A specialist in premodern Chinese history, Ruth W. Dunnell came to Kenyon in 1989 as the second holder of the James P. Storer Professorship in Asian History. She helped to launch the interdisciplinary Asian Studies Program in 1991. Dunnell has moved to expand coverage of Korea in her East Asian history courses and also teaches courses on women and gender in East Asia, Tibet, and the Mongol empire. After publishing a book on the rise of a Buddhist state between Tibet and China in the eleventh century (the Tangut Xia state), she has shifted her attention to the Mongol conquests and their legacies in East Asia, and has recently finished a biography of Chinggis Khan. Her current research explores the Tangut role in the spread of Tibetan Buddhism in the 12th and 13th centuries and under the Mongol empire. Dunnell's next project will explore the social history of the class of foreign (Central Asian and Muslim) experts who helped the Mongols to govern China in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1999-2000 she served as the resident director of the Oregon University System study abroad program in Beijing. She is currently working on a social history of the non-chinese who helped the Mongols to rule China in the Yuan dynasty 13th-14th centuries.

Areas of Expertise

Chinese and Inner-Asian history from eleventh century to present, Mongol Empire.

Education

Ph.D. Princeton University
M.A. University of Washington
B.A. Middlebury College

Selected Publications

Chinggis Khan, World Conqueror. New York: Longmans, 2010 (out in 2009)

With James A. Millward, Mark C. Elliott & Philippe Foret, New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde. London & New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004

The Great State of White and High: Buddhism and State Formation in Eleventh-Century Xia. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1996

"Translating History from Tangut Buddhist Texts," Asia Major, third series, vol. 22, part 1 (2009), pp. 41-78. Chinese version in Zhonghua wenshi luncong vol. 91 (Fall 2009).

"Xi Xia and the First Mongol Conquest in East Asia." In Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, eds. William Fitzhugh, Morris Rossabi & William Honeychurch. Media, PA: Dino Don, Mongolian Preservation Foundation; Washington, D.C.: Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution, 2009.

Courses Taught

HIST 160 Modern East Asia
HIST 161 East Asia to 1850
HIST 190 The Making of the Contemporary World
HIST 261 The Mongol Empire in World History
HIST 262 Japan to 1850
HIST 263 Imperial China
HIST 353 Tibet Between China and the West
HIST 356 Vietnam
HIST 450 Topics in Chinese History
HIST 452 Women & Gender in East Asia
ASIA 490 Asia in Comparative Perspective