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East Asia Program

Jack (John) Zinda

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Associate Professor, Global Development

John Zinda studies social and environmental change, primarily in rural China. His research and teaching examine how state policies and community practices intersect to shape livelihoods and landscapes in contexts of agricultural development programs, afforestation efforts, biodiversity conservation, tourism operations, and labor migration.

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Program

Role

  • Faculty
  • EAP Core Faculty

Contact

Liren Zheng

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Curator Wason East Asian Collection

Liren Zheng is the curator of the Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia at the Cornell University Library. Previously he was the curator of the Dr. Shao You-Bao Overseas Chinese Research and Documentation Center, Ohio University Library.

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Program

Role

  • Faculty
  • EAP Core Faculty
    • SEAP Faculty Associate

Contact

Phone: 607-255-5759

Xin Xu

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Adjunct Associate Professor, Government

XU Xin is the program manager for the China and Asia-Pacific Studies program (CAPS). His research and teaching focus on Chinese foreign policy and East Asian international relations. His areas of interest include the identity politics of the Taiwan issue, China’s grand strategy, East Asian security politics, and Olympics and international relations.

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Program

Role

  • Faculty
  • EAP Core Faculty

Contact

Phone: 607-255-4741

John Whitman

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Professor, Linguistics

John Whitman is a professor of linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences. His main interest is the problem of language variation: its limits (how much specific subsystems can vary across languages) and predictors (what typological features co-occur systematically). Exploration of this general problem has led him to work on historical linguistics and language acquisition, in addition to his central interest in synchronic syntactic variation across typologically similar languages. 

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Program

Role

  • Faculty
  • EAP Core Faculty
    • SEAP Core Faculty

Contact

Ding Xiang Warner

Ding Xiang Warner

Professor, Asian Studies

Ding Xiang Warner's research interests include Chinese literature and literary thought from Han dynasty through the early Song, early and medieval Chinese intellectual history, and the study of textual production and text culture in premodern China.

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Program

Role

  • Faculty
  • EAP Core Faculty

Contact

Phone: 607-254-6562

Qi Wang

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Professor of Human Development, Psychology, and Cognitive Science

Qi Wang is professor of human development, psychology, and cognitive science at Cornell University. She is the past associate director of the Cornell East Asia Program and former department chair of human development.

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Program

Role

  • Faculty
  • EAP Core Faculty

Contact

Phone: 607-255-9376

Keith Taylor

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Professor Emeritus, Asian Studies

Keith Taylor became interested in Vietnam as a result of his U.S. Army service in the Vietnam War. He earned his PhD in 1976 at the University of Michigan. He subsequently taught in Japan and Singapore for several years before returning to the United States in 1987. He has visited Vietnam for research and scholarly exchange many times and lived continuously in Vietnam for two years in the early 1990s while studying and teaching.

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Program

Role

  • Faculty
  • EAP Professor Emeriti
    • SEAP Professor Emeriti

Contact

Phone: 607-255-3237

EAP Area Studies Fellowships

The deadline for this opportunity has passed.
Application Deadline: January 27, 2026
Application Timeframe: Fall
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Details

As a major conduit of graduate support, EAP offers the following area studies fellowships to Cornell graduate students whose work has an East Asia focus:

  • Lee Teng-hui Fellowships in World Affairs with East Asia Focus
  • C. V. Starr Fellowships in East Asian Studies
  • Hu Shih Fellowship in Chinese Studies
  • Robert J. Smith Fellowships in Japanese and Korean Studies
  • Diverse Knowledge East Asia

There is a single application for the five fellowships. You can apply for all that are pertinent to your graduate work. 

The application for funding generally opens in November and closes late January of the following year. Typically, these fellowships provide a tuition arrangement with your field, stipend, and health insurance for one semester of the upcoming academic year, either for fall or spring. Exceptional candidates may be considered for an extra semester of support. These fellowships are considered external funding to your field, and students who receive an EAP fellowship should arrange for funding for the rest of the academic year with their department. 

There is no citizenship restriction on any of the above-listed fellowships.

Eligibility 

  • Current Cornell Doctoral Students
  • No Citizenship Restriction

Application Requirements

  • Online Application HERE
  • A Proposal Narrative (see instructions below)
  • Two Letters of Recommendation (see instructions below)
  • A Budget Form (for in-absentia mode only)
  • A Supplemental Statement (for Diverse Knowledge East Asia fellowship only, see instructions below)

Instructions: Proposal Narrative

Proposal Narrative:

  • Explain your research project in non-specialist language – readers may be outside your field of work. 

  • Explain what you will do during the time of a fellowship. Where will the research take place, and what will be the product of the work? 

  • Explain concretely how the research fits into your graduate career. What kind of research product is required for your field, and at what stage of the process will you be when you use an EAP fellowship?

  • Fellowships are either in-residence at Cornell or in-absentia (fieldwork research) away from campus. In the application you will be able to select your preferred fellowship mode: 1) writing-focused in residence; 2) research-focused in-absentia; and: if not awarded your preferred mode, would you be open to being considered for another mode.

  • Length: 2-3 pages long, single-spaced. Aim for 3 pages. Do not exceed 5 pages.

Instructions: Letters of Recommendation

Recommendations from faculty for applications to the EAP Graduate Area Studies Fellowships in addition to evaluating the student's research and study should ADDRESS THE FOLLOWING POINTS regarding the graduate student’s career at Cornell.

1. Given that it is very unlikely that a student will receive more than one EAP fellowship over the course of their graduate career, is the next academic year the best time in the student’s Cornell graduate career to use a fellowship? Another way of thinking of this might be: do you wish to lodge with the EAP fellowship committee the request that a certain student be given priority (all other things being equal) the NEXT year?

2. Are there departmental or graduate field requirements, such as TAing, that would keep the student from making use of an EAP one-semester fellowship?

3. Will the student benefit more from doing research at Cornell, or from doing field work elsewhere in-absentia from Cornell?

4. If the student has any current incompletes on their record, are there any circumstances that would explain why these incompletes should not count against their good standing (e.g. INC is because a non-essential language course was discontinued)?

5. If this student would like to be considered for the Diverse Knowledge East Asia Fellowship category, include in your recommendation how their research in East Asian studies, their graduate study, and career in East Asian studies, and/or their background are impacted by issues of difference, diversity, under-representation, or racial social justice.

The East Asia Program seeks to support students with its fellowships in the manner that most benefits the student’s progress. To this end, we seek to award fellowships in a manner that works in concert with the Graduate School aid package and the graduate fields’ work and timetables.

Instructions: Diverse Knowledge East Asia Fellowship

The East Asia Program seeks to support research that expands and redirects the scope of East Asian Studies, providing more diverse, more inclusive, and more just viewpoints on the histories, cultures, languages, and populations of East Asia in a global frame of reference.

For the Diverse Knowledge East Asia Fellowship category, priority is given to:

  • applicants from groups historically underrepresented in East Asian Studies (both within the U.S. and globally). Eligible applicants might be from underrepresented minority groups, have experiences overcoming significant challenges and hardship in their path toward graduate school, be first-generation college graduates (this list is not meant to be exhaustive).

Consideration is also given to:

  • work on topics that further new, diverse knowledge about East Asia, especially projects that think critically about and seek to redress racial, ethnic, sexual, social (and other) inequities and injustices.

Applications to the Diverse Knowledge East Asia fellowship category are asked to include an additional, brief (<2 pages) statement of how their research in East Asian studies, their graduate study and career in East Asian studies, and/or their background are impacted by issues of difference, diversity, under-representation, or racial social justice.

Check out our FAQ before you apply.

Additional Information

Funding Type

  • Fellowship

Role

  • Student

Program

Suyoung Son

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Associate Professor, Asian Studies

Suyoung Son is a literary and cultural historian of early modern China (1500-1900). Her research focuses on the narrative tradition and social practice of writing and reading in the historical conditions of print culture, commercialization, and urbanization.

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Program

Role

  • Faculty
  • EAP Core Faculty

Contact

Naoki Sakai

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Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Arts in Asian Studies

Naoki Sakai teaches in the departments of Asian studies and comparative literature and is a member of the graduate field of history at Cornell University. He has published in a number of languages in the fields of comparative literature, intellectual history, translation studies, studies of racism and nationalism, and the histories of semiotic and literary multitude—speech, writing, corporeal expressions, calligraphic regimes, and phonographic traditions. He has led the project TRACES, a multilingual series and served as its founding senior editor.

Additional Information

Program

Role

  • Faculty
  • EAP Professor Emeriti

Contact

Phone: 607-255-1344

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