Jonathan Lipman

Professor, Mt. Holyoke College

Office: Skinner Hall, Room 208
Telephone: (413) 538-2368
E-mail: jlipman@mtholyoke.edu

Degree: Ph.D., Stanford University (1981)
Field(s) of interest: China, modern Japan, ethnicity and nationalism, global history.

Graduate Courses Offered:
Global History (Not Online)

Research Interests and Professional Activities:
He can discuss Islamic mysticism; read texts in Hebrew, Korean, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese (not to mention German and French); explain U.S.–Chinese relations; detail the history of women in Japan; and recommend the best Chinese dishes (resembling food served in China, that is, not the American-style knockoffs he describes as "gloppy brown sauce" and "bright red sweet-and-sour goo"). In fact, it's hard to find an area of Asian history or culture that Jonathan Lipman can't cover.

Author of Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998) and coauthor of Imperial Japan: Expansion and War, A Humanities Approach to Japanese History, Part III (Boulder: Social Science Education Consortium, 1995), Lipman has also edited two volumes on China and published dozens of articles, book chapters, papers, and reviews on a wide range of subjects.

The range of his courses and lectures is equally impressive, covering vast geography and time periods, from Islam and Muslims in China to World War II in the Pacific. Whatever the course, he delivers brilliant lectures that challenge students' cultural preconceptions and spread his delight in the discipline of history itself.

A regular lecturer nationally and internationally and winner of numerous grants, including a major grant for faculty development in East Asian studies at the Five Colleges (Mount Holyoke, Smith, Hampshire, and Amherst Colleges and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst), Lipman is a dedicated leader in understanding and teaching Asian culture and history.