Adjunct

Morris Rossabi

Morris Rossabi

Associate Adjunct Professor

Office Hours: T 9-10 AM
Email: mr63@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Columbia University (’70)

Classes Taught

HSEA UN3898 The Mongols in History
HIST GR6999 Graduate Seminar – History of the Mongols

Research Interests

Asian History

Professor Rossabi is a historian of China and Central and Inner Asia. He teaches courses on Inner Asian, East Asian, and Chinese history at Columbia. During the 2008–2009 academic year, he received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Mongolia. He and Mary Rossabi are involved in an oral history of 20th and 21st century Mongolia, which has led to the publication of Socialist Devotees and Dissenters; A Herder, a Trader, and a Lawyer; and The Practice of Buddhism in Kharkhorin and its Revival (National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, 2010, 2012, and 2013).

Author or editor of 25 books, he has helped organize exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. He was on the advisory board of the Project on Central Eurasia and Chair of the Arts and Culture Committee of the Soros Foundation. The author of numerous articles and speeches, he travels repeatedly to China, Central Asia, and Mongolia. In 2021, the Minister of Foreign Affairs awarded Professor Rossabi a Certificate of Merit at the Mongolian Embassy to the United Nations.

Selected Publications

The Mongols and Global History (W.W. Norton, 2010)

Modern Mongolia: From Khans to Commissars to Capitalists (University of California, 2005)

Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (University of California, 1988)

Andrew Plaks

Andrew Plaks

Adjunct Professor
Office: 410A
Office Hours: WF 9:00-10:00
Email: ap3606@columbia.edu

Educational Background

AB: Princeton University (’67)
PhD: Princeton University (’73)

Research Interests

Chinese and Japanese Classical Literature

Selected Publications

Pu Andi Zixuanji (Collected Works of Andrew Plaks). Beijing: Sanlian shuju (2011)

“Zheng Xuan’s Commentary on the Zhouli,” in Statecraft and Classical Learning: the Rituals of Zhou in East Asian History, ed. Benjamin A. Elman and Martin Kern (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

“Why the Chinese Gods Don’t Suffer?,” in Studies in Chinese Language and Culture: Festschrift in Honor of Christoph Harbsmeier (2006).

“Xin as the Seat of the Emotions in Confucian Self-cultivation,” in Love, Hatred, and Other Passions, ed. Paolo Santangelo and Donatella Guida (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp.113-25.

“Completeness and Partiality in Traditional Commentaries on Honglou meng,” Tamkang Review (XXXVI:1-2), Fall-Winter 2005. pp. 117-35

“Xin as the Seat of the Emotions in Confucian Self-cultivation,” in Love, Hatred, and Other Passions, ed. Paolo Santangelo and Donatella Guida (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp.113-25.

The Highest Order of Cultivation and On the Practice of the Mean. London: Penguin Classics (2003)

Vinh Nguyen

Vinh Nguyen

Adjunct Lecturer in Vietnamese

Office Hours: Tuesday 4-6PM

Office: Lerner 569 (or Kent 502F)
Email: vqn2103@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Harvard University
MA: Harvard University

PhD: Harvard University (2024)

Research Interests

Late Premodern Vietnam, Vietnamese Literature and Cultural History, Hán-Nôm
Philology, Historiography, Literary Theory, Translation Studies, Gender and Queer
Studies

Nguyễn Quốc Vinh received his BA in East Asian Languages and Civilizations (EALC),
MA in Regional Studies – East Asia (RSEA) and PhD in History and East Asian
Languages (HEAL), all from Harvard University. He has done research in Vietnam under
fellowships from the Fulbright Program and the Social Science Research Council
(SSRC). The title of his dissertation is “From dynasty to nation: a historiography of the
dueling portraits of Nguyễn Huệ and Nguyễn Ánh.” His areas of specialization are the
Tây Sơn period in late eighteenth-century Vietnam, the transition from traditional
dynastic to modern nationalist historiography, nôm literature and gender/queer studies.

Selected Publications

“Nguyễn Ánh in the construction of a discourse of glorious restoration in nineteenth-
century Vietnam.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies (forthcoming in 2025)
“Narrative containment of the same-sex underworld in contemporary Vietnam. A critical
exploration of the police presence and function in Bùi Anh Tấn’s fiction.” Cultural
Studies 35:1,  44-63 (2021).

“Cultural Ambiguity in Contemporary Vietnamese Representations of Homosexuality: A
New Historicist Reading of Bùi Anh Tấn’s Fiction.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol.
10 No. 3 (Summer 2015). A revised Vietnamese version “Sự mập mờ văn hóa trong các
biểu thị về đồng tính luyến ái  tại Việt Nam đương đại: Thử đọc tiểu thuyết của Bùi Anh
Tấn theo chủ nghĩa Lịch Sử Mới” is published in Tiếp cận văn học châu Á từ lý thuyết
phương Tây hiện đại [Asian Literatures Read through Modern Western Theories], ed.
Trần Hải Yến. Hanoi: Social Sciences Publishing House, 2017.

Vietnamese edits and translations of the lectures “Thời tiền hiện đại trong văn học thế
giới” [The premodern in world literature] and “Những khuôn mặt trong đám đông”
[Faces in the crowd] by Stephen Owen, “Lý thuyết văn học: Từ chủ nghĩa cấu trúc đến
hậu cấu trúc” [Literary theory: From structuralism to post-structuralism] by David
Damrosch, “Lý thuyết chấn thương” [Trauma theory] and “Tính liên văn bản hay Cộng
đồng di dân” [Intertextuality or Diaspora] by Karen Thornber, in Lý thuyết và ứng dụng lý
thuyết trong nghiên cứu văn học (Tập bài giảng và tài liệu tham khảo) [Literary theories
and their application (Lectures and Readings)], edited by Trần Hải Yến. Hanoi: Social
Sciences Publishing House, 2016.

“Quang Trung – Nguyễn Huệ với phong trào Tây Sơn: Những di sản và bài học cho Việt
Nam trong thế kỷ 20 [Emperor Quang Trung – Nguyễn Huệ and the Tây Sơn
movement: Legacies and lessons for 20 th -century Vietnam].”  Closing essay in Quang
Trung Nguyễn Huệ: Những di sản và bài học [Quang Trung Nguyễn Huệ: Legacies and
Lessons]. HCMC: Xưa & Nay and Hồng Bàng, 2012.
Translated the full English text of the bilingual book Văn bia thời Lê xứ Kinh Bắc và sự
phản ánh sinh hoạt làng xã [The Stelea of the Kinh Bắc Region during the Lê period:

Reflections of village life] by Phạm Thị Thùy Vinh. Tủ sách Việt Nam [Bibliothèque
Vietnamienne] VIII. Hanoi: École française  d’Êxtrême-Orient, 2003.
“Confucianism in Tonkin (Northern Vietnam) at the end of the eighteenth century:
dynastic fortunes and cultural capital in decline,” in Confucianism in Vietnam. HCMC:
Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City Publishing House, 2002.
“Deconstructing the historical authorship of Cung-oán Ngâm-khúc [Lament in a Royal
Harem]: Canonical reading as dialectical emplotment of literary history.” Vietnam Forum
14 (1994), pp. 144-210. New Haven, CT: Yale University Council on Southeast Asia
Studies.