Asian Studies

Faculty

Andra Alvis, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Research interests include classical Japanese prose, modern Japanese fantasy, contemporary women’s writing in Japan, Japanese horror film/ animation, psychoanalytic and feminist theory.

Hiroko Chiba, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Research interests include Japanese learning and memory, technology and language learning, Japanese science fiction and fantasy, cross-cultural studies of aesthetic perceptions, cross-cultural studies of technology and aesthetics. Served as technical editor for the second edition of “Japanese for Dummies” (2013) and authored revised third edition of “Japanese for Dummies” (in press). Japan Foundation grant recipient to develop a travel course to Japan. Published with Dave Berque the conference paper “Evaluating the Use of LINE Software to Support Interaction during an American Travel Course in Japan.”

Jason D. Fuller, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania. Interests in modern Hinduism, the Hare Krishna movement and cults. A historian of religions who lived in India for years and conducted fieldwork and archival research in Kolkata, capital of the state of West Bengal, India. Won United Methodist Exemplary Teaching Award in 2016-17 and awarded the Johnson Family university professor of religious studies, 2018-22.

Sujung Kim, Ph.D., Columbia University. Interests in esoteric Buddhism in medieval Japan;
interactions between Japanese and Korean Buddhism; and Buddhist mythology. Member of the
Korean Religions Group Steering Committee of the American Academy of Religion. Author of “Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian ‘Mediterranean,’” set to be published in November 2019.

Sherry Mou, Ph.D., The Ohio State University. Research interests are classical Chinese literature, Confucianism, Taoism and classical Chinese women. One of her achievements is taking students and faculty members from both DePauw and Wabash College to study trips to China (including Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong, Hainan, Beijing and Shanghai) and Taiwan.

Pauline Ota, Ph.D., Stanford University. An art historian who studies 18th-century Japanese visual culture, particularly the visual “revolution” in two- dimensional art that changed the rendering of traditional subject matter, such as cityscapes. She also is interested in the pictorial expression of the supernatural – that is, how the seen, the known and the unknown intersect to produce imagery linked to literature, religion and the lived experience.

Sunil K. Sahu, Ph.D., University of Chicago. Interested in South Asian politics; international political economy; religion and politics; democracy; political ideologies; and international terrorism. Author of 1998 book on technology transfer and of more than a dozen articles.

Jia-ling Weng, M.A., National Taiwan Normal University.