Asian History


Program Description

The Department of History offers graduate programs in East Asian and Southeast Asian history. At the M.A. level, Oregon 's Asianists collectively cultivate a broad-gauged program in Asian history supported by courses in Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian, and trans-Asian history. At the Ph.D. level, the department offers degree programs in Chinese and Japanese history. Oregon 's historians of China focus on the late imperial and modern eras, with a special emphasis on popular culture, Confucian social ethics, print culture, gender, and modern urban society. Its historians of Japan focus on the premodern and modern eras, with particular emphasis on the history of ideas, medicine, media culture, political economy, and urban society and culture.

Recent Graduate-Level Courses in Asian History

Core Faculty in Asian History

ASIM, Ina. Associate Professor (Ph.D., 1992, Würzburg University), specializes in premodern Chinese history, archaeology, material culture, and gender-related questions. Author of Religious Land Contracts from the Song Dynasty (1993); "Status Symbol and Insurance Policy: Song Land Deeds for the Afterlife" in Dieter Kuhn, ed., Burial in Song China (1994); Wife, Good Mother - or Revolutionary: Women and Women's Education in Expectations and Biographies of a Chinese Reformer of the Early 20th Century (2002) ; Colorful Lanterns of Shangyan (2005); Infinite Worlds: Chinese Gardens as Scholarly Icon (forthcoming); Idle Talks with Guests: Urban Life in the Late Ming Nanjing (forthcoming); and From Protocol to Fashion: The Decline of Sartorial Regulations in the Ming, 1368-1644 (forthcoming). inaasim@uoregon.edu

GOBLE, Andrew. Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies (Ph.D., 1987, Stanford), specializes in medieval and premodern Japan . Current research focuses on the social history of medicine ("Medicine and New Knowledge in Medieval Japan: Kajiwara Shozen [1266-1337] and the Man'anpo," forthcoming in the Japanese Journal of Medical History ) , and the development of Japanese wound medicine. Author of Kenmu: Go-Daigo's Revolution (1996) and numerous articles, including "Visions of an Emperor" in J. Mass ed., The Origins of Japan's Medieval World (1997); "Social Change, Knowledge, and History: Emperor Hanazono's Admonitions to the Crown Prince," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (1995); and "Truth, Contradiction, and Harmony in Medieval Japan: Emperor Hanazono (1297-1348) and Buddhism," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 12 (1989).. Organizer of the international, bilingual conference (supported by the Japan Foundation and the University of Oregon ) "Tools of Culture: Japan 's Technological, Medical and Intellectual Contacts in East Asia, 1100-1600," held at the University of Oregon in 1997. platypus@uoregon.edu

GOODMAN, Bryna. Professor (Ph.D., 1990, Stanford), specializes in Modern China. Her current research, supported by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies/Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Stanford Humanities Center , and the National Endowment for the Humanities, is on public culture in early Republican China. Author of Native Place , City, and Nation: Regional Networks and Identities in Shanghai, 1853-1937 (1995); co-editor of Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (2005); guest editor of Networks of News: Power, Language and Transnational Dimensions of the Chinese Press, 1850-1949, China Review (2004). Recent articles include, “What is in a Network? Local, Personal, and Public Loyalties in the Context of Changing Conceptions of the State and Social Welfare,” in At the Crossroads of Empires: Middlemen, Social Networks and Statebuilding in Republican Shanghai (2007); “Appealing to the Public: Newspaper Presentation and Adjudication of Emotion,” Twentieth-Century China (2006); “The New Woman Commits Suicide: The Press, Cultural Memory and the New Republic,” Journal of Asian Studies (2005); “Unvirtuous Exchanges: Women and the Corruptions of the Stock Market in Early Republican China,” in Women in China: The Republican Period in Historical Perspective (2005); “Semi-Colonialism, Transnational Ties, and Press Culture in Early Republican China” China Review, (2004); "Improvisations on a Semi-Colonial Theme, or, How to read a Celebration of Transnational Urban Community," Journal of Asian Studies (2000) and "Being Public: The Politics of Representation in 1918 Shanghai," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (2000). bgoodman@uoregon.edu

HANES, Jeffrey. Associate Professor (Ph.D., 1988, UC Berkeley), specializes in Modern Japan. Current research interests include popular culture, material culture, and urban society and culture. He is currently working on a book entitled Capital of Water, Capital of Smoke on the production of urban space in the city of Osaka . Recent publications include The City as Subject: Seki Hajime and the Reinvention of Modern Osaka (2002; Japanese translation 2007); co-edited with Yamaji Hidetoshi, Image and Identity: Rethinking Japanese Cultural History (2004); “Osaka versus Tokyo: The Cultural Politics of Local Identity in Modern Japan,” in Image and Modernity (2004); "Media Culture in Taisho Osaka" in Sharon Minichiello, ed., Japan 's Competing Modernities: Issues in Culture and Democracy, 1900-1930 (1998); and "Urban Planning as an Urban Problem: The Reconstruction of Tokyo after the Great Kanto Earthquake" Seisaku Kagaku (2000). hanes@uoregon.edu

MAY, Glenn. Professor (Ph.D., 1975, Yale), teaches primarily about modern Southeast Asia and U.S.-Asian relations. His research focuses on the history of the Philippines , with research interests in social history, historical demography, popular uprisings, health/ill health, indigenous crafts (especially basketry), foreign relations, and historiography. His current project is the evolution of Philippine basketry, 1550-present. Author of Social Engineering in the Philippines: The Aims, Execution, and Impact of American Colonial Policy, 1900-1913 (1980); A Past Recovered: Essays on Philippine History and Historiography (1987); Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War (1991); Inventing a Hero: The Posthumous Re-Creation of Andres Bonifacio (1996); and Sa Akala Ko: Further Essays on Philippine History and Historiography (forthcoming). Senior fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies (Amsterdam and Leiden, 1997 and 2004). gmay@uoregon.edu

Contributing Faculty in Asian History

The University of Oregon enjoys an established reputation for excellence in Asian Studies. Some seventy faculty members are affiliated with the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies , including specialists in anthropology, architecture, art history, business, creative arts, film, international studies, law, linguistics, literature, planning, political science, and sociology, among others. In recent years, the Center has held institutional grants from the Asia Society, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the Freeman Foundation, the Jeremiah Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities, USIA, and other prestigious sources. The University Library's East Asian Collection contains approximately 85,000 volumes of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean materials.