Seminar Leaders

Dr. Jennifer Bergmark is an Assistant Professor in Art Education in the School of Art + Design. Her research is concerned with culturally relevant pedagogy, arts integration, arts advocacy, community arts programming, public engagement, school as a socially engaged arts lab, and art exhibition as a creative practice. Arts integration is foundational to the belief that we can learn about the world through the arts. Bergmark’s arts integration research projects include developing an Arts and Sustainability curriculum for preservice art teachers and the development of a campus and community crochet coral reef project, the Urbana-Champaign Satellite Reef, with visiting artist, Margaret Wertheim. Additionally, Bergmark’s research includes developing cultural understandings through Native American Art and Art education with the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana and the Myaamia Tribe of Oklahoma through Miami University, with her research partner Stephanie Danker. Bergmark’s research on the intersection of community, art, and culture developed into a historical research project focused on the community arts practices of Japanese American artist, Ruth Asawa.  Recent research projects focus on contemporary Japanese art and community revitalization projects on Naoshima Island in Japan.

Dr. Roderick Wilson is Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the intersection of people and their local habitats in Tokugawa and modern Japan. He is the author of Turbulent Streams: An Environmental History of Japan's Rivers, 1600-1930 (Brill, 2021) and is currently working on a second book about the urban and environmental history of Tokyo. At the University of Illinois, he also teaches a variety of courses on Tokyo, Japan, East Asia, and global environmental history.

Alex Chun has been working for The Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies (or CEAPS) as the program & outreach coordinator since 2023. Before that she was an elementary classroom teacher for 10 years. She holds a bachelors in Elementary Education, a Masters in Curriculum & Instruction, and reading & librarian endorsements all from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  At NCTA Alex helps coordinate programming and logistics with help from the CEAPS team.

Contact her at park387@illinois.edu 

Dr. Christopher Callahan, a scholar of Japanese religions and Buddhism, completed his B.A in Philosophy at Washington and Lee University and two Masters degrees in Asian Religions and in Japanese Literature at the University of Hawai’i before receiving his Ph.D. from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University in 2011.

Dr. Naoko Gunji is an Associate Professor with The Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures. Her primary research interests lie in cultural, social, political, and religious functions of Japanese premodern art. 

Dr. Anna Lee is an Assistant Professor with The Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures and the Department of History. She is a historian of Korea’s transnational consumption. Her research focuses on the intersection of state and society in consumer spaces in modern South Korea.

Dr. Gian Piero Persiani is an Assistant Professor at The Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures. His goal as a historian of ancient literatures and cultures is to bring to light the richness and complexity of premodern literary and artistic phenomena. His research explores the structure of the cultural field at specific points in time, as well as patterns of development over time through practices of reception, appropriation, and adaptation, at both local and transnational levels.

Samantha Shoppell (she/her) is currently a PhD in Art Education. She has nearly a decade of experience teaching in intercultural and bilingual K-12 contexts in the US and Japan, including five years on the JET Programme in Shizuoka, Japan. Her work has focused on the pedagogy and embodied practice of Japanese traditional arts with an emphasis on tea ceremony.

Dr. Bing Wang is the Chinese Studies Librarian at the International & Area Studies Library. At IAS she leads the Chinese language and Chinese Studies collection development, reference services, and liaison activities. She also directs the Taiwan Research Center for Chinese Studies within IAS. 

Dr. Maureen Warren is the curator of European and American Art before 1850 at the Krannert Art Museum (KAM). She studies early modern (1500-1800) European art and ceramics and works on paper more broadly.At KAM, Warren has curated exhibitions on medieval manuscripts, early modern European art and natural history, early modern European religious and mythological prints, Dutch political prints, blue and white ceramics, and the ink paintings of Shozo Sato (b. 1933).