ANTHROPOLOGY

Stevan Harrell
Professor of Anthropology
University of Washington
Stevan Harrell is a professor in the department of Anthropology and the curator of Asian Ethnology at the Burke Museum, University of Washington. He received his Ph.D from Standford in 1974. His dissertation dealt with social organization and social change in a village in Taipei County, Sanhsia, Taiwan. Now he is interested in the politics of translation between Chinese- and English- language anthropology, in collaborative research and collaborative field narratives, in a holistic study of the environment and society around Yangjuan Primary School in Southwest China, and in the reconstruction of fertility in historical populations from genealogical records. He served as a keynote speaker of NATSA 2006 annual conference and received a high opinion from the audience. For more information please go to http://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/

HISTORY

Prasenjit Duara
Professor of History and East Asian Languages & Civilizations
University of Chicago
Professor Prasenjit Duara (杜贊奇) is a professor in both the History and the East Asian Languages and Civilizations Departments at the University of Chicago. He is the author of "Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942," which won the 1989 American Historical Association's John K. Fairbank Prize and the 1990 Association for Asian Studies' Joseph R. Levenson Prize. He is also the author of "Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China" (1995). His most recent book is "Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern" (2003). Both books are concerned with the comparative understanding of nationalism. While the former deals mainly with nationalism and the emergence of modern historical consciousness in China, the latter seeks to understand the changing relationship between imperialism and nationalism in twentieth century East Asia through the study of Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in the Chinese northeast (1932-1945). Some of his work has been translated into Chinese and Japanese.

Professor Duara has also contributed to volumes on historiography and historical thoughts. He has published several articles on postcolonial theory, nationalism and national history. Recently, he has edited a reader of Decolonization. As an internationally-renowned scholar, Professor Duara has also visited Taiwan several times.

Mi-cha Wu 吳密察
Professor of History
National Taiwan University, Department of History
Professor Wu is a renowned expert specializing in Taiwanese History and Japanese History. He is currently a Professor in the Department of History of National Taiwan University and was the Vice Director of the Council for Cultural Affairs at the Executive Yuan.

吳密察 教授 Mi-cha Wu
國立臺灣大學歷史學系教授
http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~history/3_teachers/31_prof/wumc.htm

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Jeff Hou
Associate Professor, MLA Coordinator, Landscape Architecture
University of Washington
Jeff Hou has taught in the department of University of Washington since 2001. Prof. Hou’s research, teaching, and practice focus on engaging marginalized communities and social groups through community design, design activism, and cross-cultural learning. His work also addresses social/ecological hybridity in the urban landscapes.

In a career that spans across the Pacific, he has worked with indigenous tribes, farmers, and fishers in Taiwan, neighborhood residents in Japan, and inner-city immigrant youths and elders in American cities, in projects ranging from conservation of wildlife habitats to rebuilding of indigenous villages and design of urban open space and streetscapes. His research on innovative practices of community participation and design education has been published in Journal of Planning Education and Research, Landscape Journal, Journal of Architectural Education, and Open House International. He is a co-author of Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Urban Community Gardens in Seattle (with Julie Johnson and Laura Lawson) (UW Press 2009). He is also a contributor to Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism (Bell and Wakeford, eds. 2008).

Prof. Hou has a multidisciplinary background in architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and public art. He received his PhD in Environmental Planning and Master of Architecture from University of California, Berkeley. He also has a Master of Landscape Architecture from University of Pennsylvania and Bachelor of Architecture from the Cooper Union.

LAW

Jerome A. Cohen
Professor of Law
Co-Director and Founder of U.S.-Asia Law Institute
New York University, School of Law
Professor Jerome Cohen is the senior American expert on East Asian law. As Director of East Asian Legal Studies at Harvard Law School from 1964-1979, he helped pioneer the introduction of East Asian legal systems and perspectives into American legal curricula.

Each year, Professor Cohen teaches a course on Chinese law and society. In some years he offers a third course on comparative international law, analyzing how countries with a Confucian tradition relate to the international laws and traditions of the "Christian West." In another course, he explores international business contracts and economic cooperation with East Asia.

In addition to these formal courses, Professor Cohen coordinates a Chinese language colloquium that attracts key figures in Chinese law and hosts a weekly Asia Hour for students, featuring informal (and frequently autobiographical) talks by prominent diplomatic and government officials, leading academics, and other influential practitioners in the East Asian legal area.

Tay-sheng Wang 王泰升
Professor of Law
Vice Dean of Law College of National Taiwan University
National Taiwan University, Law College
Professor Wang is a distinguished scholar known for his pioneering research on the Taiwanese legal history. He is currently the Vice Dean of Law College of National Taiwan University (NTU) and the Director of Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Legal Studies.

王泰升 教授 Tay-sheng Wang
專任教授兼法律學院副院長科際整合法律學研究所所長
法律與社會研究中心主任
http://www.law.ntu.edu.tw/03/professor/Tay_sheng_Wang.htm

LITERATURE

Patricia Sieber
Associate Professor
Department of East Asian Language and Literature at Ohio State University
Patricia Sieber is an Associate Professor at the Department of East Asian Language and Literature at Ohio State University. Below is a short description of her work. Dr. Sieber is active in bringing issues relating to Taiwan into the Ohio State/Columbus community: e.g. she invited literary critique Kuei-fen Chiu and the Taiwan representative to the U.S., Jaushieh Joseph Wus, to speak at OSU; and also put on continuous events such as documentary film series "Windows on Taiwan" to engage professors and students in Taiwanese issues.

She is the author of *Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300-2000,* a cross-cultural history of the construction and reception of "Yuan zaju." Her current research project, *The Power of Imprints: Qing-Period Publishing and the Formation of European Sinology, 1720-1860* examines the role that books acquisitions by Europeans in China played in the formation of the literary canon of Chinese belles-lettres in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. Her research has been awarded funding from the NEH, ACLS, DAAD and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation among others.She currently serves as the director of OSU's East Asian Studies Center as well as the Institute for Chinese Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Chinese literature from University of California, Berkeley.

David Der-Wei Wang 王德威
Professor
Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University
Professor Wang is a Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. His specialties are Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature, Late Qing fiction and drama, and Comparative Literary Theory. Wang received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and he has taught at National Taiwan University and Columbia University.

Wang is an active contributor to the literary communities in America and Taiwan. He is the Chinese translator of Michel Foucault's The Archeology of Knowledge (1993), and has been the chief editor of Taiwan's Ryefield'sHumanitiesSeries (麥田人文系列) that consistently publishes important works of intellectuals in Taiwan and abroad.

Some samples of his publication include Fictional Realism in 20th Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen (1992), Fin-de-siecle Splendor: Repressed Mondernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911 (1997), and The Making of the Modern; the Making of A Literature (1997). He is also the editor of Representing Taiwan (2006), and Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule (2007). Wang is currently working on a book concerning Chinese Artists and Intellectuals in the mid-20th Century Crisis.

SOCIOLOGY

Wei-shin Yu
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology at University of Texas, Austin
Wei-shin Yu is currently an assistant professor in sociology department at University of Texas, Austin. She gets her Ph.D degree from the University of Chicago. Wei-hsin Yu's research interests include gender inequality, labor markets, and social change in East Asian societies. Her recent work compares changes in women's employment behavior over the life course in Japan and Taiwan. She also studies how macroeconomic changes shape individuals' well-being in China and Japan.

Her new book- Gendered Trajectories- explores why industrial societies vary in the pace at which they reduce gender inequality and compares changes in women's employment opportunities in Japan and Taiwan over the last half-century. Japan has undergone much less improvement in women's economic status than Taiwan, despite its more advanced economy and greater welfare provisions. Drawing on historical trends, survey statistics, and personal interviews with people in both countries, Yu shows how country-specific organizational arrangements and industrial policies affect women's employment. In particular, the conditions faced by Japanese and Taiwanese women in the workplace have a profound effect on their labor force participation at critical points in their lives. Women's lifetime employment decisions in turn shape the divergent trajectories in gender equality. This perceptive work demonstrates and underscores the importance of understanding gender inequality as a long-term, dynamic social process.