Harvard-Yenching’s visiting scholars, fellows

Harvard-Yenching Institute Director Weiming Tu recently welcomed 32 visiting scholars and fellows to the institute for the 2005-06 academic year. “HYI offers a unique opportunity to create a learning community of scholars in the humanities at Harvard each year, benefiting both the scholars themselves and Harvard,” Tu noted. The scholars are faculty members in the humanities and social sciences from selected universities in Asia, and will spend one year conducting research at the institute.

“These scholars are selected by a faculty committee from among over 140 applicants submitted by more than 50 partner institutions in Asia” said Ruohong Li, the visiting scholars program manager. During the past year, the institute has sponsored successful alumni meetings among former visiting scholars in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.

“This is the 51st consecutive year of the institute’s visiting scholars and fellows program and it continues to play a major role in developing the humanities in higher education in Asia and at Harvard,” adds Executive Director Peter Kelley.

This year’s visiting scholars:

Kanji Akagi is professor of international politics and history of war, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Keio University. He earned his LL.D. from Keio University in 1989 and has been teaching at the department since 1990. While staying at the institute as a Keio-Harvard-Yenching Exchange Scholar, Akagi will be conducting a research project titled “The Reconstruction of Cold War History in Asia.”

Seema Alavi is associate professor of the Department of History, Jamia Millia University, New Delhi, India, working on Muslim medical professionals in colonial India (18th-20th centuries). This work attempts to understand Muslim intellectual thought as it engaged with Western knowledge in the period of the British Raj.

Jianhua Cheng is associate research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The research project he is conducting at the institute is titled “Evolution and Development of Nagarjuna’s Philosophy in China.”

Kuk Cho is associate professor of law at College of Law, Seoul National University. His specialty is criminal law and procedure, judicial ethics and human rights law. While staying at the institute this year, he is doing research on the rationales and mechanism of the U.S. public defender system and the plea bargaining system.

Jiehan Feng teaches public international law and intellectual property law at Wuhan University, China. During this academic year at the institute, she will be devoted to a project on “Facing AIDS in China: The Way to Good Governance – Ethics, Policies and Human Rights.”

Motoaki Funakoshi is associate professor at Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University, Japan. While at the institute, Funakoshi hopes to explore which institutional conditions cause a distinctively American way of legal thinking.

Changlong Guan is associate professor of the institute for ancient books at Zhejiang University. The research project he is working on at the Harvard-Yenching Institute is titled “Research on Shushu Texts of Dunhuang Manuscripts.”

Xing Hang is associate professor in the Department of Economics, Fudan University, China. Her initial research interests are investments and comparative economics. As a 2005-06 visiting scholar, Hang is conducting her research on official corruption in China with an emphasis on economic ethics toward official corruption.

Reiko Kawamoto received her college education at the University of Toronto. She teaches English literature at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, while also working on her Ph.D. dissertation on a group of late-20th century British authors, with a focus on Muriel Spark and Iris Murdoch.

Sung keu Kim is professor at Chonbuk National University in Jeonju, Korea. He has been continuously concentrating his research on Chinese tributary relations during Song. At the institute, Kim will carry out a project on the studies of the traditional Chinese world order in America.

Kun-hui Ku has been teaching at the Institute of Anthropology, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, since 2001. She has been working with indigenous peoples in Taiwan for more than a decade and her current project is titled “In the Name of God and Ancestors: Religion and Politics among the Austronesian-speaking Paiwan in Taiwan.”

Linyou Lan is associate professor of the Central University of Nationalities, Beijing. He teaches sinological anthropology and theories and methods of cultural anthropology. His research focuses on the Chinese lineage organizations in rural north China.

Wei-ping Lin teaches at the department of anthropology, National Taiwan University. During her stay at the institute, her research project will be “Translocal Connections and Cultural Formations: A New Perspective on Han Migration in Taiwan.”

Ping Liu is professor of history and culture, Shandong University. At the Harvard-Yenching Institute, he is conducting a research project on the culture of rivers and lakes in modern China.

Yuan-ju Liu is from the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica. She specialized in the zhiguai (accounts of anomalies) of the Six Dynasties period of Chinese history. At the institute this year, she will focus her research on two accounts: Faxian’s “A Record of Buddhist Countries” and Yijing’s “A Record of a Buddhist’s Life Sent Back from the Southern Ocean.”

Denggao Long is professor of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, China. While at the institute, he will be working on a project titled “After Leaving Home: Merchant Society and Culture in Ming and Qing.”

Giang Hoang Nguyen is from the Department of Sociology at the National University of Vietnam (Hanoi). During his stay at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, his research focuses on non-Western models to explain income distribution and the impacts of earnings’ determinants on reproductive health in rural Vietnam.

Rui Pan is professor at the Center for American Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai. He has served in government in charge of Policy Planning Division of Shanghai municipality’s Foreign Affairs Office. His research project at the institute is “The U.S.-Japan Relationship in the Changing International Structure.”

Jeong-hye Park is assistant professor of art history at the Academy of Korean Studies. While her primary field is documentary paintings of Joseon Dynasty, her new research interest includes Chinese documentary paintings of court ceremonies.

Yunok Park is currently teaching courses on the 19th century British and American novels at the Department of English Language and Literature at Kyungpook University. Her research interests have been mainly on the 19th century American canonical male writers including Melville and Hawthorne.

Weiguo Sun is associate professor in the College of History, Nankai University, China. The project for his research stay at the institute is “A Comparative Study on Qing Qianjia School and Choson Bukhak School.”

Hoang Ai Vo is a lecturer in the faculty of Oriental Studies in the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City. During her stay at the institute, her research will focus on “American Educational Policies in Vietnam (1954-60) and in Japan (1945-52).”

Cheng-hua Wang is an art and cultural historian at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. Her specialties are visual and material culture studies, especially Chinese visual images and objects in their broad historical and cultural contexts from the late 16th to early 20th century.

Lianfen Yang is professor of the College of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University. She specializes in modern Chinese literature, from late Qing to contemporary literature.

Yang Yant is currently professor of the Department of Chinese Literaure, East China Normal University. As a visiting scholar at the institute, he is conducting a research project titled “Relationship Between Urbanization and Growth of Modern Chinese Literature.”

Bin You is associate professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Central University for Nationalities in China, Beijing. His project for the Harvard-Yenching visiting scholars program is “Theological Thought-World of the Hebrew Bible” with a focus on the images of Moses in the different traditions of Hebrew Bible.

Haiqing Zhang is associate professor of comparative and international politics of the Political Science Department, School of Government, Sun Yat-Sen University at Guangzhou, China. His research interests range from the evolution of Chinese political culture and its role in constitution making, and political change to Sino-U.S. relations.

Weini Zhao is associate professor at the law school, Sichuan University. While staying at the Harvard-Yenching Institute this year, she will be conducting a research project titled “A Study of Basic Level Lawsuits of Sichuan in Qing.”

This year’s visiting fellows:

Gwang Ho An is a Ph.D. candidate at the Academy of Korean Studies. He received his M.A. in history from the same institution, and is currently conducting his dissertation research on Munhwa Yu family and conflicts surrounding the family in the late Jeseon period.

Ying Fan received her M.A. in Chinese urban history from Sichuan University, China. Her scholarly interests lie in urbanization, urban space, urban life, and social changes in modern China. During this year at the institute, she will work on her Ph.D. dissertation titled “Changing Social Ethics – A Study on Women’s Social Life in Republican Chengdu.”

Sun Ju Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology at the Academy of Korean Studies. During her stay at the Institute she is writing her dissertation on modern Korean theaters in the first half of the 20th century from an anthropological perspective.

Ying Liu is a visiting fellow from the School of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University. Her dissertation research mainly focuses on the Wenxin diaolong studies in English-speaking countries in an attempt to find the heterogeneity of Chinese literature and culture compared with its Western counterpart.