People

Noriko Fujioka-Ito

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

4211 CLIFTCT

fujiokn@ucmail.uc.edu

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.

View Full Profile

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

513-556-2751

herzoghr@ucmail.uc.edu

Todd Herzog holds faculty appointments in the School of Communication, Film, and Media Studies and the Department of Asian, East European, and German Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he also directs the Digital Media Collaborative 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.

View Full Profile

Mikiko Hirayama

Assoc Professor, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4214 CLIFTCT

513-556-0265

miki.hirayama@uc.edu

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.

View Full Profile

Gergana Ivanova

Japanese Literature and Culture, Asian, East European, and German Studies

ivanovga@ucmail.uc.edu

Gergana Ivanova's scholarly interests include the reception of Heian period (794-1185) literature from the seventeenth century to the present, early modern (1603-1867) erotic and didactic literature, and present-day manga representations of the past. Her first book Unbinding The Pillow Book: The Many Lives of a Japanese Classic (https://cup.columbia.edu/book/unbinding-the-pillow-book/9780231187985) examines the transformations of The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (Makura no sōshi, 11th c.) from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries in Japan as documented in a variety of sources, including scholarly commentaries, erotic parodies, instruction manuals for women, high-school textbooks, and comic books. Unbinding The Pillow Book was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2019 by Choice and as one of the Seminary Co-op Notable books for 2021.

Ivanova's recent publications explore the role of Japanese "classics" in manga (https://jll.pitt.edu/ojs/JLL). She is also completing a co-translation of One Hundred Exemplary Women, One Poem Each (Retsujo hyakunin isshu, 1847 https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/hundred/items/1.0055346). Her current book project centers on the eroticization of tenth- and eleventh-century women writers in early modern Japan.

Ivanova teaches courses in Japanese literary and visual culture.

View Full Profile

Jade Yuh-Hwan Lin

Adjunct Instructor, Asian, East European, and German Studies

726A Old Chemistry Building

513-556-2132

linyh@ucmail.uc.edu

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.

View Full Profile

Junko Markovich

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

4212 CLIFTCT

(513) 556-2735

markovjo@ucmail.uc.edu

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 also served as Ohio Association of Teachers of Japanese (OATJ)'s vice president, and was recently elected OATJ President for 2022-2024. 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.

View Full Profile

Dinshaw Mistry

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

4215 CLIFTCT

513-556-9313

mistrydj@ucmail.uc.edu

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, 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.

View Full Profile

Tanja U Nusser

Professor of German Studies & Director of Graduate Studies, Asian, East European, and German Studies

4250 CLIFTCT

513-556-2752

nusserta@ucmail.uc.edu

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).

View Full Profile

Peter Rehberg

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

741 Old Chemistry Building

513-556-0449

rehberpr@ucmail.uc.edu

View Full Profile

Landon Reitz

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

731 Old Chemistry Building

513-556-2716

reitzln@ucmail.uc.edu

Landon Reitz is a Visiting Assistant Professor of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati. He completed his PhD in German and Medieval Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation on the representation of reading in medieval and modern German literature. His current research projects explore digital modes of reading, medieval mystical practices, and contemporary German-languages narratives of migration. He is a member of the DFG-funded research network on reading in the 21st century.

View Full Profile

Randall James Rowe

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

Old Chemistry Building

513-556-9013

rowerd@ucmail.uc.edu

Dr. Randall J. Rowe II 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 was the Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian and the Instructional Lead for the UC STARTALK program in Russian language from 2021-2023. He comes from the PhD program in Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at The Ohio State University. He defended his dissertation "Mediated Social Hierarchies and Gender & Sexuality in the Russian Federation" in 2023. He has a BA from Michigan State University and MAs from New York University and The Ohio State University. His areas of expertise are Cultural studies, Gender and Sexuality studies, Russian and Polish literature, film and media.

View Full Profile

Evan Torner

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

4253 CLIFTCT

513-556-2749

evan.torner@uc.edu

Evan Torner defended his dissertation on race representation in East German genre cinema at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2013, and spent 2013-2014 at Grinnell College as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. He has published several articles pertaining to East Germany, critical race theory, DEFA Indianerfilme, science-fiction, transnational genre cinema, and game studies, as well as co-edited several books. His volume Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media co-edited with William J. White was published with McFarland Publishing in 2012, and he is one of the founding editors of the Analog Game Studies journal (http://analoggamestudies.org). His major projects underway include the Handbook of East German Cinema: The DEFA Legacy, co-edited with Henning Wrage and under contract with Walter De Gruyter, and a monograph entitled A Century and Beyond: Critical Readings of German Science-Fiction Cinema.

View Full Profile

Michiko Araki

Adjunct Instructor, Asian, East European, and German Studies

740 Old Chemistry Building

arakimo@ucmail.uc.edu

View Full Profile

Akiko Marui

Instructor - Adjunct, Asian, East European, and German Studies

740 Old Chemistry Building

maruiao@ucmail.uc.edu

View Full Profile

Tomoko Tsuzuki-Deboer

Instructor - Adjunct, Asian, East European, and German Studies

740 Old Chemistry Building

tsuzukto@ucmail.uc.edu

View Full Profile

Elaine M Dunker

Financial Administrator 2, Asian, East European, and German Studies

360D ARTSCI

513-556-1524

dunkerem@ucmail.uc.edu

View Full Profile

Cam Kruse

Program Manager, Asian, East European, and German Studies

5241A CLIFTCT

(513) 556-2730

krusecs@ucmail.uc.edu

Cam Kruse is the Program Manager for the departments of Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures (RALL) and Asian, East European, and German Studies (AEEGS). 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.

In his free time, he enjoys cooking, running, traveling, and exploring the depths of foreign language acquisition and teaching.

View Full Profile