2021-2022 Visiting Faculty & Scholars

Sumitomo Visiting Professor Emeritus in East Asian Studies

James Dobbins, Fairchild Professor Emeritus of Religion and East Asian Studies, Oberlin College

Suzanne Gay, Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies, Oberlin College

Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in East Asian Studies

Antonello Palumbo researches the religious, social and political history of premodern China in its connections to the Old World system. Buddhism and Taoism have long been among his key interests. He has studied in China (Peking University), Italy (where he holds a Ph.D. in East Asian Studies from the former Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples) and Japan (Kyoto University). From 2005 to 2020 he was first Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in the Religions of China at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of An Early Chinese Commentary on the Ekottarika-āgama: The Fenbie gongde lun 分別功德論 and the History of the Translation of the Zengyi ahan jing 增一阿含經 (Taipei: Fagu Wenhua, 2013) and of many articles and essays. His current research focuses on the parallel formation of translocal religious communities and imperial polities in China during the first millennium of the Common Era. His work in progress includes two book manuscripts in preparation, respectively on the nationalization of Buddhism in mid-Tang religious policies and on the early history of Heavenly Master Taoism, as well as a number of studies on the early history of Buddhism in China.

Japan Foundation CGP Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in East Asian Studies

Gento Kato is a political scientist of information, voting, and public opinion. His specialties are in political behavior under Japanese and American contexts, political psychology, formal modeling, experiments, and quantitative methodologies. His recent works particularly explore the mechanism of voter decision-making under low information. For example, his Ph.D. dissertation chapter, “When Strategic Uninformed Abstention Improves Accountability,” utilizes a formal model to suggest the need for careful assessment of the connection between political information and voter competence. It reveals that, depending on the information environment in elections, uninformed voting can be effective in inducing democratically “good” outcomes. His other recent works use survey experiments on Japanese voters to assess the role of information environments in explaining policy attitudes formation.

Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in East Asian Studies

Graeme R. Reynolds specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Korea focusing on the production and circulation of knowledge, the history of the book, and historiography. His monograph investigates the Chosŏn-era (1392–1910) production, circulation, reception of the History of Koryŏ and the Essentials of Koryŏ History, two court histories on the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392), by examining ownership seals and marginalia on extant copies. He also maintains interests in print and manuscript culture, printing technology, practices of reading, and archives. His second project will examine the ideologies and economies of movable type and woodblock in early modern Korea as part of a larger history of the reception of printing technologies.  He received a B.A. in Asian Area Studies from the University of British Columbia in 2008, an M.A. in Korean History from the Academy of Korean Studies in 2013, and a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University in 2021.