Faculty

Hyeyoung Bang is an associate professor in the School of Educational Foundations, Leadership and Policy at BGSU where she teaches Educational Psychology, Human Growth & Development, and Cross-Cultural Human Development and Learning. Her undergraduate degree is in Elementary Education from Busan National University of Education, S. Korea, where she also taught Elementary School children for 15 years. She obtained two master’s degrees in Education (Bukyung National University, S. Korea and University Of New England, Australia) and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (Oklahoma State University). Her main research focus concerns the cross-cultural development of wisdom and self-development, and related topics such as resilience, empathy and prosocial behavior, motivation, spirituality, and religion. She also researches acculturation issues among international students and faculty, and refugee and immigrants about their acculturation stresses and impact on schooling. She utilizes quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and Q methodology in her research. Cross-national research projects have included Self, Motivation, and Virtue, focusing on human motivation to live a virtuous life (Canada and South Korea), supported by the Templeton Religion Trust.  

Khani Begum is an associate professor in the English Department at Bowling Green State University. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Postcolonial Literature and Film, Black Films Matter, Palestinian Conflict in Film, and Modern and Contemporary Literatures.  

Many of her courses involve community engagement activities where students work with the Bowling Green initiative, Not In Our Town, and the Way Public Library in Perrysburg to present student projects and films that address global cultures issues, Islamophobia, and race bias.

Dr. Begum has published essays on male modernist writers, namely James Joyce and E.M. Forster; Iranian women's literature; South Asian films in response to 9/11; and connections between Jamaican Jonkunnu slave era festivals and Black Lives Matter protest street dances.

She is currently editing two collections on global responses to 9/11 and the war on terror – one from a media and trauma perspective, and the another from an art and popular culture perspective.

Abhishek Bhati is an assistant professor in political science at BGSU. His research focuses on nonprofit studies, international development, and global politics. He teaches courses on nonprofit organizations, international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and public administration.

His work has appeared in several academic journals, and he regularly writes for The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization that publishes articles written by academic experts for the general public. Currently, he is researching the shrinking civil society in developing countries around the world, especially in Southeast Asia.

Hyungsuk Choo is an associate professor in Tourism, Hospitality, and Event Management in the College of Education and Human Development. Her research focuses on exploring the applicability of service marketing principles and social-psychology theory in the context of small-scale service hospitality/tourism services and identifying the sustainability theory and practice from visitors’ perspectives. She has done research work with a variety of organizations and agencies in the U.S. and some Asian countries, as well as individual rural communities. She has published this work in many academic journals, including the top-tier publications in tourism studies. She has also presented papers at national and international conferences.

Bradford Clark is a professor in the Department of Theatre and Film, where he is a production designer and teaches courses in scenic design, animation history, and Asian theatre.

He received a B.A. in theatre from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an M.F.A. in theatre from the University of Minnesota, Mankato. He also served as a design studio intern at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre. Prof. Clark studied the making of traditional shadow puppets and masks in Bali, Indonesia, and puppet making and performance in Japan. 

He has traveled throughout Asia to observe and document puppet and theatre performances, and was part of a research group that documented performances by both traditional and contemporary companies and performers throughout China.  

In addition to directing and designing puppet theatre productions, he has written articles on Asian puppet theatre, including performances at the Putul Yatra: A Celebration of Indian Puppetry. He also recently published a survey of puppet museums in Japan.

Christopher Frey is associate professor of Educational Foundations and Inquiry and an affiliated faculty with the Asian Studies Program. Frey’s research focuses on cross-cultural and international education, minority and Indigenous schools, and the history of education. In the Asian Studies Program, he has taught ASIA 1800: Introduction to Modern Asia, and ASIA 4800: Senior Seminar in Asian Studies, and was a visiting researcher at Hokkaido University and Keio University in Japan.  

Akiko Kawano Jones 川野朗子, teaching professor emeritus of Japanese Language and Culture in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, has been teaching at BGSU since 1983. She has taught Japanese Language and Culture-Beginning through Third Year, including independent courses. She has also taught “Japanese Business Language” and “Tea Ceremony and Culture.” She was director of the Asian Studies Program from July 2005 through June 2019. Although she retired in May of 2021, she still enjoys teaching at BGSU and working on Japan Outreach, such as Japanese-American Business Professionals Meetings called “Nakama,” the Cherry Blossom Festival, etc. She also continues to be the advisor for the Japanese Club, which she founded in 1983.

Her academic interest includes Study Abroad in Japan. She has been offering “Summer Study in Japan” every year since 2002. She is coordinator of “Peace Seminar in Hiroshima” and has taken students to Hiroshima every other year since 2006.

Among the honors and awards she has received: Faculty Senate Lifetime Achievement Award, Master Teacher of the Year at BGSU, Commendation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 2013 Teacher of the Year Award from the American Association of Teachers of Japanese, and Outstanding College Foreign Language Instructor Award from OH Foreign Language Association.

JK Jake Lee is an associate professor and the chair of the Department of Computer Science. His research interests include visualization, computer vision/pattern recognition, machine learning applications. Dr. Lee has been on the Asian Studies Advisory Committee since 2017 and had served on the BGSU Korean Club in the past. He is interested in learning Asian culture and history.

Ryoko Okamura is an assistant professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures and a director of the Japanese Program. She teaches all levels of Japanese language and courses on Japanese literature, films, culture, and society.

Dr. Okamura’s research focuses on cultural studies with emphasis on immigration/migration and experience of women and ethnic minorities in the context of East Asia and the U.S. relations. She has published articles on Japanese immigrant women (Issei women), Japanese women's motherhood and patriotism, and experience of zainichi Koreans. Her recent publication focuses on the institutionalized ethnic discrimination against North Korea affiliated schools (Chōsen gakkō) in Japan. Currently, she is working on a book project on Issei women's experience, highlighting the concept of ryōsai kenbo (good wife, wise mother) ideal and contributions of Issei women to the Japanese immigrant community from transnational perspective.

Kristen Rudisill is the director of the Asian Studies program at BGSU and was granted the title of professor in the Department of Popular Culture in Fall 2021. She's been teaching graduate and undergraduate students at BGSU since 2007. Her courses center around global and international popular culture, religion, Bollywood, storytelling, and romance novels.

This year has been a year of revisions and waiting. None of her writings from last year have been published yet, though she expects an article and introduction in the special issue of the Indian Theatre Journal on reality television and her translation of Cho Ramasamy’s play The Scriptures Don’t Say So in the journal Ecumenica: Performance and Religion to be published this spring. Her book Honeymoon Couples and Jurassic Babies: Identity and Play in Chennai’s Post-Independence Sabha Theater is expected to be published with SUNY Press in August 2022. She reviewed an excellent new book on Bengali group theatre for the Asian Theatre Journal. She postponed her fellowship from the American Institute of Sri Lankan Studies because of Covid and is now planning to head to Sri Lanka in fall 2023 to work on her new book project, The Rise of Gaana: Dance Competitions, Cinema, and Global Tamil Identity.

Rebecca L. Skinner Green is an associate professor in art history and has taught at BGSU since 1996. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Western Art and World Art, as well as courses on African, Oceanic, Mesoamerican, Indian & Southeast Asian, and Chinese & Japanese arts and cultures. She has also led two study-abroad courses to Ghana, West Africa and Bali, Indonesia. In 2021, Skinner Green was awarded the College of Arts & Sciences Diversity Award.

Dr. Skinner Green’s research focuses on traditional and contemporary art and culture in Africa, with specialization on Madagascar, where she studies the elaborate relationships between ancestors, funerary practices, divination, gender roles, and traditional and contemporary art. Her research is also expanding into art and culture in the Caribbean, with primary focus on Trinidad and Tobago. Her work has been sponsored by a Social Science Research Council fellowship, a Foreign Language Area Studies grant, a Fulbright fellowship, two Fulbright-Hays fellowships, and an American Association of University Women fellowship. It has been the subject for articles, books, edited volumes, curated exhibitions, conference papers, and keynote presentations.

She is currently writing two books – one on foundational contemporary artists in Trinidad and Tobago, and another on traditional arts associated with funerary practices in highland Madagascar. She is also working on projects on contemporary Malagasy art, as well as the use of public community art in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean.

Jeremy Wallach is a professor in the Department of Popular Culture in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University. A cultural anthropologist specializing in Asian popular music and globalization, he has written or co-written over thirty research articles; co-edited, with Esther Clinton, a special issue of Asian Music (2013); and authored the monograph Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997-2001 (Wisconsin, 2008; Indonesian Ed., Komunitas Bambu, 2017). In 2011, he co-edited, with Harris M. Berger and Paul D. Greene, the collection Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World (Duke). Dr. Wallach has given research presentations throughout North America and Indonesia, as well as Austria, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. A founding member and former chair of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Popular Music Section, Dr. Wallach serves on the editorial board of the Journal of World Popular Music Studies and is a Series Editor of the Music/Culture Series at Wesleyan University Press. His writings have appeared in Ars Lyrica, Asian Music, Ethnomusicology, Indonesia, the Journal for Cultural Research, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, the Journal of World Popular Music Studies, Popular Music History, Wacana Seni Journal of Arts Discourse, and numerous edited volumes, including The Bloomsbury Handbook for Rock Music Research (2020).