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 and currently chairs the Asian Studies Program.

Areas of Expertise

Chinese and Inner-Asian history from eleventh century to present, Mongol empire, Muslim/Hui in China from thirteenth century to present

Education

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

Selected Publications

Chinggis Khan, World Conqueror. New York: Longmans, 2009 (forthcoming)

"Xi Xia fodian zhong de fanyi lishi (Translating History from Tangut Buddhism.)

Zhonghua wenshi luncong (Chinese History and Literature Review) vol. 91 (Fall 2008).

"Buddhist Monks and the Xia State: A Preliminary Examination of Evidence in the Tiansheng Code." In Chinese, in Heishuicheng renwen yu huanjing yanjiu (Studies in Humanity and Environment of Khara Khoto). Ed. Shen Weirong, et al. Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2007, 343-353. English version forthcoming in Journal of Historical and Philological Studies of China's Western Regions 1 ( Beijing, 2007).

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.

"Patronage and Portraiture in Tangut Buddhism," in Embodying Wisdom: Art, Text and Interpretation in the History of Esoteric Buddhism, ed. Rob. Linrothe and Henrik H. Sørensen. SBS Monographs 6. Copenhagen: The Seminar for Buddhist Studies, 2001.

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