Biographical Information

Purnima Bose
Associate Professor of English
Indiana University

Purnima Bose is an Associate Professor of English, Cultural Studies, American Studies, and
India Studies. She is the author of ORGANIZING EMPIRE: INDIVIDUALISM, COLLECTIVE AGENCY AND INDIA (Duke UP 2003) and essays on feminism, nationalism, and globalization in PASSAGES, BOUNDARY 2, AGAINST THE CURRENT, SAMAR , and GENDERS among others.

Yung-chen Chiang
Professor of History
DePauw University

Yung-chen Chiang is professor of history at DePauw University . His major publications include: Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China , 1919-1949 ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2001) and "Performing Masculinity and the Self: Love, Body, and Privacy in Hu Shi," Journal of Asian Studies, 63.2 (May, 2004), 305-332.

Tom Malinowski
Washington Advocacy Director
Human Rights Watch

Tom Malinowski has been Washington Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch since April, 2001, responsible for the organization's overall advocacy effort with the United States government. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, he was Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton, and Senior Director for Foreign Policy Speechwriting at the National Security Council. From 1994 to 1998, he was a speechwriter for Secretaries of State Christopher and Albright and a member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff. He has also worked for the Ford Foundation and as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He holds degrees in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He appears frequently as a radio, television, and op-ed commentator on U.S. human rights policy worldwide.

Tun Myint
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Indiana University

Tun Myint is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Democracy in Plural Societies at Indiana University - Bloomington . He was a student activist in Burma during the 1988 people's democracy movement. He left Burma in 1988 after the military coup and spent two years on the Burma-Thailand border as revolutionary soldier. He became a political refugee in late 1990 after leaving the border area. Tun Myint came to Indiana University in 1993 after receiving a scholarship from the Burmese Refugee Scholarship Program administered by the Office of International Programs at IU. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Law and Social Science after graduating with a BA in Political Science (Honors) and East Asian Studies in 1997 and with a Master's of Public Affairs in 1999 from Indiana University. Tun Myint actively participates in international research projects addressing the issues of sustainable development and environmental governance. He is an appointed Research Fellow at the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC). He is working on a book manuscript that explores the evolution of law and legal concepts in Burma and analyzes the challenges for the making of new Burma . He currently serves as Coordinator of the Technical Advisory Network (TAN) of Burma , a think tank network of independent scholars of Burma.

Christiana Ochoa
Associate Professor of Law
Indiana University

Christiana Ochoa is an Associate Professor of Law at Indiana University Bloomington School of Law. She teaches in the areas of corporate law and international human rights. Professor Ochoa received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A. from the University of Michigan . She has worked for numerous human rights organizations throughout Latin America , including the Colombian Commission of Jurists, The Center for Justice and International Law, Human Rights Watch and FUNDECI. From 1998-1999, Professor Ochoa joined the Faculty at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá , Colombia , as a Visiting Professor and researcher. She then returned to the New York office of the law firm Clifford Chance, where her practice focused on capital markets, banking and finance. Professor Ochoa joined the Indiana University , Bloomington Law Faculty in 2003. She has two articles forthcoming discussing the importance of domestic courts in human rights litigation and is currently centering her research on the role of the individual in international law.

Radhika Parameswaran
Associate Professor, School of Journalism
Indiana University

Radhika Parameswaran is an associate professor in the School of Journalism , Indiana University . Her areas of research and teaching include media globalization and gender, audience research, race and popular culture, South Asian studies, and postcolonial theories. Her most recent publication in the Winter 2004 issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication examines the ways in which print media narratives on the global triumphs of India 's six Miss World and Miss Universe winners reinforce the ideological interests of elite Indian consumers. Her other publications have appeared in Journalism & Communication Monographs , Qualitative Inquiry , Communication Theory , and Journal of Communication . Weaving together diverse media products in the Indian context, her current project focuses on the symbolic representations of gender and skin color in children's illustrated comics, cosmetics' advertisements for skin-lightening products, and Bollywood films.

Her media experience includes editorial work in publishing and in newspapers. She has worked as an associate project editor at The Dryden Press, a division of Harcourt Brace College Publishers in Fort Worth , Texas , and was also an associate editor at Orient Longman, Ltd., one of India 's largest publishing companies. She has worked as a reporter for two different newspapers in the city of Hyderabad , India . She has published several feature articles in the The Hindu and Indian Express , two of India 's leading English-language national newspapers.

Michael Robinson
Professor of East Asian Languages and Culture
Indiana University

Michael Robinson is a Professor of East Asian Languages and Culture and an Adjunct Professor of History at Indiana University . He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1979. His research focuses on modern Korea in the early to mid-20th century. He was a Professor in Residence at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales at the University of Paris in 2001. In 1994, he served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Korea Foundation in Seoul and he was a Fulbright Fellow in Korea in 1987. His publications include Colonial Modernity in Korea (Cambridge: East Asia Council Publications, 1999), co-edited with Gi-Wook Shin; Korea Old and New: A History (Cambridge: Korea Institute, 1990) written with Carter Eckert, Young-ick Lew, Edward Wagner, Ki-Baek Lee; and Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988).

Chunghee Sarah Soh
Associate Professor of Anthropology
San Francisco State University

Chunghee Sarah Soh is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at San Francisco State University , who specializes in issues of women, gender/sexuality, and social/cultural change. She is the author of The Chosen Women in Korean Politics: An Anthropological Study (New York: Praeger, 1991) and Women in Korean Politics (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993). Her current research, which won several awards including a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is concerned with the "comfort women" issue. Field research for this project has been carried out in Korea , Japan , The Netherlands, and the National Archives in Washington D.C. Some of the findings of this research have been published in various scholarly journals. Her most recent work on the topic, "Aspiring to Craft Modern Gendered Selves: 'Comfort Women' and Chongsindae in Late Colonial Korea," was published in Critical Asian Studies (Summer 2004).

Dr. Soh is a graduate with highest honors of Sogang University in Seoul , and earned her Master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Hawaii with a scholarship from the East-West Center and a dissertation grant from the National Science Foundation. She has taught at Ewha Womans [Women's] University in Korea , the University of Hawaii , the University of Arizona , and Southwest Texas State University . Dr. Soh is a Fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies (ICAS). She has served as a member of the Executive Committee of Women in Asian Studies of the Association for Asian Studies, a member of the Planning Committee of the Competing Modernities in Twentieth-Century Japan Conference Series II, and was elected Treasurer of The American Anthropological Association East Asia Section.

Elliot Sperling
Chair, Department of Central Eurasian Studies
Indiana University

Elliot Sperling is the chair of the Dept. of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University and specializes in the study of Sino-Tibetan relations. He has published numerous pieces on the subject, including the policy paper "The Tibet-China Conflict: History And Polemics" ( East-West Center ). He has also worked with Human Rights Watch on Tibetan issues.

Margaret Sutton
Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
Indiana University

Margaret Sutton is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University . She received her Ph.D. in International Development Education from Stanford University in 1991. She also holds an M.A. in Philosophy of Education from the University of British Columbia and a B.A. from Seattle University . She studies and researches education and cultural change both outside and inside the U.S., with research and
publications on educational policy formation in international assistance agencies; gender and education in the Third World; comparative multicultural policies; the sources and forms of global awareness among children and youth in the U.S.; and citizenship and education around the world. She has worked on education in Indonesia for nearly 20 years.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Director, East Asian Studies Center
Indiana University

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is currently the Director of the East Asian Studies Center at Indiana University , where he is also a Professor of History and of East Asian Languages and Cultures and an Adjunct in the American Studies Program. Educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B.A., with honors, in history, 1982), the University of London (one year's study, no degree), Harvard (Master's in East Asian Studies, 1984), and the University of California, Berkeley (doctorate in History, 1989), he is a specialist in modern Chinese history. He is the author of Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai (Stanford University Press, 1991) and the co-author, editor or co-editor of five other books, including Human Rights and Revolutions (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000 - expanded and updated edition in preparation). In addition, has contributed research articles, reviews and commentaries to a wide range of academic and general interest periodicals, ranging from the Journal of Asian Studies and the China Quarterly to Newsweek International, the Nation, the World Policy Journal, the New Left Review, and the Times Literary Supplement ( London ). The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Academy of Education, as well as other private and public organizations, he was one of three core consultants for the Peabody Award-winning Tiananmen documentary, "The Gate of Heavenly Peace," which was shown on PBS as a "Frontline" episode, and in the past he has given talks on China and human rights at venues ranging from New York's New School to Budapest's Central European University.