East Asian Experts Expand Minds
By Nicole St. Pierre
The accelerating power of the Pacific Rim countries makes it vital to understand where the Far East has been and where it is heading. That is a common understanding among East Asian historians, and one of the reasons why the College is strengthening its undergraduate and graduate programs in East Asian history. Leading this effort are a growing number of faculty engaged in a wide range of research topics related to Eastern cultures.
Gordon Berger is researching male anxiety in 19th-century Japan through a unique psychoanalytic study of Japanese society. Roger Dingman studies 20th-century trans-Pacific international relations, and is the author of two prize-winning books on the military history of World War II.
Charlotte Furth uses Ming dynasty medical case histories as a lens to understand gender, science and the body in late Imperial China. And Jack Wills’ writings take a long-view look at continuity and change in China’s culture and foreign relations.
With an eye toward Korea, Kyung Moon Hwang researches intellectual history, studying how people with secondary status were the leading agents of change and development in the 20th century.
“When the College first started its Korean studies program around 1980, very few schools were hiring faculty to teach Korean history. But USC had foresight and now is a national leader. Our East Asia faculty also have been very active in the department’s teaching of world history,” says Wills, the first East Asian historian to join the department, in 1965.
The expertise of this core group of East Asian historians, coupled with the College’s Pacific Rim location, has resulted in a new energy fueling the study of East Asian history in the College.
“Scholars who study China, Japan and Korea are finding that understanding the traditions of the area promote a sharper insight into the cultural influences, artistic expression, politics, religion and philosophic thought that shape modern East Asia,” says Berger, who specializes in the political history of Japan.
The latest East Asia historian to join the College is Joan Piggott, a premier Japan historian from Cornell University. Her specialty includes the development of kingship and church-state relations in ancient Japan.
Piggott’s seminal study, “The Emergence of Japanese Kingship,” combined written records with archaeological evidence to illuminate the reigns of seven ancient Japanese monarchs between the third and eighth centuries. While at Cornell, she organized a series of summer workshops on reading kambun, a pre-modern Sino-Japanese script and a must-have research skill for studying pre-1600 Japanese history, literature, Buddhology and linguistics.
The Department of East Asian Language and Cultures includes other notable East Asian historians such as Bettine Birge and Peter Nosco.
In addition to top-notch faculty, powering the East Asian history focus is the East Asian Studies Center (EASC). Directed by history professor Berger, the center builds on the multidisciplinary approach to study that defines USC. Faculty in the College’s history department work in conjunction with faculty from anthropology and sociology to architecture and business.
For instance, EASC coordinates the Provost’s Pacific Rim-oriented Distinguished Visitors Program that brings high-profile scholars and public figures to campus for seven- to 10-day visits. It also offers targeted graduate fellowships for advanced language study. Established in 1975, it is one of only 12 dedicated centers in the United States supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Education.
Along with the dynamic center and inquisitive historians, USC boasts an outstanding East Asian Library on the University Park Campus, with especially strong collections in Korean and Chinese studies. These resources combined with its culturally ripe Los Angeles location have the East Asian history program poised for great success in the 21st century.
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