chinese as a second language
Jin Yaliang Stone
Specialties
American literature; Teaching Chinese as a second language
Yao Tu
Specialties
Curriculum and teaching; Instructional design and technology; OPI testing
Hindi and Urdu Teaching Faculty
Meraj Ahmed
Specialties
Hindi and Urdu languages
Hmong Teaching Faculty
Bee Vang-Moua
Specialties
Hmong Language
Japanese Teaching Faculty
Keiko Kawakami
Specialties
Japanese Language
Korean Teaching Faculty
Hangtae Cho
Specialties
Proficiency-Oriented Foreign Language Instruction and Second Language Assessment , KFL (Korean as a Foreign Language) curriculum and material development, Korean Language Pedagogy , Korean Sociolinguistics, North Korean language, Korean Phonology, Phon...
Bryce Johnson
Specialties
Korean language pedagogy (especially for non-heritage learners); Korean linguistics; Language Ideologies; Critical Approaches to language education; Language curriculum and assessment development; Language learning styles and strategies; Second Language Acquisition; North Korean language and society
Sugyung Kim
Specialties
Proficiency-Oriented Language Instruction; Proficiency-Based Second Language Assessment; Korean as a Foreign Language (KFL); Project-Based Learning of Foreign Language; Curriculum Development; and Intercultural Communication
Faculty Emeriti
Joseph Allen
Specialties
China; Chinese poetry and poetics; Colonialist Photography; Taipei City; Taiwan
Affiliate Faculty
Hakim Abderrezak
Specialties
Maghrebi and Beur Literature, Cinema and Music; Clandestine Migrations in Arabic, French and Spanish; The Contemporary Western Mediterranean; Francophone Studies
Jeffrey Broadbent
Specialties
Environmental Sociology; Political Sociology; Social Movements; Climate Change; Network Analysis; Discourse Analysis; Qualitative Methods; Unified FieldTheory for political sociology and political science; Japan; East Asia
Teri L. Caraway
Specialties
Southeast Asian politics; transnational labor issues; comparative political economy of labor; gender and comparative politics
Arash Davari
Specialties
Modern and Contemporary Political Theory; Anti-Colonial, Anti-Imperial, and Postcolonial Political Theory; History and Theory; Politics and Culture of the Modern Middle East (emphasis on Iran); Revolution; Race, Ethnicity, and Politics
Kale B. Fajardo
Specialties
Gender and sexuality studies; Queer theory; Queer of color critique; Masculinity studies; Transgender studies; Philippine studies; Filipinix studies; Asian American studies; American studies; Global studies; Globalization studies; Migration studies; Auto-ethnography; Santa Cruz School of Ethnography; Visual cultures; Visual anthropology; Environmental humanities
Keya Ganguly
Specialties
The Frankfurt School; Intellectual History of Vision; Sociology of Culture; Postcolonial Criticism; Global Cinema; Marxism; Peripheral Literature
Vinay Gidwani
Specialties
Post-socialism and justice; Labor geographies; Marxism; Identity politics and subaltern social movements; Geographies of work; Agroecological transformations; Social theory; India
Daniel M. Greenberg
Specialties
East Asian Art; Qing History; Chinese Painting; Chinese Calligraphy; Curatorial Studies
Rachmi Diyah Larasati
Specialties
Study of Archive, Empire and Aesthetics; Post Colonial Theories and Literature (s); Study of Culture; Performing Arts, Dance in Global Politics & Culture; Politics of Human Rights and Creative Arts; Study of the body, emodiment, memory; Study of transnational Politics, Alliances (Bandung Movement and Global South); Creative Projects in Post-Conflict/War Zones (Asia); Southeast Asia; Sound Studies and Urban Studies; Plantation, Land and Forest
Mai Na Lee
Specialties
Southeast Asia; Southeast Asian American/Hmong communities; Highland Southeast Asian Studies
Kevin Luo
Specialties
Chinese Politics; East Asian Politics; State Building; Authoritarian Politics and Democratization; Politics of Development
Hiromi Mizuno
Specialties
Modern Japan & Asia; Science and technology; Empires, post-empire, the Cold War; Intellectual and cultural history; Environment and agriculture; Soil, fertilizer, nitrogen; Human rights and international laws
Yuichiro Onishi
Specialties
Black radicalism and internationalism; African American intellectual history; Asian American studies; Transnational American studies
Sonali Pahwa
Specialties
Egypt; Digital Media; Gender Studies; Middle East Studies; Performance Studies; Youth Culture
Zozan Pehlivan
Specialties
Environmental History; History of Violence; Comparative Empires; Pastoral Nomadism; Ottoman Empire; Kurdistan
Matthew Rahaim
Specialties
Hindustani Music, American Experimentalism, music for new instruments, analog synthesis, gesture, anthropocene sonic ecology, ethnomusicology, voice studies, speculative musical philosophy, raga theory, practices of listening, speculative harmonics, music
Sima Shakhsari
Specialties
Transnational Feminist Theory and Practice; Transnational Queer Theory and Sexuality Studies; Diasporas; Necropolitics; Neoliberalism; Governmentality; Social Media; Refugee Studies; Middle East Studies; Political Anthropology; Cultural and Social Anthropology
Ajay Skaria
Specialties
intellectual/conceptual/philosophical history; Democracies and the minor; 19th- and 20th-century caste politics; 19th- and 20th-century Hinduism; Gandhi; Ambedkar; 19th- and 20th-century adivasi religious movements; Historical theory/political theory; Academic Freedom
Hoon Song
Specialties
Early French Anthropology; Philosophical anthropology; Psychoanalysis; US/North Korea; Animality; Biopolitics; Ontology of power, materiality of sovereignty
Wayne Soon
Specialties
History of medicine; History of modern China, Taiwan, and diaspora; History of health insurance and medicine; History of pandemics
Shaden M. Tageldin
Specialties
Histories and ideologies of comparative literature; Empire and postcolonial studies; Critical translation theory; Aesthetics and biologics of race, nation, culture; Literatures of migration and diaspora; 19th- and 20th-century literatures in English, Arabic, French; Trans-African and trans-Asian studies; Politics of language, literary form, genre
Honghong Tinn
Specialties
History of electronic digital computing; Cold War; Econometrics; Science, technology, and medicine in East Asia
Ann Waltner
Specialties
Ritual; Law; Religion; Traditional Chinese social history; Gender; Analysis of historical documentation; Rumor; Gossip; Chinese history; World history; Feminism
Margaret Werry
Specialties
performance studies and performance theory; theatre historiography, 19C performance, theatre, and entertainment; museum studies; settler colonialism, neo-liberalization, nationalism, state-making and theories of race and ethnicity; tourism, heritage, and cultural policy; Pacific studies; critical pedagogy