Asia | Asian Studies Center

Carla-Nappi

Given Name:

Carla

Family Name:

Nappi

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Rank:

Mellon Professor

Department:

History

Office:

3904 WWPH

Office phone number:

412-648-7478

Regional specialty:

Asia

East Asia

China

Email Address:

nappi@pitt.edu

Region:

Area of specialization:

History of China History of Central Eurasia (especially Manchu studies) Translation History World History Historical Writing and Theory

Staff Title:

Biography:

Qualifications:

Ph.D. Princeton, 2006

Contact if:

Publications:

“Metamorphoses: Fictioning and the Historian’s Craft,” PMLA 133.1 (2018): 160-165.
“Paying Attention: Early Modern Science Beyond Genealogy,” Journal of Early Modern History 21 (2017): 459-470.
“The Gesture of Photographing” (with Dominic Pettman), thresholds 1 (2017). http://openthresholds.org/1/gestureofphotographing
“A Page at the Orchestra.” In Wendy Doniger, Peter Galison, and Susan Neiman, eds., What Reason Promises: Essays on Reason, Nature and History (De Gruyter, 2016), 221-227.
“Surface Tension: Objectifying Ginseng in Chinese Early Modernity.” In Paula Findlen, ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500-1800 (Routledge, 2013): 31-52.
“Disengaging from ‘Asia’.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Society 6.2 (2012): 1-4.
The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Staff Ranking:

Ruth-Mostern

Given Name:

Ruth

Family Name:

Mostern

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Rank:

Associate Professor

Department:

History

Office:

3534 WWPH

Office phone number:

(412) 648-7460

Regional specialty:

Asia

East Asia

China

Email Address:

mostern@pitt.edu

Region:

Area of specialization:

History of China World History Spatial History Environmental History

Staff Title:

Biography:

Qualifications:

Ph.D. UC Berkeley, 2003

Contact if:

Publications:

Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern: The Spatial Organization of the Song State (960-1276 CE), 2011 Harvard University Asia Center Monographs distributed by Harvard University Press.

Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers, Indiana University Press 2016 (edited with Humphrey Southall and Merrick Lex Berman).

Don’t Just Build It, They Probably Won’t Come: Rethinking Data Sharing and the Social Life of Data in the Historical Quantitative Social Sciences, International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 10.2 (2016), 205–224 (with Marieka Arksey).

Sediment and State in Imperial China: The Yellow River Watershed as an Earth System and a World System, Nature and Culture 11.2 (Summer 2016), 121-147.

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Patrick-Beckhorn

Given Name:

Patrick

Family Name:

Beckhorn

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Rank:

Graduate Student

Department:

Anthropology

Regional specialty:

Asia

South Asia

India

Email Address:

pwb5@pitt.edu

Region:

South Asia, India

Area of specialization:

labor, migration, and gender in South Asia

Staff Title:

Graduate Student

Biography:

Professor Patrick Beckhorn is a graduate student at the University of PIttsburgh Department of Anthropology whose studies focus on labor, migration, and gender in South Asia, specifically India.  He focuses on cycle rickshaw pullers in Delhi and North India.  His interests of study are in migrant support networks, different scales and experiences of time regarding migration patterns,  the relationship between circular migration and masculinity in India, and anarchic elements of informal laborers' social organization.

Patrick-Hughes

Given Name:

Patrick

Family Name:

Hughes

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Rank:

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Staff

Department:

Religious Studies

Office:

4132 Wesley W. Posvar Hall

Office phone number:

412-648-7737

Regional specialty:

Asia

Email Address:

hughespw@pitt.edu

Staff Title:

Assistant Director, National Coordinating Site for the NCTA

Staff Ranking:

Jennifer Brick-Murtazashivili

Given Name:

Jennifer Brick

Family Name:

Murtazashivili

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Rank:

Associate Professor

Department:

Public and International Affairs

Office:

412-648-7611

Office phone number:

3619 Wesley W. Posvar Hall

Regional specialty:

Asia

South Asia

Email Address:

jmurtaz@pitt.edu

Area of specialization:

Political Economy of Development; Politics of Central and South Asia; Politics of the Former Soviet Union; Afghanistan; State Building; Informal Institutions and Customary Governance; Political Islam

Biography:

Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. She is writing a book on the role of customary and village governance in the state-building process in Afghanistan for which she conducted interviews and focus groups in more than 30 Afghan villages across six provinces over the span of two years. In the policy world, she has managed U.S. Government democracy assistance for the United States Agency of International Development in Uzbekistan and drafted legislative materials for the new Afghan Parliament as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program in Kabul. She has lived for more than seven years in various parts of Central Eurasia, primarily in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Jennifer was a research fellow at the Institute for Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison Law School and served as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan. She has a Ph.D. in Political Science and a M.A. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as a B.S.F.S. from Georgetown University.

Qualifications:

PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2009

Publications:

2012 “Colored by Revolution: The Political Economy of Autocratic Stability in Uzbekistan.” Democratization

2012 “Soviet Union in Central Asia,” in Volume 4: Cultural Sociology of West, Central, and South Asia; Part 3, 1900 to Present: Soviet Union in Central Asia

2012 “Osama bin Laden,” in Volume 4: Cultural Sociology of West, Central, and South Asia; Part 3, 1900 to Present: Soviet Union in Central Asia

Louise K.-Comfort

Given Name:

Louise K.

Family Name:

Comfort

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Rank:

Professor Emeritus

Department:

Public and International Affairs

Office:

3617 Wesley W. Posvar Hall

Office phone number:

412-648-7606

Regional specialty:

Asia

Email Address:

lkc@pitt.edu

Area of specialization:

Organizational Theory and Design; Organizational Analysis, Organizational Dynamics and Change Processes; Policy Design and Implementation; Public Policy Analysis; Public Management; Information Technology

Biography:

Louise K. Comfort is Professor of Public and International Affairs and Director, Center for Disaster Management, University of Pittsburgh. She holds a B.A. in political science and philosophy, Macalester College, a M.A. in political science, University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in political science, Yale University. She is a Fellow, National Academy of Public Administration, and author or co-author of six books, including Designing Resilience: Preparing for Extreme Events, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010 and Mega-Crises: Understanding the Prospects, Nature, Characteristics and the Effects of Cataclysmic Events, Charles C. Thomas, 2012. Her primary research interests are in decision making under conditions of uncertainty and rapid change, and the uses of information technology to develop decision support systems for managers operating under urgent conditions. She teaches courses in organizational theory and design, systems thinking, and public policy. She has published articles on information policy, organizational learning, and sociotechnical systems, and is Editor, Safety Science, and Book Review Editor, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. She has engaged in field studies following nineteen earthquake disasters in fourteen countries, including the EERI reconnaissance study of September 30, 2009 Padang Earthquake, Indonesia, an NSF RAPID response study of the January 12, 2010 Haiti Earthquake, and a recovery study of the March 11, 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, Japan.

Qualifications:

Phd, Yale University, 1975

Publications:

2011 Resilience, Entropy, and Efficiency in Crisis Management: The January 12, 2010 Haiti Earthquake. In U. Rosenthal et al. Megacrises. Springfield, IL, Charles C. Thomas, Publisher.

2011 Transition from Response to Recovery: A Knowledge Commons to Support Decision Making following the January 12, 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Special Issue on January 12, 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Earthquake Spectra.

2011 Distributed cognition: The basis for coordinated action in dynamic environments. Journal of Emergency

Brenda G.-Jordan

Given Name:

Brenda G.

Family Name:

Jordan

Photograph:

Rank:

Staff

Affiliated Faculty

Department:

East Asian Languages and Literatures

Office:

4134 Wesley W. Posvar Hall

Office phone number:

412-648-7763

Regional specialty:

Asia

East Asia

Japan

Email Address:

jordanb@pitt.edu

Region:

Japan

Area of specialization:

Modernization and Modernity Issues in Meiji Period Japan; Issues of censorship; Artist Biography; Creation of Persona; Related Issues of Artistic Flouting, Playfulness and the Juxtaposition of the Traditional and the Contemporary in the Making of Art in Nineteenth Century Japan

Staff Title:

Director, National Consortium for Teaching About Asia

Biography:

Brenda G. Jordan received her PhD from the University of Kansas in Japanese art history. She teaches for the Departments of East Asian Languages and Literatures and History of Art and Architecture. Her research interests are early modern and modern Japanese art history, specifically issues of the dynamics of modernization and modernity in Japan. Jordan is the Director of the National Coordinating Site for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. She also serves as the program manager for the Japanese internship program, as part of her duties as Japan studies coordinator. She is an avid gardener in her spare time, and enjoys traveling and hanging out with her husband and daughter Erika.

Qualifications:

PhD, University of Kansas, 1993

Contact if:

Contact Dr. Jordan if you are interested in Japan studies, Japan internships, or K-12 professional development for educators.

Publications:

2013 “The Trickster in Japanese Art.” In: Education about Asia, Vol. 18, No. 1.

2007 “Potentially Disruptive: Censorship and the Painter Kawanabe Kyôsai” in Hiroshi Nara, ed., Inexorable Modernity, Japan’s grappling with modernity in the arts, Lexington Press

2003 Copying the Master and Stealing His Secrets: Talent and Training in Japanese Painting. Co-authored and co-edited book. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Pres

Staff Ranking: