Thomas H. Rohlich, Smith College, 2007-2008 Resident Director
A Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Thomas Rohlich teaches
courses on Japanese literature, primarily premodern literature, as well
as Japanese language courses at various levels at Smith College. The literature
courses include the survey course on traditional Japanese literature,
a course on the Japanese poetic tradition, and a seminar course on The
Tale of Genji. His research focuses primarily on literature of the Heian
period (794-1184), both the monogatari prose tradition and the waka poetic
tradition. This is his third tenure as the AKP Resident Director
Kathryn Sparling, Carleton College
Kathryn Sparling received her BA in French literature from Stanford, masters in modern Japanese literature from Ochanomizu University, and PhD in Japanese literature from Harvard. Her research has focused on Natsume Soseki, Mishima Yukio, Oe Kenzaburo, Shimao Toshio, and Kono Taeko. She has taught at Columbia University and the University of Michigan and has now been teaching Japanese language and literature at Carleton College for twenty-four years. She has served as Visiting Faculty Fellow at AKP three times and as Resident Director once. Each time, it has been a completely new adventure.
Shinko Kagaya, Williams College
Shinko Kagaya is Associate Professor of Japanese at Williams College. Having grown up in Japan, she did her graduate work in the U.S.A., and received her Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the Ohio State University. At Williams, she teaches Japanese Language and Literature. Her current research focuses on Japanese Performance Literature, with emphasis on the traditional theatres and their place in the contemporary world. She also engages in training in kyogen, nô, and kotsuzumi (shoulder drum) under master teachers in the Kyoto area.
David Boggett, Seika University
David is a professor of the Humanities Faculty of Kyoto Seika University, where he has been teaching for the past 30 years. He earned his BA and MA in History at Cambridge University, where he was also the first elected President of the Cambridge Students’ Union. He originally came to Asia as a representative of the University to investigate South Korean human rights abuses involving Korean students at Cambridge, and has been here ever since! David first worked as a journalist and editor of a small magazine before being invited to Seika University to teach contemporary Asian history, and has made his “home” in Chiangrai, North Thailand. He has contributed articles to various English and Japanese language journals and magazines, chiefly about South Korea and Thailand, and jointly authored a Japanese book on the Pol Pot administration in Cambodia. His research interests are Thai-Japanese relations during World War II, and he has published a long series of articles on the Thai-Burma Railway in the Journal of Seika University. Largely self-taught in Asian history, David has been leading courses on the history of Kyoto for over ten years, not only at Seika, but also at other overseas student programmes, including those of Friends World College and Antioch University, in addition to AKP. He is an avid collector of old (pre-war) postcards of Japan and its colonies, and is presently cooperating with the South Korean MBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation) in producing a documentary on human rights abuses under the Park Chung-hee administration.
Joel Upton, Amherst College
Professor of Fine Arts; graduated from Rutgers University in January, 1963 with a major in
American Civilization; officer in the USAF, 1963-1965, assigned to AirCent Headquarters in
Fontainebleau, France; studied at the Goethe Institute in Berlin, Germany from 1965 to 1966;
graduate study as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the History of Art at Bryn Mawr College;
received M.A. in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1972 with a dissertation on the 15 century Netherlandish
painter, Petrus Christus, published by the Pennsylvania University Press as “Petrus Christus: His
Place in Fifteenth-Century Flemish Painting;” member of the Department of Fine Arts at
Amherst College from 1972 to present, offering courses in the history of medieval art and
architecture in Europe, the history of Netherlandish painting of the 15th to the 17th centuries, the
construction of space in pre-modern architecture in Japan, the theory and practice of ‘beholding’
and the conjunctive role of erôs and insight in the contemplative integration of Art and Science.
Research and teaching interests focus on the nature and character of the ‘art’ of works of art,
including the psychological, physiological and spiritual foundations of artistic aspiration, its
material realization and the experiential intersection of contemplative ways of knowing and
being in the world; current projects include a contemplative guide to Netherlandish painting and
the definition and pictorial presentation of ‘Ai-no-Ma,’ a Japanese architectural and spatial
equivalent of ‘beholding.’ VFF in 1986 and 1993. See also Dr. Upton's website at http:/www.amherst.edu/~facultyprofiles/_joel.html
Stephen Vlastos, University of Iowa
Stephen Vlastos is Professor of History at the University of Iowa, where he has taught since 1976. He received his BA from Princeton University and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has held visiting appointments at Stanford, UC Irvine and UC Berkeley, and various research appointments and fellowships at American and Japanese universities and institutes. Publications include Peasant Protests and Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan (California, 1986); Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan (California, 1998); and “Opposition Political Movements in Early Meiji Japan,” Cambridge History of Japan: The 19th Century (Cambridge, 1989). He has also published and taught courses on the American war in Vietnam. He is currently serving as the Journal of Asian Studies’ Japan book review editor. His current research area is comparative international relations, with a focus on Japan’s relations with the U.S., Great Britain and France in the first part of the 20th century.
Walter Edwards, Tenri University
Walter Edwards is the Chair of the Japanese Studeis Program at Tenri University in Nara, where hwe has been teaching since 1993. He has taught courses there and also for the Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies and the Konan International Exchange Center. He earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1984 in anthropology, and his reaserch interests include modern Japanese perspectives on history and its relation to national identity; Japanese archaeology (Yayoi through early historic periods); Japanese imperial tombs; archaeological prospection (especially with ground-penetrating radar); cultural history of Japan (ancient to modern); Japanese gardens in historical perspective; contemporary Japanese society (social organization and cultural values); and Japanese language education; anthropological study of symbolism, ritual, and of complex societies.
Barbara Hofer, Middlebury College
Barbara K. Hofer is Associate Professor at Middlebury College, where she has been teaching courses on educational, developmental, and cultural psychology since 1998. She received her B.A. in American Studies from the University of South Florida, her Ed.M. in Human Development from Harvard, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Psychology and Education, with a certificate in “Culture and Cognition,” an interdisciplinary program that integrates anthropology and psychology and addresses human behavior in cultural context. Her cultural research interests have included cross-national studies of academic achievement and the psychological variables that illuminate some of these differences, She also does research on beliefs that individuals have about knowledge and knowing and how this influences learning, and co-edited the book Personal Epistemology: The Psychology of Beliefs about Knowledge and Knowing. She taught at AKP during the fall of 2002 and looks forward to returning, biking the countryside and visiting temples, eating a wide variety of Japanese food once again, learning and teaching about psychology and culture, and getting to know AKP students and their families.
Terry MacDougall, Stanford Center for Information Technology
Terry
MacDougall is Consulting Professor at Stanford University and has been the
Director of the Stanford Center for Technology and Innovation since 1992.
He also served as Director of the Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies between
1992 and 2006. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1963 with a B.A.
in history, Professor MacDougall spent three years in Japan studying Japanese
and teaching at Doshisha High School in Kyoto. He completed his masters
and PhD degrees in political science at Yale University. He taught at the
University of Virginia, Harvard University, and Boston University before
coming to Stanford University in 1992. Professor MacDougall’s academic specialties
include Japanese and comparative politics and the international relations
of East Asia.
Bettina Langner-Teramoto, Stanford Center for Information Technology
Professor Langner-Teramoto is a professional architect and university lecturer in architectural design and Japanese culture. She is a graduate of the architectural department of Aachen Technical University (Germany) and did her graduate studies at Dusseldorf Academy of Fine Arts and at Aachen Technical University, where she was certified as First Class Architect. After serving as an architect in the Office of Engineering and Architecture in Tilke, she came to Japan to study at Ryukoku University in Kyoto. Subsequently, she has been a practicing architect in Kyoto and Osaka and in 2002 founded ARCHITEKTURRAEUME Design Office.
She has taught at Aachen Technical University, Kyoto Women’s University, Ritsumeikan University and the Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies. Professor Langner-Teramoto has published widely in Japanese and European journals in the fields of housing, ecology and architecture and is the creator of a number of major architectural projects in Japan and Europe. In 1998, she won First Prize in the International Competition for the Future Vision of Kyoto.
Chester Michalik, Smith College
Professor of Art at Smith College since 1978, Chester Michalik received a B.S. from the Massachusetts College of Art, and an M.F.A. from Boston University. Michalik’s work has been exhibited and collected by museums across the United States, and he has received numerous grants for travel and teaching in Japan.