Karen L. Thornber – Curriculum Vitae – 1 KAREN LAURA THORNBER Mailing address: Harvard University CGIS South Building, Room S222 1730 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 USA Email: [email protected] 32T Cell: (781)-296-5140 Updated: June 11, 2021 Research and Teaching Fields: Comparative literature, world literature, global literature, and the literatures and cultures of East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan), as well as the Indian Ocean Rim (Southeast and South Asia, Middle East, Africa), and more recently the Pacific Rim (the Americas, Asia, and Oceania); medical humanities and health humanities (including chronic illness, epidemics/pandemics, death and dying, mental health, and disability), environmental humanities, ecocriticism; displacement, migration, diaspora; social justice, including inequality, and economic, gender, health, racial, criminal, and environmental (in)equality and (in)justice; gender, Asian/global feminisms, gender and leadership; empire, postcolonialism, transculturation, translation, intertextualization; trauma; global and comparative indigeneities; criminal justice humanities. Academic and Leadership Positions______________________________ Co-Chair, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Financial Study Group, 2020-Acting Director, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard, 2020 Victor and William Fung Director, Harvard University Asia Center, 2016-2019 Working with the Faculty Steering Committee (faculty members from across Harvard, including 9 professsional schools), transformed the Asia Center into a fully fledged international research center with strong faculty governance and a diverse array of policies and programs that promoted transparency, accessibility, diversity, inclusion, and belonging and made the Center a leader in the study of Asia in transnational and transregional perspective. The 2018-2019 Annual Report can be found here. Chair, Harvard University Asia Center Council, 2016-2019 Harvard University, Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Civilizations Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, 2013-2014 Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Comparative Literature, 2010-2011, 20132016 Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, 2019-Professor of Comparative Literature and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, 2014-2019 Karen L. Thornber – Curriculum Vitae – 2 Professor of Comparative Literature, 2012-2014 Harris K. Weston Associate Professor of the Humanities, 2011-2012 Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, 2007-2011 Research Associate, Department of Comparative Literature, 2006-2007 Harvard University, Program in Regional Studies East Asia Chair, 2013-2014 Director of Graduate Studies, 2014-2016 Northeastern University, Lecturer, Department of History, Spring 2006 Education____________________________________________________ U Ph.D. Harvard University , East Asian Languages and Civilizations, June 2006 U Dissertation: Cultures and Texts in Motion: Negotiating and Reconfiguring Japan and Japanese Literature in Polyintertextual East Asian Contact Zones (Japan, Semicolonial China, Colonial Korea, Colonial Taiwan, 1895-1945). 3 vols., 966 manuscript pp. Dissertation Prizes Charles Bernheimer Prize, American Comparative Literature Association, for the best dissertation in North America in the field of Comparative Literature, 2007 International Convention of Asia Scholars (Leiden) Book Prize, global competition for the best dissertation in the field of Asian Studies, 2007 Achilles Fang Prize, for the best dissertation in East Asian Humanities, Harvard University, in the triennium 2006-2009 U A.B. Princeton University , Comparative Literature, June 1996. Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa; GPA 4.03; Minors in East Asian Studies, Japanese Language and Literature, Romance Languages and Literatures U Senior Thesis: Toward Human Dignity: The Poetry and Poetics of Tōge Sankichi. 232 manuscript pp. Senior Thesis Prizes Center for Human Values Senior Thesis Prize for Outstanding Work in Ethics and Human Values, 1996 Department of Comparative Literature Senior Thesis Prize, 1996 U Languages__________________________________________ Major research languages: Japanese, Chinese, and French. Advanced proficiency in Korean and German. Reading knowledge of Classical Japanese and Classical Chinese (graduate seminars in the original literatures of both languages). Intermediate knowledge