People

The faculty listing for the Department of Asian, East European, and German Studies is below. Please click their name to be taken to a description of the nature of their work, research areas, teaching, and more.

Full Time Faculty

Headshot of Matthew R Bauman

Matthew R Bauman

Asst Professor - Visiting, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4252 CLIFTCT

513-556-2752

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Noriko Fujioka-Ito

Professor-Educator and Director of Japanese Language and Culture Program , Asian, East European, and German Studies

4211 CLIFTCT

Noriko Fujioka-Ito earned a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Foreign and Second Language Education with minors in Japanese Linguistics and Educational Research from the Ohio State University. She has been teaching and coordinating Japanese language courses at the University of Cincinnati. She has an extensive record of presentations and publications on a variety of areas, including developing 21st century skills, learning autonomy, distance learning education, feedback, interculturality, and Japanese for specific purposes. Additionally, she has been involved in professional services at large. For example, she currently serves as an ACTFL Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL) Quality Assurance Advisor, is on the Advisory Board of the International Journal of Instruction, and is a Board Member of the Japanese Language Literature Association of Korea.
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Todd Herzog

Professor in the School of Communication, Film, and Media Studies and the Department of Asian, East European, and German Studies. Director of the Niehoff Center for Film and Media Studies and the Digital Media Collaborative., Asian, East European, and German Studies

4256 CLIFTCT

513-556-2797

Todd Herzog holds faculty appointments in the Department of Asian, East European, and German Studies and the School of Communication, Film, and Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he also directs the Digital Media program and the Niehoff Center for Film & Media Studies. He is author or editor of six books and has published over three dozen articles on topics ranging from the modernist crime story to the representation of history in the films of Quentin Tarantino. He is currently working on a book project on Vienna’s Prater and the History of Amusement.
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Miki Hirayama

Assoc Professor, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4214 CLIFTCT

Professor Hirayama ​teaches courses on Japanese and Chinese art history.  
Her research focuses on Japanese art criticism of the early twentieth century. Her recent publications include  “Inner Beauty: Kishida Ryūsei (1891-1929)’s Theory of Realism.” Edited by Minh Nguyen. New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics:  Philosophy, Politics, Culture, Literature, and the Arts. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2017,  “Ishii Hakutei and the Journal Hōsun.”  Edited by Chris Uhlenbeck, Amy Riegle Newland, and Maureen de Vries. Waves of Renewal: Modern Japanese Prints, 1900-1960. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2015, “‘Fictionalized Truth’: Realism as the Vehicle for War Painting” in Art and War in Japan and Its Empire, 1931-1960 (2012),  “From Art without Borders to Art for the Nation: Japanist (Nihonshugi) Painting by Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyōkai during the 1930s” in Monumenta Nipponica (2010), and Reflecting Truth: Japanese Photography in the Nineteenth Century (co-editor, 2005).  

She has delivered papers at venues such as the College Art Association conference, Association for Asian Studies conference, and Asian Studies Conference Japan.   Hirayama's service to the field included serving as an anonymous reviewer for Art Bulletin and Ars Orientalis.

 
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Jade Yuh-Hwan Lin

Adjunct Instructor, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4210 CLIFTCT

513-556-2132

Jade Yuhhwan Lin has been teaching modern Chinese language culture at the University of Cincinnati since year 2000. She serves as TAG (Transfer Assurance Guide) panel lead; also a member and regional coordinator for Ohio Association of Teachers of Chinese. She participates and organizes annual workshops with fellow Chinese teachers for professional developments. She teaches different levels of the target language including begining, intermediate, advance, and AP courses. She started the Chinese program at St. Xavier High School and taught there for many years. She  serves as a co-chair of the Cincinnati and New Taipei City Sister City Committee. They lead high school students exchange program to Taiwan since 2012. She also volunteered being a guide and chaperone to groups of students visiting China. Her teaching pedagogy is using interactive instructional models to engage student learning, and using many online tools and authentic meterials from media. Her goal is to build students to become a lifelong learner and to reach their highest potential. 
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Headshot of Junko Markovich

Junko Markovich

Asst Professor - Visiting, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4212 CLIFTCT

(513) 556-2735

Junko Markovich has been teaching Japanese at UC since 2009. She has served as a faculty advisor to UC's student organization, Japanese American Student Society (JASS) since 2013. JASS promotes cultural exchange between UC students, Japanese exchange students, and local Japanese communities through various events and activities. She has also been serving as Ohio Association of Teachers of Japanese (OATJ)'s president since 2022. The mission of OATJ is to promote and improve the study and teaching of Japanese in Ohio and offers professional development workshops twice a year for both K-12 and college teachers. 
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Dinshaw Mistry

Professor, International Affairs & Asian Studies
Head, Department of Asian, East European, and German Studies, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4215 CLIFTCT

513-556-3317

  Dinshaw Mistry is a Professor of International Affairs and Asian Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and Head of the Department of Asian, East European, and German Studies. He has also been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center; the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University; and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. 
  He specializes in international relations, security studies, Asian security, and technology and politics. Within these fields, his research covers two main areas: nuclear and missile proliferation, and South Asian security and US foreign policy in the region. 
  Dr. Mistry is author of two major books and co-author / editor of a third. The first, Containing Missile Proliferation, is a comprehensive study of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and its impact on 14 missile programs; it also analyzes the supply-side approach to nonproliferation. The second, The US-India Nuclear Agreement, offers the most detailed analysis of nuclear negotiations with India; it highlights the impact of domestic politics on nuclear diplomacy. The third is an edited volume, Enduring and Emerging Issues in South Asian Security, where he authored the leading chapters on US foreign policy interests in South Asia, ranging from strategic issues to democracy and development, and regional challenges in these areas.
  His additional writings appear in journals such as International Security, Security Studies, Asian Survey, Political Science Quarterly, Asian Security, Journal of Global Security Studies, and Arms Control Today, and in the International Herald Tribune, New York Times, and Washington Post. 
  His current research projects examine regional nuclear issues and the global arms control regime; the new dimensions of missile proliferation and missile defense; and US foreign policy in South Asia and its implications for Asian security. 
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Headshot of Tanja U Nusser

Tanja U Nusser

Professor of German Studies; Director of Graduate Studies; Niehoff Professor of Film & Media Studies, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4250 CLIFTCT

Tanja Nusser is interested in animals, artificial reproductions and artificial humans, science (and maybe mad scientist too), in terror and catastrophes, and questions of the real. Her main research interests are literature since the 19th century, film studies, and history of science, disability studies, and gender studies, postcolonial and transnational theory.

She is author of a book on the German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger (2001) and one on artificial reproductions in literature and film (2011). She is co-editor of the book series Szenen / Schnittstellen (Fink Verlag, Germany) and co-edited volumes on the Berlin Republic. Reflections on / of German Unification (1990-2015) (2019), Kathrin Röggla (2017), Catastrophe and Catharsis: Perspective on Disaster and Redemption in German Culture and Beyond (2015), Engineering Life. Narrationen vom Menschen in Biomedizin, Kultur und Literatur (2008), Askese. Geschlecht und Geschichte der Selbstdisziplinierung (2005), Rasterfahndungen. Darstellungstechniken – Normierungsverfahren – Wahrnehmungskonstitution (2003), Techniken der Reproduktion. Medien – Leben – Diskurse (2002) and Krankheit und Geschlecht: Diskursive Affären zwischen Literatur und Medizin (2002).
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Peter Rehberg

Assoc Professor - Visiting, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4251 CLIFTCT

513-556-0449

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Randall James Rowe II

Asst Professor - Adj Ann, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4254 CLIFTCT

Randall J. Rowe II, PhD is the Assistant Professor of Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies - Annual Adjunct in the Department of Asian, East European and German Studies at the University of Cincinnati.

He is the Lead Instructor and Director of the UC STARTALK Russian Language Program. His areas of expertise are Cultural studies, power dynamics in society, Russian and Polish literature, film and media. 
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Evan Torner

Associate Professor of German Studies, Niehoff Professor of Film & Media Studies; Undergraduate Director of German Studies; Director, UC Game Lab, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4253 CLIFTCT

513-556-2749

Dr. Evan Torner works between three fields: German, Film, and Game Studies. After earning his teaching licensure in German from Grinnell College, he began work at the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2005), where he received an MA (2008), a Fulbright scholarship to study at Potsdam-Babelsberg (2009-2010), and a PhD in German with a certificate in Film Studies (2013). He subsequently spent 2013-2014 at Grinnell College as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, before accepting a position at the University of Cincinnati. In 2016, he became the director of the UC Game Lab, a hub of events and materials for games and playable media at UC. He was tenured in 2020 and, in 2025, accepted a position as a Niehoff Professor of Film & Media Studies.

Dr. Torner's work on East German cinema pertains to questions of representation in transnational genre productions, which also extends to his work on German science fiction. A lifelong player and facilitator of games, he joined the game studies subfield as a role-playing game specialist, and subsequently co-edited (with William J. White, 2012) Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media, which explores the intersection of role-playing and media. He is one of the founding editors of the Analog Game Studies journal (http://analoggamestudies.org), and has served as a long-time editor for the International Journal of Role-Playing.
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Adjunct Faculty

Adjunct Faculty

Adjunct faculty in the Asian Studies program are Akiko Marui, Ji Shouse, Lin Sun, Tomoko Tsuzuki-Deboer, Mariam Wang

Staff

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Elaine M Dunker

Treasury Analyst 2, Asian, East European, and German Studies

CLIFTCT

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Cam Kruse

Program Director, Asian, East European, and German Studies

5241A CLIFTCT

(513) 556-2730

Cam Kruse is the Program Manager for the departments of Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures (RALL) and Asian, East European, and German Studies (AEGS). He completed his undergraduate career at the University of Louisville in 2017, completing a BSBA in Business Marketing, with minors in French and Entrepreneurship. He obtained his MA in French Studies with a focus on Foreign Language Teaching at the University of Cincinnati in 2022.
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Graduate Students

Headshot of Barbara Antonie Besendorfer

Barbara Antonie Besendorfer

Graduate Assistant, Asian, East European, and German Studies

Barbara Besendorfer is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in German Studies at the University of Cincinnati and is working as a Teaching Assistant in the department. She earned a Master of Arts degree in History from the University of Regensburg in Germany. Her research focuses on the representation of women in Weimar Republic mass media with an emphasis on childless women. Broader research interests include food and nutrition in 19th-century literature and philosophy and performances of Milo Rau. Currently, she is the book review editor of the focus on German Studies Journal.
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Saskia Ziemacki

Graduate Assistant, Asian, East European, and German Studies

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