Photo courtesy of Kathryn Mohrman
Center for Asian Research Emeritus
This page provides an alphabetical listing of former Center for Asian Research faculty.
Prasad Boradkar
The Design School
Prasad Boradkar teaches courses on strategic enterprise innovation and collaborative innovation. His research interests include New Product Design and Development and the Culture of Objects. He has published Designing Things: A Critical Introduction to the Culture of Objects (2010).
Josef Brada
Department of Economic
Josef Brada is an Emeritus Professor, a Foreign Member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts and president at Society for the Study of Emerging Markets. While at Arizona State University, he taught courses on international economics in the Department of Economics with W. P. Carey School of Business for 33 years. Prior to joning ASU in 1978, he was an assistant professor with The Ohio State University (1969-1974) and an associate professor of economics and international business with New York University Stern School of Business (1974-1978).
Joe Cutter
School of International Letters and Cultures
Joe Cutter teaches courses on China and its language. His research interests include early medieval Chinese literature and the history of the Three States period, pre-modern China, modern China, traditional Chinese literature and history, with emphasis on the Han and early medieval periods. His publications include: The Brush and the Spur: Chinese Culture and the Cockfight (1989); and Empresses and Consorts: Selections from Chen Shou’s Records of the Three States With Pei Songzhi’s Commentary (with other authors 1999).
James Eder
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
James Eder teaches courses on the peoples of Southeast Asia and on international development and sustainability. His research interests center on Palawan Island, the Philippines, and include demographic and subsistence change among tropical forest foragers; agricultural intensification and economic diversification in upland farming communities; livelihood and resource management in the coastal zone; and ethnic differences, Islamic consciousness, and Muslim-Christian relations.
Anne Feldhaus
School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
Anne Feldhaus teaches courses on religion in India. She specializes in medieval Hinduism folk Hinduism, and religious geography, and conducts Her research on the religious traditions of the Marathi-language region of western India. Her publications include Connected Places: Region, Pilgrimage, and Geographical Imagination in Maharashtra (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and Water and Womanhood: Religious Meanings of Rivers in Maharashtra (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Feldhaus has been a Guggenheim Fellow, an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, and a Senior Research Fellow for the American Institute of Indian Studies.
Miko Foard
School of International Letters and Cultures
Miko Foard teaches courses on Japanese.
Thomas Hudak
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Thomas J. Hudak focuses on the linguistics and literature of Southeast Asia, with a particular emphasis on the Thai and Indonesian languages. His research has involved the analysis and interpretation of ethnopoetics and ethnoaesthetics. Current topics of his research include the translation of classical Thai poetry, the uses of repetition in literary discourse and the compiling and editing of primary data from twenty Tai languages and dialects.
Thuy-Kim Le
School of International Letters and Cultures
Lê Phạm Thuý-Kim has taught Vietnamese language at Arizona State University since 1991 and served as examiner and consultant for the Vietnamese language courses offered by the Critical Languages Program at University of Arizona from 1995-2013. She has been active in Group of Universities for the Advancement of Vietnamese in America (GUAVA) since 1991 and served as chair of Academic Affairs, vice president, and chair of Proficiency Guidelines Committee. In September 2002, Lê Phạm Thúy-Kim received Outstanding Post-Secondary Educator of the Year Award at the Arizona Language Association annual conference in Glendale, Arizona. She also received an award from the Vietnamese Community in Arizona for her contribution to the community in February, 2006. Her two textbooks "Chúng ta nói" and "Let's Speak Vietnamese" received awards from Charles E. Tuttle Publishing. She also published "Let's Practice Vietnamese" for the second-year courses and several workbooks to accompany those textbooks. Le enjoyed developing web-based learning and teaching materials for Vietnamese language learners and instructors.
Stephen Mackinnon
Professor Emeritus, School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
Stephen Mackinnon teaches courses on Modern China, Peoples Republic of China, U.S.-China relations and History of Modern India, as well as War and Revolution. His research interests include a biographical study of the life and times of Chen Hanseng (1897-2004), pioneer Chinese social scientist and international political activist since the 1920s. He has published Power and Politics in Late Imperial China (1981); China Reporting: An Oral History of American Journalism in the 1930s and 1940s (1987); Agnes Smedley: Life and Times of an American Radical (1988) and WUHAN,1938: WAR , REFUGEES, AND MAKING OF MODERN CHINA, (2008).
Mookesh Patel
The Design School
Mookesh Patel teaches courses on visual communication and teaching design. His research interests include the visual communication and information design issues, semiotics, visual interpretation, visualization, film and animation design, exhibition / experience design, and typography.
James Rush
School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
James Rush teaches courses on Asia and Southeast Asia, including “Introduction to Asia,” “Modern Southeast Asia,” and other undergraduate and graduate courses on Asian and global topics (e.g., comparative colonialism). His research interests include Indonesia, Southeast Asia, colonialism, Islam, and modern Asian biography. He has published Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprise in Colonial Indonesia, 1860-1910 (1990), The Last Tree: Reclaiming the Environment in Tropical Asia (1991), Hamka’s Great Story: A Master Writer’s Vision of Islam for Indonesia (2016), and Southeast Asia: A Very Short Introduction (2018), plus several short biographies and articles.
Sheldon Simon
School of Politics and Global Studies
Sheldon Simon teaches courses on national security, intelligence, terrorism, world politics, Asian foreign policies, and Asian security policies. He has written or co-edited ten books, most recently co-edited volumes: China, the United States, and Southeast Asia: Contending Perspectives on Politics, Security, and Economics (Routledge, 2008) and Religion and Conflict in South and Southeast Asia: Disrupting Violence (Routledge, 2007).
Andrew Smith
School of Life Sciences
Andrew Smith teaches courses on biodiversity conservation and mammalogy. His work involves investigation of the ecosystem services and keystone species status of small mammals – primarily Plateau Pikas on the high grasslands of the Tibetan plateau. His collaborative work on these alpine grasslands is designed to deepen our understanding of the complex interactions involving geophysical, biological, social, and policy factors and feedback systems in determining grassland status. A goal of this work is to enhance understanding of this socio-ecological system and to provide important inference for policies on grassland restoration, biodiversity, and economic development. This work is being supported by a 5-year NSF CNH grant. He recently completed A Guide to the Mammals of China (Princeton University Press), which has also been translated and published in a Chinese edition.
Sybil Thornton
School of Historical Philosophical and Religious Studies
Sybil Thornton’s research focuses on three interrelated areas of Japanese narrative: medieval Buddhist propaganda, late-medieval epic, and the period film. In addition to several articles and book chapters, she is the author of Charisma and Community Formation in Medieval Japan: The Case of the Yugyo-ha (1300-1700) and of the 2007The Japanese Period Film: A Critical Analysis. She is now working on a translation and study of the c. 1400 Meitokuki, the second of a proposed series of five late-medieval Japanese epics. Dr. Thornton has been particularly active in advancing knowledge about Asia among Arizona Community College and K-12 teachers and students. She is also the Principle Investigator of the 3-year (2011-2014) Institutional Project Support grant from the Japan Foundation.
Hoyt Tillman
School of International Letters and Cultures
Hoyt Tillman (Tian Hao) teaches courses on Chinese cultural and intellectual history from antiquity to the present, as well as pre-Qing history and the history of medicine in China. English books include Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (1992); Utilitarian Confucianism: Chien Liang’s Challenge to Chu Hsi (1982); Ch’en Liang on Law and the Public Interest (1994); Business as a Profession: The Autobiography of Mr. Wu Ho-su (2002); and he also co-edited with Stephen West, China Under Jurchen Rule (1995). His major books in Chinese include: Zhu Xi de siwei shijie (Zhu Xi’s World of Thought) (2008 & 2009); Pangguan Zhuzixue (Bystander’s Perspectives on Zhu Xi Studies) (2011); and Gonglizhuyi de rujia (Utilitarian Confucianism) (1997). He also edited Songdai sixiangshi lun (Discussions of Song-era Intellectual History) (2003), and Wenhua yu lishi de zhuisuo (Cultural and Historical Explorations) (2009), as well as co-edited two volumes of essays with colleagues in China.
Douglas Webster
School of Politics and Global Studies
Douglas Webster teaches courses in Global Urban Systems, Sustainable Urban Dynamics, Urbanization in China, and the ASU Summer Abroad Course, Thailand: Sustainable Urban Dynamics. His research interests are comparative urban dynamics, urban competitiveness and resilience, peri-urbanization (most urban development is occurring on the fringes of cities worldwide), and urban governance. Recent publications focus on urbanization dynamics in the context of economic shocks, post-petroleum dynamics, climate change, and accelerating globalization. Geographically, his work primarily focuses on East Asia.
Stephen West
School of International Letters and Cultures
He is a specialist in Chinese literature and urban history from 950-1400, working primarily on the rise of urban consciousness, Chinese performing literature, and Chinese garden culture. His publications in the last five years include Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals: Eleven Early Chinese Plays (2010, Hackett), Bandits, Betrayal, and Brotherhood: Chinese Plays on the Three Kingdoms Era (2012, Hackett), “Chinese Literature 1275-1425”, in The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, and several articles in English language and Chinese language journals. His current work includes “The Pains of Pleasure: The New Year’s Festivals of Kaifeng and the Expatriate Communities of Hangzhou 1125-1250” (in a volume from the Univ. of Michigan Press), and The Orphan of Zhao and Its Kin: The Earliest Chinese Dramas (Columbia Univ. Press).
Elizabeth Wong
School of International Letters and Cultures
Elizabeth Wong teaches first, second and third year Japanese.
Ruth Yabes
Professor Emerita, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
Ruth Yabes teaches courses on urban housing analysis and urban planning. Her research interests include participation, community development, international planning, planning pedagogy.
Robert Youngblood
Professor Emeritus, School of Politics and Global Studies
Robert Youngblood’s current teaching and research interests are focused on two different aspects of domestic U.S. policy. The first focus is helping freshmen and sophomores understand the need to save and invest early in their working lives and the importance of avoiding some simple investment pitfalls in planning their financial futures. The second focus is on public policy issues associated with health care and examines the question of why the epidemic of heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, osteoporosis, and prostate cancer in the United States has not resulted in clear preventative guidelines from the government and the medical profession. He has published Marcos Against the Church: Economic Development and Political Repression in the Philippines (1990) and is the co-editor of Patterns of Power and Politics in the Philippines: Implications for Development (1994).