Harvard-Yenching Institute names visiting scholars, fellows

The Harvard-Yenching Institute recently announced the following visiting scholars and fellows for the academic year. Based at the institute’s office in Vanserg Hall, the fellows and scholars represent more than 20 institutions in East Asia.

“With this group of scholars from China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, the institute carries on its tradition of creating a diverse community at Harvard of outstanding young Asian faculty members in the humanities,” said Peter Kelley, executive director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute.

This year’s visiting scholars

Chia-feng Chang is an assistant professor at the Department of History, National Taiwan University. Her research deals with transmission of medical knowledge and medical practice in the Ming dynasty.

Julie Choi teaches English literature at Ewha Womans University. Her special area of interest is 18th century Britain. The title of her project at the Harvard-Yenching Institute is “The Metropolis and Mental Life in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel.”

Seung-Mi Han serves as an associate professor of Japanese studies/anthropology at Yonsei University in Korea. She is doing research on a project titled “Politics of Belonging in an Age of Globalization: Reconfiguring Nationhood and Citizenship in Japan and South Korea.”

Yangfang Hou works at the Institute of Chinese Historical Geography at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. His major field of research is Chinese historical demography.

Geung-Sik Jung is an associate professor at the College of Law at Seoul National University. While at Harvard, he will examine the modes of acceptance and transformation of the Zhu His’ family ritual.

Janghwan Kim is a professor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Yonsei University, Korea. His research is titled “The Historical Meaning of the Tai-ping guang-ji, the Early Song Dynasty Collection of Ancient Chinese Fictions.”

Jean-young Kim is a professor in the Department of Russian Language and Literature at Yonsei University. Her project will be “Russian Romantic Travelogues and the East” and a monograph on Pushkin.

Thuy Khuong Le is a researcher at the National Center for Social Sciences and the Humanities. She plans to conduct research on the changing relations between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations since 9/11.

Sean Hsiang-lin Lei is an assistant professor teaching modern history of Chinese medicine and science studies in Taiwan Tsing-hua University. His research deals with the historical encounter between Chinese medicine, Western medicine, and the state in the republic of China.

Kang Li is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology, Peking University. His research will focus on the revolutionary mobilization mechanism in rural China’s land reform around the 1940s.

Runhui Lin is an associate professor of the International Business School, Nankai University. His research centers on network organizations, organization innovation and change, system analysis of organization systems and management systems, and network analysis methodology.

Rui Ma is an associate professor in Sichuan University, China. While at Harvard, she is doing research on the change in Chinese literary thoughts from the late Qing to the modern era.

Takahiro Nakajima is an associate professor in the University of Tokyo Komaba. His research focuses on problematics in Chinese philosophy: language, historicity, and religiousness.

Ke Niu is an associate professor in the Department of History, Peking University, and also a researcher at the university’s Center for Studies of World Modernization Process. His research is on the U.S. role in Taiwan’s postwar development.

Takashi Osugi is an associate professor in the Anthropology Department, Graduate School of Social Sciences, at Hitotsubashi University in Japan. He is working on a project titled “An Anthropological Study of the Genealogy of the Twin Concepts ‘Materiality/Spirituality’ in Modern Cuban Politics and Religion.”

Yuan Shen is an associate professor in the Department of English, Fudan University in Shanghai. She will look into the parametric variation in the choice of nominal forms in Chinese and English.

Lei Tao is a lecturer at the Institute of Religion, Science and Social Studies, Shandong University. He will be working on the Shushu and science in ancient China.

Jen-Chieh Ting is an assistant research fellow in the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. His research project focuses on both the Falun Gong overseas and the organization of Scientology worldwide.

Thi Hai Yen Tran comes from Institute of Literature, Vietnam. Her research field is in Vietnamese Ancient Medieval Literature. She plans to do research on the effects of Chinese traditional culture-literature on Vietnam literature compared with Japan and Korea traditional literatures.

Wei Wang is an associate professor at the Institute of Science, Technology and Society, Tsinghua University in China. His research project is “Scientific Explanation and Natural Law.”

Guosheng Wu is a professor in the Philosophy Department of Peking University. His research at the Harvard-Yenching Institute focuses on scientism in modern China.

Feng Yan teaches at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of Fudan University. His research at Harvard examines the cult of the Cultural Revolution in the post-Mao era.

Hong Yin is a professor at South China Normal University. As a Harvard-Yenching Institute Visiting Scholar, she is working on the vagrant problem in England from the 17th to the 19th century.

Ting Yu is an associate professor at the Institute of Ancient Chinese Classics Study, Wuhan University. His research plan is titled “Ancient Chinese Classics Studies in Circumstance of Humanities Computing – Case Study on Ancient Yinyi Books of Buddhism Sutras and Tripitaka.”

Xiang Zhou is an associate professor in the History Department of Zhongshan University, China. While at Harvard, she is doing research on the fur and tea trade, a world market before industrialization.

Wenshu Zhao is an associate professor in the English Department, Nanjing University, China. His research project is titled “Cultural Identity of Contemporary Chinese American Literature.”

This year’s visiting fellows

Young Hun Cho is a Ph.D. degree candidate in the Department of Asian History at Seoul National University. He is working on his dissertation on the relation between the rise and fall of the merchants of Huizhou and the Grand Canal during the Ming-Qing period.

Xi Gao works as associate professor in the History Department of Fudan University. The theme of her Harvard-Yenching project is on the Chinese medical revolution beginning from 1928.

Yongmei Gong started her Ph. D. program in the Department of History at East China Normal University in 1999 and works for the Center for China Studies Overseas Research. Her Ph.D. dissertation focuses on Professor Philip A. Kuhn and his research on modern Chinese history.

Zuofu Wu came from the Sociology Department at Nanjing University, China. He is working on his dissertation titled “The Construction and Expression of Lineage Identity: A Study on a North Fujian Village.”