When Ruth Dunnell talks about the vanished kingdom of Da Xia, you begin to understand the allure of the ancient, the perplexities of translation, and the way an entire culture can glimmer in fragments of text and architecture.

Dunnell, the James Storer Associate Professor of Asian History, is one of the world's few experts on Da Xia, an eleventh- and twelfth-century empire founded by the seminomadic Tangut people on the desolate northern fringes of China. Through painstaking research embracing art, archaeology, Buddhism, and Chinese culture-and through treks into the remote Gansu Corridor, near Inner Mongolia-she and a handful of other scholars are reconstructing a complex, embattled civilization.

In her courses, Dunnell challenges students to delve into Chinese or Japanese culture through poetry, art, and narratives. She also brings leading Asia scholars to Kenyon as guest lecturers and sponsors films that offer students rare glimpses of contemporary China.

Dunnell particularly values the unusual breadth of Asian expertise at the College, where faculty members specialize in such subjects as India, Islam, and Southeast Asia. "Most colleges cover only East Asia-China and Japan," she notes. "Kenyon has the capacity to cover all of Asia."