Andrew W. Mellon John E. Sawyer Seminars
Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Mixed-Race Studies
Fall 2013 ~ present
—
Lily Anne Yumi Welty Tamai grew up in Oxnard, California speaking Japanese and English in a mixed-race household. Her undergraduate studies in Sociology and Biology shaped her research interests leading to advanced degrees in Biology and a doctorate in History from the University of California Santa Barbara. She conducted research as a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellow in Japan and in Okinawa. Dr. Welty’s dissertation research documents the history of mixed-race American Japanese born to Japanese mothers and American fathers after World War II between 1945 and 1972, and raised during the post-war period. She is a Ford Foundation Fellow and formerly a visiting post-doctoral scholar at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.
Former Postdoctoral Scholar
Christopher T. Callahan
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Japanese Religions
2012-2014
—
Christopher Callahan, a scholar of Japanese religions and Buddhism, completed his B.A in Philosophy at Washington and Lee University and two Masters degrees in Asian Religions and in Japanese Literature at the University of Hawai’i before receiving his Ph.D. from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University in 2011. Dr. Callahan is interested in religious biographies and the role that they play in the “life” of religious communities. His doctoral research at Harvard focused on the narrative and ritual representation of the life and thought of Shinran, the purported founder of Jôdo Shinshû (“The True Sect of Pure Land”) Buddhism, particularly in the illustrated hand scroll (emaki) biographies produced by Shinran’s great-grandson, Kakunyo.
Current Affiliation: Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies, Oberlin College (from Fall 2014)
