Michael Gibbs , Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley, is Associate Professor in the History Department, specializing in the history of Japan, with strong interests in the comparative history of modern East Asia. His monograph, Struggle and Purpose in Postwar Japanese Unionism, studies the ideology of unionists in the Japanese steel industry.  He is currently at work on research into the connections between the labor movement and other social movements in postwar Japan.  A Fulbright-Hays fellowship recipient, Dr. Gibbs has lived in Japan for a total of nine years, carrying out his research in labor archives in Japan. He speaks and reads Japanese fluently.

P. Sai-wing Ho , Ph.D. Stanford University and B.Soc.Sci. University of Hong Kong, is Associate Professor of Economics and Chair of the Economics Department.  He specializes in trade and development, with a minor focus on East and Southeast Asia. His dissertation, which combined theoretical analysis and a case study, is entitled “Essays on Ricardo’s Trade-Growth Analysis, with an Application to the Postwar Growth Experience in Hong Kong.”  Dr. Ho has published articles in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Metroeconomica, Contributions to Political Economy, and Journal of Economic Issues and has served as a referee for the first two of these journals.  He is the author of the entry “Foreign Trade” in the Elgar Companion to Classical Economics.

Ginni Ishimatsu , Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley, is the Director of the Asian Studies program as well as Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences divisions; she is also Associate Professor of Religious Studies, specializing in Hindu religious and ritual traditions.  She is the author of a book manuscript, Between Text and Tradition:  Hindu Ritual and Politics in South India, and has co-authored a translation of the Kriyakramadyotika, a medieval Sanskrit text used in modern Hindu temple worship (DK Printworld, forthcoming).  She has published articles in Oxford Bibliographies Online, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Journal of Oriental Research and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.  In 2006 she received DU's William T. Driscoll Master Educator award.

Christina Kreps , Ph.D. University of Oregon, is Associate Professor and Director of Museum Studies in the Department of Anthropology.  Her areas of specialization are the anthropology of museums, the politics of cultural representation, art and cultural expression, and international cultural policy. Dr. Kreps has conducted research on and taught museum studies in the Netherlands, Indonesia, Italy, Viet Nam and the United States. Some of her publications include Liberating Culture: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation and Heritage Preservation(Routledge, 2003); Curatorship as Social Practice (Curator, 2003); "The Theoretical and Practical Future of Indigenous Museums," in N. Stanley, ed. The Future of Indigenous Museums. Berghahn (2007); Appropriate Museology in Theory and Practice. International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship (2008). Dr. Kreps has received fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, and Fulbright-Hays. WEBSITE

Sarah Morelli , Ph.D. Harvard University, is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music.  A specialist in classical music and dance of North India, she teaches courses on world musics and leads a North Indian classical performance ensemble.  Dr. Morelli has studied Hindustani vocal music and the sarod with the legendary musician, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, and has trained in Kathak dance with virtuosic Kathak master, Pandit Chitresh Das.  Her dissertation, “From Calcutta to California: Negotiations of Movement and Meaning in Kathak Dance,” focuses on Pandit Das’ contributions to Kathak dance, examining processes of culture-change in artistic diasporas. These issues also inform her earlier work on hip hop culture in Korea.  Dr. Morelli is also active as a performer of Kathak and Hindustani music and in the summer of 2007, she performed with Pandit Das throughout South India, in Mumbai and Kolkata.  WEBSITE

Li Peters , Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles, is Assistant Professor of Chinese and Coordinator of the Chinese Program in the Department of Languages and Literatures. Her research interests include translation theories and practices in early modern China; pre-modern and modern Chinese literature and cinema; and gender studies, with a focus on the semiotic and ideological constructs of women in Chinese cultural practice.  Her dissertation, entitled "Translation, the Novelistic Reconfiguration of Cultural Identity, China 1890s-1930s," examines the configuration of social and cultural imaginary and reconstruction of the Chinese literary field through the translation and rewriting of foreign novels in China from the late Qing to the early Republican period. She is the translator and compiler of translations of literary theories, poems and short stories, from English to Chinese and vice versa. She has published articles and given presentations on translation and politics in gender constructs. Her next project explores trauma and the politics of memory and representations in post-Mao China.

Jing Sun , Ph.D. University of Wisconsin–Madison, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science.  His areas of expertise are Japanese politics, Chinese politics, and East Asian international relations.  Dr. Sun, a native of Beijing, received his B.A. in journalism from Fudan University in Shanghai.  Upon graduation, he worked as a journalist for China’s state news agency from 1997 to 1999.  He also worked for China Central Television, the People’s Daily, and Beijing Youth Daily while he was a student at the School of Journalism of Fudan University.  Dr. Sun came to the United States in 1999.  He has received fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and the Japan Foundation, and was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Tokyo from 2003 to 2004.  He is the author of “Japan-Taiwan Relations: Unofficial in Name Only” (Asian Survey) and “Covering a Non-Democracy:  Analysis of Japanese Newspapers’ Portrayals of China and Implications for Media Balancing” (International Journal of Communication).  He is currently working on a book project that compares and contrasts Japan's and China’s diplomatic charm offensives.  Dr. Sun speaks English, Mandarin, and Japanese fluently.

ASSOCIATED FACULTY

Michiko Croft (Japanese), Department of Languages and Literatures
Hui-jie Zhang (Mandarin), Department of Languages and Literatures