UMass Amherst Faculty Who Teach Certificate Courses
THERESA Y. AUSTIN
Prof. Austin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Studies and Curriculum Development in the School of Education. She received her B.A. in 1976, M.A. in 1980, and Ph.D. in 1991, all from the University of California at Los Angeles. Her professional interests include Bilingualism Through Second and Foreign Language Education; Sociocultural Issues in Second Language Learning; Language and Literacy Policy and Planning; Cross-Cultural Pragmatics; Technology-Assisted Language Learning; Foreign Language Teacher Education; ESL/Bilingual Testing and Evaluation. She can be reached at taustin@educ.umass.edu and a copy of her vita is here (388k PDF).
NERISSA BALCE
Nerissa Balce joined the Comparative Literature department at UMass Amherst as an Assistant Professor in the Spring of 2005. She received her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California-Berkeley . Her recent publications include a co-edited essay on radical Filipino community politics after 9/11 in Peace Review: A Journal on Social Justice with Robyn Rodriguez (June 2004) and an essay on lynching and imperialism in the forthcoming anthology, Positively No Filipinos Allowed: Mapping Filipino American Formations (Temple University Press, forthcoming). She will be offering a graduate seminar on American Orientalism, visual culture and 1898 in the spring semester, and an undergraduate course, “Fiction East and West.”
DORIS G. BARGEN
Prof. Bargen is an Associate Professor of Japanese. She receive her Ph.D. at Tubingen Universitv (Germany) in 1978. Her areas of research are Classical Japanese Literature, Japanese Women writers, Japanese Film, and Japanese Theater. Her teaching responsibilities include Classical & Medieval Japanese Literature, Modern Japanese Literature, Women in Japanese Literature & Film and Classical Japanese. She can be reached at dgbargen@amherst.edu.
E. BRUCE BROOKS
Prof. Brooks is research Professor of Chinese. He received his Ph.D. in Chinese Language and Literature from the University of Washington, 1968. His areas of research include Warring States Text Chronology, Chinese Prosody, Chinese Grammar and Warring States History and Society. His teaching responsibilities are Warring States Texts. He can be reached at brooks@asianlan.umass.edu.
PAULA CHAKRAVARTTY
Paula Chakravartty is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communications. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her teaching responsibilities include Global Communications, Political Economy, Postcolonial Theory and New Media and Social Movements. Her current research focuses on the politics of high-tech development in India and its relationship to the transformation of America's new economy. She focuses on the politics of globalized high-tech work in the form of both high-skilled migration to the U.S. and offshore development in India's burgeoning high-tech cities and regions. In this project she explores forms of power and opposition based on class, caste, gender and race that make up the globalized politics of high skilled labor in a neo-liberal information economy. She is also interested in struggles over access and content in the new media arenas that have most impact for low-income communities including new web-based communications and radio. She can be reached at pchakrav@comm.umass.edu or 413-545-6346.
BRIANKLE CHANG
Briankle Chang is an Associate Professor in Communication and his research interests include cultural studies, media criticism, and the philosophy of communication. He can be contacted in Machmer Hall 310 and at 545-3742 or bchang@comm.umass.edu.
ANNE CIECKO
Anne Ciecko is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and a participating faculty member in the Interdepartmental Film Program. Prof. Ciecko has taught the "Bridging Asia & Asia America" colloquium required for certificate students, as well as designed and taught a new course on Asian Pacific American Cinema (Comm 397S). She regularly teaches courses on popular Asian cinema, contemporary world cinema (Comm 397T, every spring), intercultural cinema, international film stars, and women filmmakers. She has also organized and curated annual Asian and Asian American film festivals and symposia at UMASS, and is the faculty coordinator for the popular one-credit Multicultural Film Festival course (Comm 296F), offered every spring. Her research on international cinema, including Asian and Asian diaspora cinemas, has appeared in many scholarly journals and anthologies. Her areas of research are Global cinema, gender studies and critical cultural studies. Her current and ongoing research projects focus on the international film star; diasporic film cultures, especially global reception of popular Indian films (Bollywood); transcultural film, video, and multimedia installations by women. She can be reached at ciecko@comm.umass.edu and 413-545-6348.
RICHARD CHU
Prof. Chu previously taught at the University of San Francisco and was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in December of 2003. Prof. Chu studies the history of ethnic identity in the Philippines, where indigenous pepoles and immigrants from China and the Pacific have negotiated identity -- and power relations -- under a series of empires (Muslim, British, Spanish, American, and Japanese) over centuries. He regularly teaches History 197, "Empire, Race, & the Philippines" here at UMass this fall and other courses on the Philippines and Pacific empires.
NILANJANA DASGUPTA
Assistant Professor Dasgupta's work in the Psychology Department focuses on the interface of nonconscious social cognition and intergroup relations. She studies how the culture in which people live shapes their mind and affects their overt and covert social behavior toward disadvantaged and advantaged groups. She is located in Tobin Hall 635 and can be contacted at 545-0049 or dasgupta@psych.umass.edu.
JANE DEGENHARDT
Jane Degenhardt is an Assistant Professor in English and is also a Five Colleges Fellow. Her research and teaching interests include Shakespeare, non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama, gender and race studies, Asian American literature, and African American literature. Professor Degenhardt is particularly interested in conversions of identity (religious, cultural, and racial) on the Renaissance stage, and in how English contact with the East and the religion of Islam created anxieties about identity that were played out on the stage. She is also interested in how popular Renaissance plays reworked older medieval conventions in order to imagine new threats of foreign difference. She is currently at work on a book entitled The Failure of Faith: Islamic Conversion on the Early Modern Stage and the Embodiment of Religious Identity. She is located in Bartlett Hall 459 and can be contacted at 545-5511 or janed@english.umass.edu.
STEPHEN M. FORREST
Stephen M. Forrest is a Visiting Instructor in Japanese. He received his Ph.D. (ABD) at Harvard University in Japanese Literature. His areas of research include Classical Japanese poetry collections and poetry theory, Japanese poetry abroad, Literature of travel in Pre-modern Japan, publishing, and bibliography in Japan and Manuscript texts. His teaching responsibilities include Introduction to Classical Japanese I (J556H), Manuscript Japanese (J597A), Pre-Modern and Modern Japanese Literature (in translation) (J 144/ComLit 152), Research in Japanese Sources (J570H) and Elementary Research in Japanese Studies (J297A). He can be reached at sforrest~u;asianlan.umass.edu.
LAUREL E. FOSTER-MOORE
Laurel E. Foster-Moore is the Study Abroad Coordinator/Asia, International Programs Office. She can be reached at fostermo@ipo.umass.edu.
PIPER GAUBATZ
Prof. Gaubatz is an Associate Professor in the Geoscience Department. Her research include Urban Studies, China, Japan, and the U.S. She received her B.A, at Princeton, 1984: M.A.. California at Berkeley, 1986: Ph.D. 1989, Prof. Gaubatz is an urban geographer with a background in sociology, architecture and Chinese studies. She also directs the campus-wide Asian Area Studies program. Within the field of urban geography, her research specialization is urban morphology - the analysis of urban form. Her current research projects include The New Chinese City. Urban Restructuring in Contemporary Japan, People and Environment on the Northern Chinese Frontiers. She can be reached at gaubatz@geo.umass.edu.
DONALD E. GJERTSON
Prof. Gjertson is Chair and Professor of Chinese, he received his Ph.D. in Chinese from Stanford University, 1975. His areas of research are Chinese literature, Early Chinese Buddhism, and Chinese Fiction. His teaching responsibilities consist of Chinese Literature Tale, Short Story, Novel, Problems and Methods in Translation, Pre-Modern Vernacular Literature, and Chinese Literature: Poetry. He can be reached at dgjertson@asianlan.umass.edu.
JAMES A. HAFNER
Prof. Hafner is Professor in the Geoscience Department. His research includes Political Ecology of Development, Resource Management and Migration and Southeast Asia in Global Context. He obtained his B.A. degree from Miami University (Ohio) and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Michigan. He has held numerous administrative and service positions within the Department and University, currently serving as Chair of the Asian Studies Program and as a member of the Five College Asian Pacific American Committee. Many of his teaching and research interests have focused on processes of rural social and economic change in the context of the development process. He is currently completing work on a study of the political ecology of forest use and access in Thailand while working on a review of long-term population-land use dynamics in the northeast region of that country. His teaching responsibilities are GEO 102: The Human Landscape, GEO 332: Southeast Asia, GEO 364: Development, GEO 531: Population and Environment, GEO 591: Global Ecology and Development, GEO 631: Social Movements and the Environment and GEO 689: Research Methods. He can be reached at hafner@geo.umass.edu.
HAIVAN HOANG
Hiavan Hoang is an Assistant Professor in English and she received her Bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley, her Master's from Cal State Hayward, and her Ph.D. from Ohio State. Her research and teaching interests are in rhetoric and composition. Her office is in Bartlett Hall 267 and she can be contacted at 545-2972 and hhoang@english.umass.edu.
SANGEETA KAMAT
Prof. Kamat is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Research and Administration. She received her B.A. at Sophia College, Bombay, India, 1985; M.A.; The Tata Institute of Social Science, Bombay, India, 1988; Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1998. Her professional interests include globalization and education; critical theory; gender analysis and South Asia. She can be reached at skamat@educ.umass.edu.
MILIANN KANG
Prof. Kang is an Assistant Professor of the Women's Studies Department. She received her B.A. magna cum laude in Social Studies at Harvard University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology at New York University, 2001. She arrived at UMass in the fall of 2003 and teaches in the Women's Studies program and is affiliated with the Sociology Department. Her research is on Asian immigrant women's work in the service economy, focusing on Korean women in the nail salon industry. Her other areas of interest are the social construction of race, gender and class, Asian American activism, second generation families, and ethnography. She also teaches a course on "Asian American Women: Gender, Race and Immigration," which she hopes to offer each year. She can be reached at mkang@wost.umass.edu or 413-577-0710.
C.N. LE
Prof. Le completed his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University at Albany SUNY in 2004 and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department. He is also the Chair of the UMass Amherst Asian American Studies program. His primary research involves demographic analyses and comparisons of assimilation outcomes (socioeconomic, marital, residential, and entrepreneurial) among different Asian American ethic groups, with a particular focus on Vietnamese Americans. His general research interests include race and ethnicity, immigration and ethnic communities, Asian American studies, and social demography. He teaches the "Sociology of the Asian American Experience" and "Bridging Asian and Asian America Colloquium" courses every year. He can be reached at and 413-545-4074.
SHAODAN LUO
Prof. Luo is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Chinese. Has received his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, 2002. His teaching responsibilities include Chinese 326, Chinese 426 and Chinese 526. He can be reached at shaodan@asianlan.umass.edu.
STEPHEN MILLER
Prof. Miller is an Assistant Professor of Japanese and is the current Graduate Program Director of Japanese. Has received his Ph.D. in Japanese Language and Literature from the University of California Los Angeles in 1993. He can be reached at smiller@asianlan.umass.edu.
RICHARD H. MINEAR
Prof. Minear is Professor and Associate Chair in Department of History. He received his Ph.D., at Harvard, 1968. His field of interest is Japan. Professor Minear is the author of Japanese Tradition and Western Law (1970) and Victors' Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (1971), and the editor of Through Japanese Eyes (1974; 4th edition 1994), and Dr. Seuss Goes to War (1999). He is translator of the Japanese battle epic Requiem for Battleship Yamato (University of Washington Press, 1985), Hiroshima: Three Witnesses (Princeton, 1990), Black Eggs (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1994), and Ienaga Saburo, Japan's Past, Japan's Future: One Historian's Odyssey (2001). He can be reached at rhminear@history.umass.edu.
SUZANNE MODEL
Suzanne Model is a Professor at the Department of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, 1985. Her research interests are Immigrants' Economic Well-Being, Cross-National Comparisons, Ethnic Economy Jobs, Female Labor Participation and Intermarriage. Her teaching responsibilities include Soc 106: Race, Gender, Class and Ethnicity, Soc 224 & 724: Social Class Inequality, Soc 244: Sociology of Immigration, Soc 301: Writing in Sociology and Soc 332: Social Change in China. She can be reached at model@sadri.umass.edu and 413-545-5975.
ASHA NADKARNI
Asha Nadkarni is a new Assistant Professor in the English Department, having recently received her Ph.D. from Brown University. Her research and teaching interests include postcolonial literature and theory, transnational feminism, theories of development, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature (canonical and ethnic), and literatures and cultures of the South Asian diaspora. She is located at Bartlett Hall 491 and can be contacted at 545-5523 or nadkarni@english.umass.edu.
HOANG G. PHAN
Prof. Phan is a new Assistant Professor in English and he received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. His fields of research include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature, African American literature, Asian American Literature, Marxism, Postcolonial Theory, and Legal-Literary Studies. He is located in Bartlett Hall 291 and can be contacted at 545-2979 or hgphan@english.umass.edu.
STEPHEN PLATT
Professor Platt is an Assistant Professor in the History department. His research interests include modern China and nationalism.
SRIRUPA ROY
Prof. Roy is the Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department. She received her Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania. Her teaching responsibilities include Nationalism and Ethnicity, South Asian Studies and Cultural Politics. Her recent publications are "Instituting Diversity: Official Nationalism in Post-Independence India" (1999); "Nation and Institution: Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of Indian Independence" (2001); "Moving Pictures: Audiovisual Representations of Nation and State" (2002); "Nuclear Frames; Science, Society, and the Bomb in South Asia" (2003). She can be reached at srirupa@polsci.umass.edu.
DAVID K. SCHNEIDER
Prof. Schneider is a new Assistant Professor in the Asian Studies program, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. He received his Ph.D. in Chinese Language and Literature from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005 and his Masters of International Affairs from the Columbia University School of International Affairs in 1987. His research primarily focuses on Late Medieval Chinese poetry and prose. His email is dkschneider@asianlan.umass.edu.
AMANDA C. SEAMAN
Amanda C. Seaman is Assistant Professor of Japanese and the Graduate Program Director of the Japanese MA Program. She received her Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from the University of Chicago, 2001. Her areas of research are Contemporary Japanese Literature and Culture, Japanese
Women Writers and Gender and Popular Culture. Her teaching responsibilities for 2003-2004 include Japanese 144: Pre-modern and Modern Literature in translation, Japanese 297: Elementary Research in Japanese, Japanese 497B and 497D: 3rd year Contemporary Japanese 497C: readings in Modern Japanese II and Japanese 560H (Seminar in Literature): Pure/Pop. She can be reached at acseaman@asianlan.umass.edu.
SIGRID SCHMALZER
Prof. Schmalzer is an Assistant Professor in the History department. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2004 and her fields of interest include modern Chinese history, history of science, and history of popular culture. Professor Schmalzer has published two articles on the interactions between scientific and local forms of knowledge in rural Chinese communities, entitled "Breeding a Better China: Pigs, Practices, and Place in a Chinese County, 1929-1937" (2002) and "Fishing and Fishers in Penghu, Taiwan, 1895-1970" (2002). Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, and the Social Science Research Council.
ZHONGWEI SHEN
Prof. Shen is an Associate Professor of Chinese. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, 1993. His areas of research are Chinese Linguistics, Dialectology, Chinese Writing System, and Phonology. His teaching responsibilities include Introduction to Chinese Linguistics, History of the Chinese Language, Chinese Dialectology and Chinese Language. He can be reached at zwshen@asianlan.umass.edu.
REIKO SONO
Reiko Sono is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Japanese. She received her Ph.D. (ABD) at Princeton University in Japanese Religion. Her areas of research are Japanese religions, the culture of gift giving, and Pre-modern Japanese History. Her teaching responsibilities are Death in Japanese Culture (J391) and Advanced Modern Japanese (J536 & J537). She can be reached at rsono@asianlan.umass.edu.
STAN STEVENS
Prof. Stevens is Associate Professor in the Geoscience Department. His research includes Cultural Ecology, Political Ecology, Environmental History, Indigenous Peoples and Conservation and Conservation Issues. He received his B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, 1983; M.A., 1986; Ph.D., 1989. Stan Stevens is a cultural geographer whose work focuses on the study of indigenous knowledge, land use, current conservation issues, and environmental history. Stevens' current projects include continuing fieldwork in the Mount Everest region, and in-progress books on the cultural and political ecology of middle and high-altitude Sherpa groups in the Mount Everest region and on tourism and change in the Mount Everest region. His teaching responsibilities include GEO 420: Human Impact on the Natural Environment, GEO 49213: Conservation, Land Use, and Indigenous Knowledge, GEO 497: Indigenous Peoples and Conservation, GEO 250: Global Environmental Issues, GEO 697E: Seminar: Political Ecology/Environmental History, GEO 697C: Seminar: Cultural Ecology, GEO 692A: Seminar: Conservation and Indigenous Peoples, GEO 697 Pro-Seminar: National Parks and Protected Areas. He can be reached at sstevens@geo.umass.edu.
DIANA YOON
Diana Yoon is one of the newest members of our program and is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Legal Studies department. She has conducted research in the areas of human rights, political activism and rights discourses around questions of race and gender, and the relationship between U.S. military policies and citizenship practices. Her teaching and research interests are broadly concerned with examining citizenship, immigration, and legal formations of U.S. imperialism through interdisciplinary sociolegal perspectives.
ENHUA ZHANG
Prof. Xhang is starting as a new Assistant Professor in the Asian Studies program, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Her expertise is in modern Chinese literature, Chinese cinema and popular culture, Ming and Qing literature, and 'critical theory on space and the uncanny.' You can learn more about what that means by emailing her at ezhang@llc.umass.edu. She is completing her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University.
