Core Faculty

Daniel H. Bays
Director of the Asian Studies Program

Professor of History
Professor Emeritus, University of Kansas
Ph.D. University of Michigan, 1971

Professor Bays's major publications include China Enters the 20th Century (1978), Christianity in China: the 18th Century to the Present, ed., (1996), and over 20 articles. He has held an NEH fellowship (1973), two Fulbright-Hays research grants to Taiwan (1977-78 and 1984-85), and a National Academy of Sciences grant for research in China (1986). He currently teaches East Asian History.

Kelly James Clark

Professor of Philosophy
Ph.D Notre Dame University, 1985

Professor Clark specializes in Chinese thought, philosophy of religion, ethics, and narrative philosophy. He is the author of about 50 articles, and author, co-author or co-editor of a dozen books, including Return to Reason (recently translated into Chinese and published by Peking University Press), When Faith Is Not Enough, 101 Key Philosophical Terms and Their Importance for Theology, and The Story of Ethics . He organizes annual conferences of American and Chinese philosophers in China, and an annual exchange between the Philosophy departments of Calvin College and Peking University.  He has edited four books that were published in China and has written articles in Chinese philosophy including "A Confucian Defense of Gender-Equity," "The Gods of Abraham, Isaiah and Confucius," and "Three Types of Confucian Scholarship." He currently teaches Chinese Thought and Culture.

Lawrence R. Herzberg

Associate Professor of Chinese and Japanese
MA and ABD, Indiana University

Professor Herzberg has taught Chinese and Japanese at the college level since 1980 (Indiana University, Albion College, Calvin College). He has taught both languages from introductory through fourth year level literature courses, and at present teaches first and second year classes for both languages. He has visited China and Japan many times, including leading groups of Calvin students on January interim study programs. Larry and his wife, Qin (Instructor of Chinese), have published a book with travel advice for China entitled "China Survival Guide: How to Avoid Travel Troubles and Mortifying Mishaps" (Stonebridge Press, 2007). It's the first-ever guidebook that deals with the daily, nitty-gritty hurdles a tourist faces when traveling around China, done with a lot of humor as well as invaluable travel tips.
Larry and Qin have also produced a 50-minute documentary film on China called "China Today: Issues that Trouble Americans", which will be available for schools at all levels as well as church groups when it is released in 2008.

Professor Herzberg is assisted in teaching at Calvin by Qin Xue Herzberg (B.A., Beijing Normal University) and Yoshiko Tsuda (B.A., Shiga University), who handle third and fourth year classes in Chinese and Japanese, respectively.

Won W. Lee

Associate Professor of Religion. Ph.D.
Claremont Graduate University, 1998

Won W. Lee specializes in biblical exegesis, theology, and hermeneutics of the Old Testament. He is author of two books, Punishment and Forgiveness in Israel's Migratory Campaign (2003) and The Bible: A Library of Holy Writings (2005), 10 articles, and more than 40 book reviews. As a Korean-American, he is interested in bridging the gap between West and East in biblical scholarship that led him to teach two Interim courses on Asian biblical interpretation at Calvin, a week-long intensive course on the Bible as a Western classic at the Capital Normal University in Beijing, and lecture frequently in major Universities and Seminaries in Korea as well. He was also invited to deliver lectures on the book of Genesis and current debate on biblical interpretation at Peking University , Beijing China . Since 2000, he organizes biannual Calvin Seminar on Christian Higher Education in Korea which involves 4-5 Calvin faculty and 125-150 faculty members from various Korean universities. His recent publication on the Bible is in process of being translated in to Chinese.

Diane Obenchain

Professor of Religion
Ph.D. Harvard (1984)

Areas of Teaching and Research Interests: Comparative History of Religion, Chinese Traditions, Mission, Approaches to Study of Religion

Affiliated Faculty

Don De Graaf

Associate Professor of Physical Education, Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Dance, and Sport
Ph.D. University of Oregon, 1992

Professor DeGraaf is experienced in recreation programs, including day camps, family camps, and resident camps. He has resided and worked in Asia for several years, including the Philippines, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan, and his publications on recreation reflect his Aasian experience. He has in hte past taken student groups to Asia, and is interested in doing that at Calvin as well. He also has contacts for placing students as interns in recreation camp settings in Asia.

Peggy J. Goetz

Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
Ph.D. University of Michigan, 1999

Professor Goetz, trained in linguistics and developmental psychology, has taught in China and her research interests relate to Chinese language learning.

Ruth Groenhout

Associate Professor of Philosophy
Ph.D. Notre Dame, 1993

Professor Groenhout teaches and does research in ethical issues, including health care ethics. She has participated in the Philosophy Department's exchange with Xiamen University, and is interested in including Chinese materials in her courses, particularly her Health Care Ethics course.

Douglas A. Howard

Professor of History
Ph.D. Indiana University, 1987

Professor Howard is a specialist on Turkey and the Middle East, and he has developed a two-course sequence on the history of India. He would also like to develop other courses on Asia, including one on the empires of early modern Asia and another an interim class taught in India on the Mughal period.

Craig Hanson

Professor of Art History

John T. Netland

Professor of English
Ph.D. UCLA, 1989

Professor Netland teaches literature, including world literature, and has included novels by Japanese and Indian authors in his courses. He has a particular interest in teh novels of Shusaku Endo, and in the past three years has published two articles on the fiction of Endo. He is very interested in developing at least one new course in the English department focusing specifically on Asian literature, in taking students to Japan (where he lived for 16 years as a child), and continuing his recent research on Endo.

Johnathan Bascom

Professor of Geography
Ph.D. University of Iowa, 1989

Dr. Bascom joined the department in the fall of 2000. He is a graduate of Kansas State University (BS 1980, MA 1982). He worked a year for an economic research firm, then completed a Ph.D. in Geography at the University of Iowa (1989). His eleven-year tenure at East Carolina University included the university's Teaching Excellence award. He has been a visiting Lecturer at the Department of Geography, University of Asmara (1997-2005) and a visiting Research Fellow at the Refugee Studies Programme, Oxford University (1993). His work experience includes an internship with the Africa Bureau of the US Agency for International Development. Invited entries of his are found in the Encyclopedia of Sub-Saharan Africa and the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Bascom has written on a pedagogical approach to teaching Third World geography. Agencies that have supported his research include the American Philosophical Society, the US Agency for International Development, National Science Foundation, and the Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Program.

Elizabeth A. Vander Lei

Assistant Professor of English
Ph.D. Arizona State University, 1995

Professor Vander Lei is a specialist in language acquisition and the teaching of English as a second language. She has a particular interest in Asia, having made three trips there, and she is scheduled to be one of the first Calvin participants in the exchange with Handong University in South Korea, taking a class of ESL students to Handong in the January interim in 2003.