Speaker Bios
Dr. Abe Yukinobu
Prof. Yukinobu Abe is Professor of Chinese history at Chuo University. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo. His primary research area is the examination of royal power and worldviews from the Han to Tang dynasties, as observed through the analysis of archaeological materials such as official seals, Buddhist bells, and animal statues positioned at the entrances of imperial tombs. His most recent publications include Inju ga tsukutta tenka chitsujo 印綬が創った天下秩序, Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2024; “Upon Distinctly Hearing the Bell’s Ringing, I Know I Am in the Imperial Capital: The Soundscape of Northern Wei Luoyang,” Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies 73. 1 (2025).
Dr. Chris Bellitto
Dr. Christopher M. Bellitto is Professor of History at Kean University in New Jersey, where he teaches courses in ancient and medieval history. A specialist in medieval and church history, his latest book is Humility: The Secret History of a Lost Virtue (Georgetown University Press, 2023). He has twice won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has been Visiting Scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary and a Fulbright Specialist in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Dr. Bellitto also serves as series Editor in Chief of Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition and Academic Editor at Large for Paulist Press. He offers public lectures frequently and is also a media commentator on church history and contemporary Catholicism.
Dr. Jamie Pelling
Jamie Pelling is a scholar of collective feeling and fantasy across the Middle East. Her research explores how emotional experience became entwined with large-scale historical processes throughout the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. In particular, she looks at different instances of "public work" by which new collectives were inspired, curated, and shaped in the midst of onrushing modernity, new states, and changing social norms. This idea of "public work" is at the center of her book project, Infrastructures of Attachment, which tracks a series of fantasies of the collective that spread from the Ottoman Empire across the world, some of which even travelled along the old Silk Roads.
Dr. Jacquelyn Stonberg
Dr. Jacquelyn Tuerk-Stonberg is Professor of Art History at Kean University. She received her doctorate in the history of Byzantine art and material culture from the University of Chicago. Her current book project is Medieval Magic: How to do Things with Words and Images in Byzantium which focuses on the use of amulets (small personal objects with word and images on them) as they were used in medicine, ritual power, pilgrimage and religion to affect human experience directly. She has also compiled an extensive annotated catalogue of 340 late antique and medieval archaeological objects related to the history of magic. She has conducted art and archaeological research in 41 different museums across 10 countries. As a Fulbright Specialist, she is working on an art history project with colleagues in Germany.
Dr. Elizabeth Hyde
Elizabeth Hyde is Professor of History at Kean University. She received her Ph.D. in History at Harvard University. Her first book, Cultivated Power: Flowers, Culture, and Politics in the Reign of Louis XIV explores the collection, cultivation, and political importance of flowers in early modern France. Her current research project is Of Monarchical Climates and Republican Soil: Nature, Nation, and Botanical Diplomacy in the Franco-American Atlantic World, an analysis of the North American mission of French botanist André Michaux and Franco-American botanical exchange. Her work has been funded by the NEH, the Mellon Foundation via New York Botanical Garden, and the American Philosophical Society. She is currently a Senior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, and the Editor of Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes.
Dr. Xurong Kong
Xurong Kong is Professor of Classical Culture in the Department of History at Kean University. She studies and translates classical Chinese texts, and works in related areas such as world history, literature, material cultures, and the Silk Roads. Her recent publications include a monograph on Fu Poetry along the Silk Roads (Arc Humanities, 2023) and a translation of Survey of Classical Chinese Literature (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024). She is an editorial board member of the journal Chinese Rhapsody Studies中國賦學, Fulbright Specialist, recipient of the CUSP (China-US Scholar Program) and JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science).
Ms. Hou Lin
Hou Lin is a Ph.D. Candidate at the School of History, Wuhan University. She holds a master's degree from Chuo University, Japan. Her current research focuses on the cultural history of the Qin-Han dynasties and ancient Chinese ritual systems.