Integral
Conversation

Karen Thornber is Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.  She also serves as Victor and William Fung Director of the Harvard University Asia Center and Chair of the Harvard Asia Center Council.  Thornber is author of two multiple international award-winning scholarly monographs – Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (Harvard 2009) and Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literatures (Michigan 2012), and she has just finished her most recent book, titled Global Healing: Literature, Advocacy, Care.  Co-editor of a special issue of Literature and Medicine on World Literature and Health, a special issue of Humanities on Global Indigeneities and Environment which was also published as a separate volume, and a volume on The Poetics of Aging in the Japanese Narrative Arts, Thornber has also published six dozen articles on comparative and world literature, East Asian literatures and cultures, the literatures and cultures of the Indian Ocean Rim, diaspora, gender, indigeneities, postcolonialism, transculturation, trauma, and the environmental humanities and medical and health humanities.  Current projects include books on culture, technology, and inequality as well as a co-edited special issue of the journal World Literature on trans-Asian literatures and cultures.