Asia Program

Asia Program Faculty

In addition to professional training, our faculty members have benefited from extensive travel, research, and/or teaching abroad. We are known across campus as a department committed to quality undergraduate education, and a number of our faculty have won major teaching awards. Students find that the Asia Program is staffed with stimulating and helpful instructors.

Weiguo Cao

Ph.D. Candidate, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Instructor of Chinese
Office: Thompson Hall 101E
Phone: 509-335-6626

Mr. Cao received his M.A. from the University of Wisconsin, where he is finishing his Ph.D. dissertation, tentatively entitled "The Qing Dynasty Evidential Research Scholarship (kaozheng) on The Grand Scribe's Records." His research interests include early Chinese narrative and historical works, the development of Chinese fictional writings, and the translation of ancient Chinese texts. He is part of the group project translating Sima Qian's Shiji (The Grand Scribe's Records—popularly known as The Book of History), and his annotated translation of "The Basic Annals of Emperor Wen, the Filial" appeared in volume 3 of that book last year. Mr. Cao teaches Chinese language and literature.

Roger Chan

Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington
Instructor of History and General Education
Office: Wilson-Short Hall 319
Phone: 509-335-4066

Mr. Chan’s teaching and research interests are centered on late Imperial China, modern China, modern Japan, and Western legal history. In addition to courses in Asian studies, Chan teaches world civilizations in the General Education Program.

Zheng-min Dong

Ph.D., University of Washington, 1990
Professor of Russian
Office: Thompson Hall 124C
Phone: 509-335-4162
E-mail: dongzm@wsu.edu

Dong has published many articles on Russian syntax in the U.S., Russia, China, and Europe. His current projects are Crossroads, an English-Russian dictionary of American and Far East Asian contacts to be published in the fall of 2003, and a bilingual (Russian-English) dictionary of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean words, both in collaboration with faculty at Far Eastern National University in Vladivostok, Russia. Recently, Professor Dong has established a summer program leading 20–30 WSU students to China to teach English. In addition to Russian, Professor Dong teaches some advanced Chinese language courses.

Lydia Gerber

Ph.D., Hamburg University, 1998
Senior Instructor of General Education, History, and Honors
Office: Wilson-Short Hall 342
Phone: 509-335-7425
E-mail: lgerber@wsu.edu

Gerber teaches global civilizations (Honors College), world civilizations, and coordinates Asia 301 (East Meets West). Her areas of research interest include late Qing China, cross-cultural studies, Protestant missions in China, and Sino-German relations. She has recently published Von Voskamps "heidnischem Treiben" und Wilhelms "höherem China": Die Berichterstattung deutscher protestantischer Missionare aus dem deutschen Pachtgebiet Kiautschou 1898–1914 (Hamburger Sinologische Hefte, 2002) and "Richard Wilhelms Missionsarbeit im deutschen Pachtgebiet Kiautschou, 1899–1914" in Richard Wilhelm: Botschafter zweier Welten, Klaus Hirsch, ed. (Frankfurt, 2003, p. 167–200).

Carol S. Ivory

Ph.D., University of Washington, 1990
Professor and Chair, Department of Fine Arts
Office: Fine Arts Center 5072F
Phone: 509-335-7043
E-mail: ivorycs@wsu.edu
Carol Ivory's Web page

An art historian, Ivory has been at WSU since 1992. She teaches courses on Asian, Native American, and, her specialty, Pacific Island art. Dr. Ivory's research focuses on the art, history, and culture of the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. She is the author of numerous articles and essays on the Marquesas in a variety of international publications, including Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands, the catalog for the exhibit of the same name at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005-06. She is past-president of the Pacific Arts Association, an international professional organization, and co-editor of the association's journal, Pacific Arts. At WSU, she is a co-advisor to the Pacific Islanders Club.

Raymond A. Jussaume Jr.

Ph.D., Cornell University, 1987
Professor and Chair of Community and Rural Sociology
Office: Wilson-Short Hall 25
Phone: 509-335-7626
E-mail: rajussaume@wsu.edu
Raymond Jussaume's Web page

Jussaume has a research and extension position in the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences with a specialty in Asian food marketing systems. He has lived off and on for more than 4 years in Japan, where he has conducted field research on rural communities, agro-food production systems, and food consumption patterns. He has conducted similar research in China. Jussaume teaches classes in rural sociology and serves as advisor to the WSU Anime Club.

Noriko Kawamura

Ph.D., University of Washington, 1989
Associate Professor of History
Office: Wilson-Short Hall 310
Phone: 509-335-5428
E-mail: nkawamura@wsu.edu

Kawamura teaches American diplomatic history and Japanese history. Her publications include Turbulence in the Pacific: Japanese–U.S. Relations during World War I (Praeger, 2000) and "Wilsonian Idealism and Japanese Claims at the Paris Peace Conference," Pacific Historical Review, 66 (November 1997). Her current research project concerns Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War.

Manling Luo

Assistant Professor of Chinese
Office: Thompson Hall 203B
Phone: 509-335-8713
E-mail: manlingluo@wsu.edu

Christopher Lupke

Ph.D., Cornell University, 1993
Associate Professor of Chinese
Office: Thompson Hall 124D
Phone: 509-335-2755
E-mail: lupke@wsu.edu

Lupke’s research interests include modern Chinese literature, film, and cultural studies. His edited volume of essays entitled The Magnitude of Ming: Command, Lot, and Fate in Chinese Culture is due out from the University of Hawai'i Press. He recently has finished a scholarly translation of Peng Ge's novel Setting Moon that includes a survey of Chinese literature from the 1950s in Taiwan and several appendixes on the Peking Opera, critical reception of the novel, and correspondences. Professor Lupke also has a scholarly interest in Chinese language pedagogy.

Michael Myers

Ph.D., University of Hawaii, 1990
Professor of Philosophy
Office: Bryan Hall 301
Phone: 509-335-8036
E-mail: myers@wsu.edu

Myers teaches Asian philosophies and religions and philosophy of religion. He is coordinator of the religious studies program at WSU. His revised dissertation appears under the title Let the Cow Wander: Modeling the Metaphors in Veda and Vedanta (University of Hawaii Press, 1995), and he has also published Brahman: A Comparative Theology (Curzon, 2000).

Hiromi Ono

Associate Professor of Sociology
Office: Wilson-Short Hall 239
Phone: 509-335-5427
E-mail: ono@wsu.edu

Professor Ono received her Ph.D. from UCLA in 1996. Her interests are family demography, social stratification, gender, race/ethnicity, immigration, and crossnational comparisons. Her current research explores the linkage between inequality and family transitions over a variety of life course stages, with a focus on contexts of race/ethnicity and gender. Her many publications include "Marital History Homogamy between the Divorced and the Never Married among Non-Hispanic Whites" and "Assortative Mating of the Divorced and the Never Married in the United States in Recent Decades."

David A. Pietz

Ph.D., Washington University, 1998
Director of the Asia Program
Associate Professor of History
Office: Wilson-Short Hall 320
Phone: 509-335-3267
E-mail: pietz@wsu.edu

Pietz teaches Chinese and East Asian history. His current research focuses on 20th-century Chinese economic and environmental history. Recent publications include Engineering the State: The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China, 1927–37 (Routledge, 2002), and he is the co-editor of State and Economy in Republican China (Harvard, 2000).

Robert Snyder

Instructor of Philosophy
Office: Bryan Hall 316P
Phone: 509-335-5464
E-mail: rsnyder@wsu.edu

Professor Snyder earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Integral Studies. His areas of specialization include philosophy of religion and Chinese and Asian philosophy—Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. His teaching includes ethical theory, east-west studies, Islam, theology, spirituality, and hermeneutics.

Robert Staab

Ph.D., University of Utah, 1980
Senior Instructor of History and General Education
Office: Wilson-Short Hall 342
Phone: 509-335-7425
E-mail: rstaab@wsu.edu

Staab teaches history courses primarily related to the Middle East and world civilizations. His interest in the Middle East started in 1965 when he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1980, with a focus on Middle East studies: Turkish and Islamic history. His current research interests focus on social and cultural 19th-century Istanbul.

Raymond Sun

Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, 1991
Associate Professor and Cochair of History
Office: Wilson-Short Hall 339
Phone: 509-335-4622
E-mail: sunray@wsu.edu

Sun teaches modern European history, the history of Germany, and World War II in Asia and the Pacific. His recent publications include Before the Enemy Is within Our Walls: A Social, Cultural, and Political History of Catholic Workers in Cologne, 1885–1912 (Brill 1999), "Catholic-Marxist Competition in the Working-Class Parishes of Cologne during the Weimar Republic" (Catholic Historical Review 83, No. 1 (January 1997):20-43), and "Arbeiter Priester und die 'Roten': Kulturelle Hegemonie im Katholischen Milieu, 1885–1933" in Thomas Mergel and Thomas Welskopp, eds., Geschichte zwischen Kultur und Gesellshaft: Beitrage zur Theoriedebatte (Munich: Beck Verlag, 1997).

Ikuyo Suzuki

M.S., University of Idaho, 2001
Instructor of Japanese Language
Office: Thompson Hall 203A
Phone: 509-335-6649
E-mail: suzukiikuyo@wsu.edu

A seasoned teacher of Japanese language, Ikuyo Suzuki is working toward her Ph.D. in education at the University of Idaho. Her research interests include bilingual and foreign language education as well as international education. Her teaching has merited an "excellence in teaching" award. Her energy in the classroom and sense of humor are an inspiration to her students, and students can often be seen working diligently on their Japanese while laughing and having fun together.

Patriya Silpakit Tansuhaj

Ph.D., Oklahoma State University, 1985
Professor of Marketing and International Business
Director of the International Business Institute at WSU
Office: Johnson Tower 501
Phone: 509-335-0940
E-mail: tansuhaj@wsu.edu

Tansuhaj’s current research interest is in international marketing. Her work has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of International Business Studies, International Marketing Review, Journal of Marketing Education, Journal of Services Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Communication, among others. She has extensive international experience, including visiting professor at Prince of Songkla University in Thailand, professor at the National Economics University, Hanoi, Vietnam, and Fulbright Scholar to Mahasarakham University, Thailand.

Paul Thiers

Ph.D., University of Oregon, 1999
Associate Professor of Political Science
Office: LB 210C (WSU Vancouver)
Phone: 360-546-9466
E-mail: thiers@vancouver.wsu.edu

Thiers teaches comparative and environmental policy in the program in public affairs at Washington State University’s Vancouver campus. His research focuses on political issues relating to globalization, international trade (especially food trade), and social and environmental justice, with a specific emphasis on rural China and a regional emphasis on the Pacific Rim. Recent research projects have focused on Chinese pesticide policy, China’s integration into international organic food markets, and China's accession to the World Trade Organization. For Dr. Thiers, the defining questions of our time are how will globalization affect local institutions, people, and ecosystems, and how will these local institutions, people, and ecosystems respond to globalization?

Marina Tolmacheva

Ph.D., Institute of Ethnography, Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., Leningrad, 1970
Professor of History
Phone: 509-335-5139
E-mail: tolmache@wsu.edu
Marina Tolmacheva's Web page

Tolmacheva teaches Islamic civilization, Middle East history, and contemporary Islam. Her 100+ publications include "Female Piety and Patronage in the Medieval Hajj," in Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998); The Pate Chronicle (Michigan State University Press, 1993); "The Muslim Women in Soviet Central Asia" (Central Asian Survey, 1993); and "Ibn Battuta on Women's Travel in the Dar al-Islam" (Women and the Journey, Washington State University Press, 1993).

Ian Wendt

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 2005
Assistant Professor of History
Office: Wilson-Short Hall 320
Phone: 509-335-5383
E-mail: iwendt@wsu.edu

Wendt’s research and teaching focus on the regions of South and Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, as well as the Islamic World in Asia. His current research examines the social and economic history of textile production and trade in early modern South India. This project addresses the themes of industry and capitalism in the world economy, caste and community, historical geography, and social ecology.

Thomas L. Kennedy

Emeritus Professor of History
E-mail: kennedyt@wsu.edu

Kennedy recently has published an adapted translation of the memoirs of Ms. Zeng Baosun entitled Confucian Feminist: The Memoirs of Zeng Baosun (1893–1978) from the American Philosophical Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He presented a paper on Ms. Zeng's life and philosophy at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast conference of the Association for Asian Studies at Western Washington University in June 2002. Currently he is working on an annotated translation of Zhou Daguan's "A Record of the Customs of Cambodia," written in 1293 and submitted to the Court of Khubilai Khan by China's first ambassador to the Khmer kingdom, in cooperation with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Alice M. Spitzer

M.L.S., University of Washington, 1970
Emeritus Professor, WSU Libraries
E-mail: baarslag@wsu.edu

Spitzer has been a reference librarian, library liaison to the Asia Program, and professor of world civilizations. She has worked as a library consultant in Ethiopia, Honduras, Indonesia, Lesotho, Sudan, Romania, and Russia, and was a Fulbright Scholar in El Salvador. She served as the Asia Program's interim director in 1994–95. In 2003 she was awarded the Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award for Public Service.