Faculty in the East Asian Studies Minor
(listed alphabetically)
Dr. George Brown received a B.A. from UC Santa Cruz, an M.A. from UC Santa Barbara, and holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Washington, where he studied Comparative Politics with a specialty in East Asian and Chinese politics. Dr. Brown lived in Taiwan in 1983-1984, where he studied Chinese. he also studied at other universities in China, including Beijing University, Sichuan Normal University, and Nanjing University. At Nanjing University, Dr. Brown spent one year taking graduate level courses and then returned for an additional three semesters of dissertation research. He has also visited Japan on numerous occasions and has traveled in South East Asia. Dr. Brown's research focuses broadly on rural development in china, and he has written on a range of related issues, including local governance in rural China, compliance with family planning policies in rural China, the changing status of women in rural China, gender bias in rural education, land use and land management policies in rural China, and rural industrialization. Dr. Brown teaches the Japanese politics and the Chinese politics courses. Dr. Brown taught at Nanjing University in the Spring of 2003, and has recently participated in Fulbright travel in Malaysia and Singapore (1999, 2002), and in several additional summer seminars in Korea, Hong Kong, and China. Dr. Brown currently directs the Asian Studies Program at SRU.
Dr. Andrew Colvin holds a Ph.D. in Comparative and Asian Philosophy from the University of Hawaii. He teaches world religions and Oriental Religious and Philosophical Thought.
Dr. Margaret B. Denning is responsible for the undergraduate history courses dealing with modern China, modern Japan, East Asian military traditions and the Asian Pacific rim. She also offers a graduate course on contemporary China. She has studied in China (Fudan University in Shanghai and Beijing Normal University) and travels frequently to Asia for research purposes. Dr. Denning's focus of research and publication is China during the Sino-Japanese War, and she also publishes articles on other parts of Asia. As part of an overall effort to promote interest in Asia at SRU, Dr. Denning developed a reading group of faculty and students which considers the films, books, food, and way of life of China. She has both participated in and served as guest speaker at conferences and workshops dealing with infusing Asian studies into the undergraduate curriculum. In 1993, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education awarded her a grant to hold a workshop for SRU faculty to integrate East Asia into their courses. A similar workshop on Japan followed in 1996. In 1998, a workshop on integrating Southeast Asia into the curriculum is also planned. She has served on the Advisory Council of the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies, edited two of its publications, has served as nominations chair, vice president and president of the organization.
Dr. Alison Mc Neal received her B.A. from Akron University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in American Literature in from Kent State University. Her twenty-year teaching background is diverse, including such courses as Auto/biographical Writing, Expository Writing, Introduction to Fiction, Survey of English Literature, and Eastern Literature. Dr. Mc Neal's interest in Eastern literature developed gradually beginning with the early reading of the British and American Romantic poets. It became more focused in 1988 when she took a summer workshop on forms of meditation offered by the SRU Philosophy Department. She has pursued a more formal study of classical Eastern thought during a recent sabbatical. She spent the fall of 1997 in Shanghai, and has participated in several summer workshops on Asia, including a Fulbright-Hays travel project in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Dr. Sunita Peacock received her Ph.D in English from Southern Illinois University in 1996. Her areas of specialization are Postcolonial theory and Women's Studies. Her interest in Asian film stems from that fact that she is from the city of Calcutta, India, where one of the forerunners of Indian film, Satyajit Rat, began his career and made all of his films. Further, Dr. Peacock's interest in Third World Women gives her an added advantage of introducing films made by women from such countries as India and China, thus adding a new dimension to Asian Film.
Dr. Armand Policicchio received his B.A. from St. Vincent College, M.A. in Asian Studies from Seton Hall University, and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. He teaches Third World Nations, and will offer Introduction to Asian Studies beginning in Fall 2006.
Dr. Carolyn V. Prorok earned her B.S. in Education from Slippery Rock University, her M.A. in Geography from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Ph.D. in Geography at Louisiana State University. The main focus of her research is the Hindu Diaspora and the impact of people's religious behavior on the landscape. Dr. Prorok has traveled extensively in India, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. She presents her research regularly at research conferences and publishes her findings. Dr. Prorok teaches the course on Asian geography.
The language instructors for SRU's Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language courses are all native speakers. The university has formal agreements with Nanjing University in China, Kangweon National University in South Korea, and ALLEX in Japan that provide SRU with Asian language professors every year. Please see the Modern Languages and Cultures site for current information on our visiting professors from Asia.
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