Frederick R. Dickinson is Professor of Japanese History, director of the Center for East Asian Studies and co-director of the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies. Born in Tokyo and raised in Kanazawa and Kyoto, Japan, he teaches courses on modern Japan and empire and nation in modern East Asia. He holds an M.A. in International Politics from Kyoto University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Yale University. He has received grants from the Japanese Ministry of Education, the Fulbright Commission and the Japan Foundation and was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Kyoto). He has held visiting professorships at Swarthmore College, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Kyoto University (Kyoto, Japan) and Kwansei Gakuin University (Nishinomiya, Japan). He is the author of War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914–1919 (Harvard, 1999), Taisho Tenno (Taisho Emperor, Minerva, 2009 [in Japanese]) and World War I and the Triumph of the New Japan, 1919–1930 (Cambridge, 2013).
From January 2024-January 2025, Professor Dickinson will be serving as a Fullbright U.S. Scholar in Ho Chi Minh City. During this period, the Interim Director of CEAS is Siyen Fei.
Email: frdickin@sas.upenn.edu
Office: St. Leonard's Court, Room 400.9
Email: siyen@sas.upenn.edu
David Dettmann earned his M.A. in 2009 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the field of Central Asian Studies, and has since worked in higher education as an administrator, outreach coordinator, teacher, and educational liaison focusing on themes relating to East, Central, and Inner Asia. From 2009 to 2013 David worked as Assistant Director at the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught several courses focused on topics such as East Asian civilization and on themes relating to Mongolian and Chinese borderlands. Since 2015, David has coordinated educational outreach and professional development programs relating to East and Inner Asia from the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Example programs organized by David include the annual National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) East Asia seminar at Penn, and the 2016 National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Summer Institute on Modern Mongolia. David has a strong interest in the many cultures of Mongolia and China, and takes great pleasure in studying the region's languages, music, and foodways.
David is also a Program Manager and Consultant for the American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS).
E-mail: dettmann@sas.upenn.edu
Sunny Shang is currently a first-year graduate student in the Counseling and Mental Health Services (CMHS) Masters’ Program. She comes from China. Joining the Center for East Asian Studies was a natural choice for her, as it provides a unique platform to delve deeper into the rich cultural, historical, and socio-political perspectives of East Asia. Sunny is excited about the opportunities CEAS offers and contributes to this vibrant and fascinating community!
Telephone: 215.573.4203
Fax: 215.573.2561
E-mail: kshang@upenn.edu
Email: ruow@upenn.edu
Email: jianit@sas.upenn.edu
Email: miakao@sas.upenn.edu