Faculty: Asian Studies

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Asian Studies brings together specialists in history, philosophy, politics, religion, sociology, anthropology, and the languages of China and Japan. 

Shiwei Chen
Professor
Chair of History
Chair of Asian Studies 

Shiwei Chen obtained his MA degree from Peking University and PhD from Harvard University.  A recipient of numerous prestigious scholarships, he taught at such higher educational institutions as Peking University and Cornell University before joining the faculty of Lake Forest College in 1998.  He teaches a variety of courses in the field of East Asian history, and his research focuses on modern China’s scientific community within a larger narrative of China’s engagement with modernity in the twentieth century.

Catherine Benton
Associate Professor
Chair of Religion
Chair of Islamic World Studies

Cathy Benton has been at Lake Forest for over twenty years.  She teaches courses that explore the worldviews of Asian religious traditions and literatures, specifically of Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and Daoist communities. 

Her research in Maharashtra, India, focuses on the religious rituals and music of Hindu and Muslim communities, and on South Asian Hindu and Buddhist religious story literature.  Her book, God of Desire:  Tales of Kamadeva in Sanskrit Story Literature (SUNY 2005), examines stories of the Indian god of desire as a way to unpack Hindu and Buddhist teachings about desire.

Rui Zhu
Associate Professor of Philosophy

Rui Zhu’s interests include Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Japanese aesthetics, comparative philosophy, and cultural studies.  He has taught the following courses:  Chinese Ethics; Global Engagement with Contemporary China; Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis; and Japanese Thought. 

Alexander Mawyer
Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Alex’s research interests are focused on the intersection of language, culture and political history in the oceanic Pacific, particularly in French Polynesia’s Society and Gambier islands. He has also conducted research in the history of Pacific film and filmmaking including an MA thesis on post-war Japanese films.

Alex’s teaching practice supports Asian Studies in two dimensions: Sociology and Anthropology 247:  Anthropology Pacific Islands provides students with a  broad context for and understanding of the Pacific Islands culture regions including the pre-history of the settlement of the Pacific by Austronesian speaking persons originally sited in coastal East-Asia, including the pre-historic archeology of Taiwan. His course Sociology and Anthropology 250:  Anthropology of Globalization has a strong East-Asia component with substantial critical readings on numerous aspects and dimensions of globalization drawn from across East-Asia, South Asia and insular South-East Asia.

Fatima Imam
Assistant Professor of History

Dr. Imam specializes in the history, culture, politics, and religious traditions of South Asia.  She teaches history of India, Modern South Asia, Race and Empire in Colonial India, and Islamic Cultures of South Asia. Her research interests are Institutionalization of sovereignty in precolonial India, nature of Indian urbanization, and South Asian Islam. 

Areas of Study: South Asian history

Aurelia Campbell 

ACM-Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Art History

Aurelia Campbell received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in August 2011. At Lake Forest she teaches surveys of Chinese and Japanese art history, as well as seminars in Buddhist arts of East Asia, private life in late imperial China, and arts of the Silk Road. Her current research project, which expands her dissertation into a book, focuses on the architecture and wall paintings of several early Ming dynasty (1368-1644) Buddhist temples at the Sino-Tibetan frontier.

Department Staff

Department Supervisor:  Harriet Doud, 847-735-5121

Department Assistant:  Wendy Ohman, 847-735-5122