My research focuses on modern Japanese history, with particular emphases on sports, disability, militarization, and urban development. At K, I teach courses on the entire scope of premodern, modern, and contemporary East Asian history with particular focus on China, Japan, and Korea. I also teach First-Year and Sophomore Seminars in the College’s Shared Passages Program, as well as Senior Seminars for the History Department and the East Asian Studies Program.

• SEMN 154 – First-Year Seminar: Who Are the Samurai?
• ANSO/HIST 288 – Faster, Higher, Stronger: Sports in East Asia
• HIST 103 – Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: China, Japan, and Korea
• HIST 280 – Modern China: A People’s History
• HIST 282 – Early China
• HIST 283 – Occupiers and Occupied in Post-World War II East Asia
• HIST 285 – Modern Japan: A People’s History
• HIST/SEMN 287 – Sophomore Seminar: What If: Alternate Pasts
• HIST 397 – Seminar: The Korean War
• HIST 490 – Senior Seminar: Historical Methods
• EAST 490 – Senior Seminar: East Asia In and Beyond the Media

My research concerns popular media cultures and constructions of subjectivity in contemporary Japan.  In particular, I look at how science fiction media has been produced, received, and discussed from the 1960s onward in Japan, and what sorts of political, racial, gendered, and national identities are implicitly enunciated through it.  I teach courses on Japanese popular culture, modern and contemporary literature, and Japanese language at K.

Leihua Weng is assistant professor of Chinese. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Pacific Lutheran University before coming to K College. She obtained her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina, M.A. at Peking University, and B.A. at Zhejiang University. She is interested in traditions, including the (trans)formations and transmission of traditions, as well as their modern receptions in China and in the West. Her articles have appeared in a number of journals. She is currently conducting several research projects on commentaries in early China, and on nationalism in modern Chinese literature. She is working on a book project on the reception of Plato in China.

A multilingual scholar and teacher, Yanshuo Zhang’s research tackles multiethnic Chinese identities in literary and visual cultures produced both in China and in the U.S. Her research on multiethnic Chinese cultural productions helps diversify the scholarly understanding of and teaching about China and Asia. Her current book manuscript, tentatively titled Beyond Minority: The Qiang and Multiethnic Imagination in Modern China, is an innovative interdisciplinary project that combines anthropological field research in the ethnic regions of southwest China with close reading of previously under-studied minority cultural articulations in contemporary China. Dr. Zhang’s teaching encourages students to explore identity, diversity, and the traditionally neglected voices of marginalized groups in various parts of the world. Dr. Zhang has published her work in interdisciplinary journals such as positions: asia critique, Heritage and Society, and the Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies. Dr. Zhang grew up in China’s multiethnic Sichuan province known for its spicy food and pandas. She is passionate about fostering diversity in the community; she founded the Stanford Youth Cultural Exchange Initiative, a cross-cultural community service organization at Stanford University. Dr. Zhang received her PhD in Chinese Literature and Culture from Stanford University. Prior to joining Kalamazoo College, she taught in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University and served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan.