Who's Who

New Asian Studies Faculty Appointed

The Asian Studies Center (ASN) at Michigan State University has played an important facilitative role in the hiring of four new tenure-track Asia scholars by the university. ANS's support for these positions was made possible through the center's Title VI allotment from U.S. Department of Education as a result of being named an All-Asia National Resource Center for the current three-year cycle. The four new tenure-track faculty members, who arrived for the fall 2001 semester, are housed in the Department of Anthropology (College of Social Science), the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages (College of Arts and Letters), and James Madison College.

• John H. Davis, Jr. received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University in January 2002. A Japan specialist, his dissertation was titled "Challenging the State, Embracing the Nation: The Cultural Politics of Human Rights in Japanese Society." He joins the Department of Anthropology, where he teaches Japan: Society and Culture; Human Rights: Anthropological Perspectives; Psychological Anthropology; and Social and Cultural Analysis.
• Elizabeth F. Drexler received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Washington in 2001. An Indonesia specialist, her research focuses on issues related to human rights and state violence. Her dissertation was titled "Paranoid Transparencies: Aceh's Historical Grievance and Indonesia's Failed Reform." She joins the Department of Anthropology, were she teaches Race, Ethnicity, and the Nation-State; Globalization and Justice; and Anthropological Methods.
• Bryan K. Ritchie received his Ph.D. in political science from Emory University. A Southeast Asia specialist, his dissertation was titled "The Political Economy of Technical Intellectual Capital Formation in Southeast Asia." He joins the faculty of James Madison College, where he teaches courses on the political economy of Southeast Asia, the political economy of technological development, and the politics of international economic relations.
• Catherine Ryu received her Ph.D. in Japanese language and literature from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation, completed in 1999, was titled "Configuring Female Authorship in Japanese Cultural History: The Case of Ono no Komachi." Her research interests are in the field of gender studies and women's literature, especially Japanese Heian narratives. She teaches courses in Japanese language for her home department, the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages, and also teaches Japanese literature courses for the Asian Studies program.