Speakers Bureau List (2026-27)
- Betsy Bolton, Literature and Environmental Studies, Swarthmore College
- Keisha Brown, Modern Chinese History, Tennessee State University
- Francisco Chen-López, World Languages and Cultures, Spelman College
- Robert Dayley, Political Economy of Southeast Asia, The College of Idaho
- Jin Feng, Chinese Literature, Grinnell College
- Susan Westhafer Furukawa, Japanese Language and Literature, Beloit College
- Jaya Jha, Economics, Davidson College
- Vivian Wenli Lin, Media Arts and Culture, Occidental College
- Lauren Meeker, Anthropology, SUNY New Paltz
- Deepa Prakash, Political Science, DePauw University
- Mizuki Takahashi, Biology, Bucknell University
- Wei Yu Wayne Tan, History, Hope College
- Shaolu Yu, Geography, Rhodes College
- Iskandar Zulkarnain, Media and Society, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
Speaker contact and bios:
Betsy Bolton, Ph.D.
Literature, Environmental Studies, Digital Storytelling, Bhutan
Swarthmore College
ebolton1@swarthmore.edu
betsydotgallery.wordpress.com
Talk Titles
- Gross National Happiness versus Gross Domestic Product: Models of Thriving in Bhutan and the United States
- Traditional Arts in Bhutan: Vajrayana Buddhism, Culture, and Environment
- The “Real” Bhutan: Grappling with Modernity, Tradition, and Development
- Cultural Complications of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness
Betsy Bolton teaches English and Environmental Studies at Swarthmore College, on Lenape land, at the edge of the Piedmont and the coastal plain. Her lyric eco-history of a local creek, Mouth Art of the Bald-faced Hornet, was published in 2024 by Finishing Line Press. Bolton has also served as a Fulbright scholar to both Morocco and Bhutan, where she facilitated the creation of digital stories (short, autobiographical videos) and filmed miniature documentaries of traditional crafts. Her latest book, In the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon: Happiness, History, and Environment in a Changing Bhutan (Lever Press, 2025) engages connections among Vajrayana Buddhism, Gross National Happiness, biocultural heritage, and struggles over citizenship.
Keisha A. Brown, Ph.D.
Modern Chinese History
Tennessee State University
kbrow110@tnstate.edu
Talk Titles
- From Bandung to Beijing: The Shifting Landscapes of Afro-Asian Solidarity
- Sino-Black Relations: Blackness, Race, and the Role of Foreign Other in Shaping Modern Chinese History
- Jamaican Chinese: Coolie Trade, Blackness, and Global Diasporas
- Red Lines and Shared Horizons: Navigating Race, Rhetoric, and Reality in Chinese Foreign Relations
Dr. Keisha A. Brown is an Associate Professor of History Tennessee State University in the Department of History, Political Science, Geography, and Africana Studies. Professor Brown is interested in modern understandings of what she has termed Sino-Black relations. Dr. Brown’s research into Sino-Black relations examines networks of difference in China used to understand the Black foreign other through an investigation of the social and political context that the Black diaspora navigate in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as evidenced in her article “Blackness in Exile: W.E.B. Du Bois’ Role in the Formation of Representations of Blackness as Conceptualized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)” and other related scholarship. Dr. Brown was in cohort VI of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations Public Intellectuals Program, is co-founder and co-CEO of the Black China Caucus (BCC), and co-Editor of Siyabonana: The Journal of Africana Studies.
Francisco Chen-López, Ph.D.
World Languages and Cultures
Spelman College
franciscochenlopez@spelman.edu
Talk Titles
- Chinese Presence in Latin America and Caribbean Cultural Production
- Representation of East Asian Diasporas and Immigrations in Latin American Cinema
- Transpacific Encounters between East Asia and the Americas
Robert Dayley, Ph.D.
Political Economy of Southeast Asia, ASEAN, Thailand
The College of Idaho
rdayley@collegeofidaho.edu
Talk Titles
- Buddhist Economics? Inside Thailand’s Attempt at Sufficiency Economy
- Myanmar’s Forever Wars: Ethnopolitics in a Dysfunctional State
- “The Boiling Sea”: South China Sea Territorial Claims in Geocultural Context
- The Art of Becoming Governed: Myanmar’s Dara’ang Refugees in Thailand
- Timor-Leste: Tiny, Obscure, and Totally Unforgettable!
Robert Dayley trained as a Southeast Asianist at the University of Oregon and Northern Illinois University in the 1990s. His publications span Asian political economy, agrarian change, Buddhist economics, human rights, and ASEAN regionalism. Dayley is the author of a widely-used college text, Southeast Asia in the New International Era (2024), now in its ninth edition. His scholarship builds on over five years of living, researching, teaching, and traveling in Asia. As a recipient of multiple Fulbright grants, he has taught internationally at several Thai universities including Payap University, Naresuan University, and Mae Fa Luang University. He has also taught IPE courses at China Agricultural University in Beijing. Currently, Dayley serves as professor and chair of the Department of Political Economy at The College of Idaho. Named the Carnegie/CASE Idaho Professor of the Year in 2011, he has led over a dozen off-campus courses to Asia and directs an internationally competitive Model UN program.
Jin Feng 冯进, Ph.D.
Modern Chinese Literature
Grinnell College
fengjin@grinnell.edu
Talk Titles
- Chinese Food for Thought: A Theoretical and Pedagogical Exploration
- Romancing the Internet: Chinese Web Novels
- Missionaries, Students, Cultural Entrepreneurs: Sino-American Educational Exchange in Three Chapters
Jin Feng 冯进 is Professor of Chinese and Japanese and the Orville and Mary Patterson Routt Professor of Literature at Grinnell College. She has published five English monographs: The New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction (2004), The Making of a Family Saga: Ginling College 1915-1952 (2009), Romancing the Internet: Consuming and Producing Chinese Web Romance (2013), Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways (2019), and The Transpacific Flow: Creative Writing Programs in China (2024); three Chinese books such as A Book for Foodies 吃货之书 (2020); and numerous articles in both English and Chinese. She is currently working on “Grinnell-in-China, China in Grinnell.”
Susan Westhafer Furukawa, Ph.D.
Japanese Language and Literature, Japanese History from the 1560s to the Present
Beloit College
furukawas@beloit.edu
Talk titles
- Japanese History in Popular Culture—Samurai!
- Women Writers in Japan
- Women of the Warring States Period
- Using Miyazaki Hayao Films in an Environment Studies Classroom
Susan Westhafer Furukawa is Professor of Japanese in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Beloit College, where she also directs the Japanese Program and serves as a first-year advisor. Her research focuses on the intersections of history, literature, and popular culture, and she has published several articles and a monograph, The Afterlife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi: Historical Fiction and Popular Culture in Japan (Harvard Asia Center, 2022) on this topic. Her current book project looks at the ways women writers of historical fiction use the genre to dismantle patriarchal narratives of Japan’s past.
Jaya Jha, Ph.D.
Economics and South Asian Studies
Davidson College
jajha@davidson.edu
Talk Titles
- Women’s Work in India
- Social Capital in Rural India
- Poverty in South Asia
Jaya Jha is the Boone Assistant Professor of Economics and a Core Faculty member in South Asian Studies at Davidson College in North Carolina. Her research areas include economic growth and development, macroeconomic aspects of international trade, and applied time series analysis. She is examining publication trends in development economics, women’s labour force participation in India, and child malnutrition in Rwanda. She has previously explored the complementarity and substitutability between public and private investment in Pakistan, and the intertemporal dynamics of US agricultural export demand. She holds a PhD in Applied Economics (University of Minnesota), an MA in Economics (University of Pune), and BA (Honours) in Economics (University of Delhi). She teaches macroeconomics, development, growth, and forecasting, and mentors student research projects.
Vivian Wenli Lin, Ph.D.
Media Arts and Culture
Occidental College
vlin@oxy.edu
Talk Titles
- Women Making Moves: Participatory Narratives of Migration
- Migration, Labor and Gender: Creating Participatory Media with Communities of Migrant Women Workers
- Media Activism Through Participatory Video
Vivian Wenli Lin is a media artist and educator with a background in documentary film, video art, and interactive installation. She founded Voices of Women Media, an organization that utilizes visual participatory methods to facilitate communities of migrant women and allies in media literacy and authoring their own narratives. Lin received her Ph.D. in Media Art at the City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media. From 2017-2021 she was based in Tokyo, Japan, where she taught at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and served as an Associate Professor at Tokyo Christian Woman’s University. From 2020-2023, she was appointed as the Visiting Assistant Professor in Media for Social Change at Occidental College’s Media Arts and Culture department where she developed the course Media Activism Through Participatory Video based on her practice. From 2023 onwards, she serves as an Assistant Professor at Occidental College.
Lauren Meeker, Ph.D.
Anthrolopology and Asian Studies
State University of New York at New Paltz
meekerl@newpaltz.edu
Talk Titles
- Ethical Engagement and Collaborative Ethnographic Filmmaking
- Changing Gender Norms in Chèo Popular Theater in Northern Vietnam
- Amateur Lineage Historiography in a Northern Vietnamese Village
- Moral Personhood, Gender, and Popular Buddhist Practice in Rural Northern Vietnam
Lauren Meeker received her Ph.D. in anthropology, with distinction, from Columbia University in 2007. She is currently Associate professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at New Paltz and also teaches in the Asian Studies Program. Her research foci include visual anthropology, the cultural politics of folk performance, the ritual construction of moral personhood in Vietnam, online ancestor worship, and cross-cultural musical pedagogies.
Her current research projects include an NSF and NEH funded collaborative project with Dr. Phan Phuong Anh (Department of Anthropology, Vietnam National University) that examines how social belonging and moral personhood are shaped through ritual practice in rural northern Vietnam, and a study on the use of online media in ancestor worship among families with members living and working abroad.
Her films on Vietnamese culture include Drums on the Red River (DER, 2010), Singing Sentiment (Berkeley Media, LLC., 2014), and Mother Witness for Me (Mẹ Chứng cho Con) (co-directed with Dr. Phan Phuong Anh, 2021). She and Alyson Hummer have co-directed several films about cross-cultural musical collaborations including Growing Rhythm (2019), which documents the SUNY New Paltz Burmese hsaing ensemble’s work with acclaimed Burmese percussionist Kyaw Kyaw Naing. With funding from the Asian Cultural Council, she and Alyson also directed a short film Ko Gyi Kyaw (2021) as part of a larger project on Burmese spirit mediumship (nat pwe). And, they have recently completed Intermittent Attunement (2023), a collaborative visual ethnography that documents classically trained pianist Alex Peh’s lessons in four different oral piano traditions: Burmese sandaya, Greek rebetiko, Persian-tuned classical piano, and jazz.
Mizuki Takahashi, Ph.D.
Biology and Animal Behavior Program
Bucknell University
mizuki.takahashi@bucknell.edu
https://sites.google.com/bucknell.edu/takahashi-lab/home
Talk Titles
- Little Known Giant: The Life History of the Japanese Giant Salamander
- Liberal Arts Ecologist: Happiness, Ethics, and Giant Salamander Research
- Environmental and Conservation Issues in Japan
- Exploring the intersection between conservation biology and the humanities in Japan
Mizuki Takahashi is an ecologist and conservation biologist from Japan. He is an Associate Professor of biology and animal behavior at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania. He was born in Hokkaido and grew up in Tokyo, Japan. He majored in forestry as an undergrad at Tsukuba University and a master’s student at Tokyo University. He came to the U.S. in his late 20s. Since then, he has studied ecology, evolution, and conservation of amphibians (along with American culture and English!) and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Memphis. His current research focuses on the interspecific competition of local amphibians such as spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) and wood frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus) and the conservation ecology of the giant salamanders: the hellbender and the Japanese giant salamander. His teaching interests also include mass extinctions, environmental conservation issues in Japan, and the science of meditation. He is a co-editor of the international peer-reviewed journal Herpetological Conservation & Biology and co-charing the journal’s DEI committee. In 2022, he published a book, “Is Mass Extinction Going to Happen Again?”, targeting teenagers and the lay audience in Japan. He loves the outdoors: hiking, camping, fishing, mushrooming, and trail running.
Wei Yu Wayne Tan, Ph.D.
Disability Studies/History, History of Medicine, Japanese History, Asian History, World History
Hope College
tan@hope.edu
Talk Titles
- From Disability Studies to Global Studies: Disability in the Modern World
- Asian Perspectives on Disability: What Does Asian Disability Studies Look Like?
Early Modern Disability Studies: A Conversation between Asia and Europe
Wei Yu Wayne Tan is Associate Professor of History at Hope College in Michigan. He is a historian of disability, science, and medicine in Japan and East Asia. He regularly teaches courses that emphasize global approaches to history. His first book, Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity (University of Michigan Press, 2022), explores the contexts and lived experiences of blindness in Japan at the time. His current research uses disability studies to explore the interconnected histories of global Asian communities, and expands the toolkit of disability studies to engage with ideas of care and community.
Deepa Prakash, Ph.D.
International Relations
DePauw University
deepaprakash@depauw.edu
Talk Titles
- The Pop-culture of the ‘Margins’: Contrasting the Indian and South Korean Experience with Soft Power
- The Uses of Culture in the Construction of Indian State Identity: Current Controversies and Debates
- Contested Constructions: Public Architecture and State Identity in India
- India in the Emerging World Order: Opportunities and Challenges
- Influenzas and WhatsApp Uncles: Social Media Influences on Foreign Policy Discourse in Modi’s India
Deepa Prakash is Associate Professor of Political Science at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Deepa’s research and teaching interests lie in International Relations. She has published work on the role of emotional politics in International Relations, centering on the use of naming and shaming, and on non-state actors in world politics. Current research projects center on the intersection of culture and politics as they pertain to the construction of state identities, particularly in the Indian, Turkish and South Korean contexts. Her doctoral work focused on Political Violence and Comparative Counter-Terrorism. She is also the co-editor of Qualitative Methods in International Relations. At DePauw University, Deepa teaches courses on International Security, Non-State actors in world politics, gender and politics, terrorism, and pop-culture in politics, in addition to regularly teaching introductory international politics courses.
Shaolu Yu, Ph.D.
Urban Geography, Urban Planning, AAPI Experiences
Rhodes College
yus@rhodes.edu
Talk Titles
- Between Black and White: Chinese-Owned Grocery Stores in the Mississippi Delta
- “They Know How to Cut Asian Hair”: Race, Beauty, and Identity in Asian Hair Salons in the U.S. South
- What can U.S. Cities Learn from Asian Cities? A Comparative Urbanism Perspective
- Teaching Asian Cities Through Cinema
Dr. Shaolu Yu is an Associate Professor of Urban Studies and the Chair of Asian and Asian American Studies at Rhodes College, Memphis, TN. Trained as an urban geographer in China and the U.S. in an interdisciplinary environment, Dr. Yu draws on mixed method approach that blends ethnography, interviews, archival research, and GIS (Geographical Information System) in documenting Asian cities and Asian diasporic communities in the United States. Dr. Yu’s doctoral dissertation examined everyday mobility of Chinese people in Flushing, New York City, the largest Asian diasporic neighborhoods in the U.S. After relocating to the U.S. South, Dr. Yu seeks to document the overlooked stories of Chinese immigrants and their grocery stores and hair salons in the racially bifurcated U.S. South. Additionally, Dr. Yu continues her research on urbanization and urban changes in China. Dr. Yu’s research are published in the Annals of American Association of Geographers, Papers in Applied Geography, The Professional Geographer , Urban Geography, Geographical Review, and Journal of Transport Geography.
Iskandar Zulkarnain, Ph.D.
Southeast Asian Digital Cultures, inter-Asian Video Game and Animation Cultures, Southeast Asian Underground Music Cultures
Hobart & William Smith Colleges
zulkarnain@hws.edu
Talk Titles
- The Politics and Aesthetics of Southeast Asian Gaming Cultures
- Japanese Anime in Inter-Asian Contexts
- Inter-Asian Punk Archivist Cultures in the Digital Era
- Indonesian Gaming Cultures Under the New Order Regime
- Histories and Politics of Animation in Indonesia
Iskandar “Izul” Zulkarnain is currently Assistant Professor of Media and Society at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and is also affiliated with the Asian Studies Program. He works on global digital media cultures focusing on non-western regions, particularly Southeast Asia. He has published articles in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, SOJOURN, Afterimage, and Journal of Games, Game Art, and Gamification. He also has contributed a chapter to Feminist Interventions in Participatory Media (eds. Laren S. Berliner and Ron Krabill) (co-written with Leah Shafer).
His current research projects include an edited collection, Playable Southeast Asia: Gaming Cultures, Politics, and Aesthetics in a Multiethnic Region (with Peichi Chung and Byron Fong), an article manuscript about an Indonesian indie game that simulates the 1998 tragedy in the country, a research project on Asian diaspora hardcore punk archivists, and a project on teaching critical artificial intelligence and media literacy in liberal arts classroom.
