The Storer Lectures

The origin of Asian Studies at Kenyon owes much to the generosity of James P. Storer, a trustee and alumnus of the College. In 1991, Storer endowed both a chair in Asian history and a lectureships program in Asian Studies. Since then, a number of distinguished visitors have come to Kenyon as Storer Lecturers. These include (with some of their books):

1990-91

Jonathan Spence
The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and their Revolution (1981); The Memory Palace of Mateo Ricci (1984); The Search for Modern China (1990)

1991-92

Wendy Doniger
Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook (1975); Women, Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts (1980); Other People's Myths: The Cave of Echoes (1988)

1992-93

David Desser
The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa (1983); Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema (1988); Ozu's Tokyo Story (1997)

Maxine Hong Kingston
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976); China Men (1980); Tripmaster Monkey: This Fake Book (1989)

1993-94

James C. Scott
The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (1976); Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985); Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (1990)

William LaFleur
The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan (1983); Buddhism: A Cultural Perspective (1988); Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan (1992)

1994-95

Patricia Ebrey
Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China: A Social History of Writing about Rites (1991); The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (1993); The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1996)

1995-96

The Drepung Loseling Tibetan Monks

1996-97

Dharma Kumar
Land and Caste in South India: Agricultural Labour in the Madras Presidency during the Nineteenth Century (1965); The Cambridge Economic History of India (ed. v. 2, 1983); Colonialism, Property, and the State (1998)

1997-98

Donald Lopez
A Study of Svantantrika (1987); Elaboration on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra (1996); Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (1998)

1998-99

Barbara Metcalf
Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900 (1982); Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (ed. 1984); Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe (ed. 1996)

1999-00

Elizabeth Perry
Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China (1980); Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (1993); Casting a Chinese "Democracy" Movement: The Roles of Studetns, Workers, and Entrepreneurs (1994); Contentious Chinese (1999).

2000-01

Jaime FlorCruz
CNN Beijing bureau chief; former Time Beijing bureau chief; co-author of Massacre at Beijing.

Devin Deweese
An "Uvaysi" Sufi in Timurid Mawarannahr: Notes on Hagiography and the Taxonomy of Santitiy in the Religious History of Central Asia (1993); Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tukles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (1994).

2001-02

Richard Bernstein
Ultimate Journey: Retracing the Path of an Ancient Buddhist Monk who Crossed Asia in Search of Enlightenment (2001).

2002-03

Norman Fischer
Jerusalem Moonlight: An American Zen Teacher Walks The Path Of His Ancestors (1995); Opening To You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms (2002); Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up (2003).

Kathy Foley
Clowns in the (Asian Puppet) Theater

2003-04

Bruce Cummings
The Origins of the Korean War (1981); War and Television (1992); Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History (1997); Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations (2002); North Korea: Another Country (2003).

2004-05

Bei Dao
Notes from the City of Sun (1983); The August Sleepwalker (1990); 1991 Old Snow (1991); Forms of Distance (1994); Landscape over Zero (1996); Nightwatch (1999); Unlock (2000); Blue House (2000); At the Sky's Edge (2001); Midnight's Gate (2003).

2005-06

Ali Bastug
Turkish folk-singer.

Wen-jie Qin
Documentary filmmaker; To the Land of Bliss (2002).

2006-07

Orville Schell
Dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism

Ning Qiang
Chu?Niblack Associate Professor of Art History and Curator of the Chu?Griffis Asian Art Collection, Connecticut College; Art, Religion, and Politics in Medieval China: The Dunhuang Cave of the Zhai Family (2004)

2007-08

Ian Buruma
Henry R. Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights & Journalism, Bard College; Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes (1985); The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (1994); The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West (2000); Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (2001); Inventing Japan, 1853 1964 (2003); Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies (2003); Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (2006)

2008-09

Melvyn Goldstein
John Reynolds Harkness Professor of Anthropology, Case-Western University; A History of Modern Tibet, 1913 1951 (1989); Nomads of Western Tibet (1990); The Changing World of Mongolia's Nomads (1994); The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (1997); Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet (1998).

2009-10

Bruce Lawrence
Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Professor of Religion, Duke University; Defenders of God : the Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age (1989); Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence (1998); New Faiths, Old Fears : Muslims and Other Asian Immigrants in American Religious Life (2002); The Qur'an: A Biography (2006).

Tenzin Legtsok (Brian Beffa, Kenyon '95)
Sera Jey Monastic University

2010-11

Xu Xin
Professor of Jewish Studies and Director, Glazer Institute of Jewish Studies, Nanjing University (China); The Jews of Kaifeng, China

Chieko and Kuniyasu Iwazaki, Michael Chikuzen Gould
Traditional Japanese musicians