The Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Center (AMES Center)
The Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Center (AMES Center) at Saint Louis University aims to serve, uplift, and deliberate the Asian and Middle Eastern communities through student-focused events, lectures, film nights, and more
The Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Center at Saint Louis University, formally established in 2024, aligns with the Jesuit mission of attaining mutual understanding and a common higher ground through respectful discourse and reflective understanding of the self and others. The center is committed to studying cultures in Asia and the Middle East and collaborates on research and scholarship across the College of Arts and Sciences, where it resides. It also partners with universities and institutions worldwide, fostering dialogue, movement and relationships.
From an intellectual perspective, the West discovered Asia through the pioneering missionary work of the Society of Jesus in the 16th century. Perhaps most widely known today is the work of Matteo Ricci, S.J., who became influential in China as a leading intellectual in Beijing and lived and wrote there from 1582 to 1610. Also profoundly influential was Alessandro Valignano, S.J., who founded St. Paul’s University College of Macau in 1594 on the premise that the serious study of Asian cultures and languages was essential for engaging local communities and practicing the Ignatian mission.
Signature events include the Matteo Ricci Speakers Series: China, Christianity, the Jesuits, and Intercultural Dialogue; the Silk Roads Lecture Series: People, Objects, and Stories on the Move; and Coffee-Time Talks on Chinese Thought. Additionally, the center supports collaborations across departments and institutions, writing, reading and translation study groups, and public-facing events with partner universities and institutions in the larger community.
Leadership Team
Pauline Lee
AMES Center co-founding director
pauline.lee@slu.edu
314-977-2893
Pauline Lee is an associate professor of Chinese thought and cultures at Saint Louis
University.
Her scholarship focuses on ethics in Chinese thought, placing her work at the intersection of disciplines including religious studies, philosophy and literature. She is the author of Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire (State University of New York Press, 2012), which examines the 16th-century Chinese iconoclast Li Zhi and his views on self-expression and desire in a good life.
With Rivi Handler-Spitz and Haun Saussy, she co-edited A Book to Burn and A Book to Keep (Hidden) (Columbia University Press, 2016), the first English-language volume of translations on this major thinker, and The Objectionable Li Zhi: Fiction, Syncretism, and Dissent in Late Ming China (University of Washington Press, 2021), the first English-language volume of critical essays on Li.
She has also published or developed projects in comparative religions, feminism, space and place, conceptions of children, democracy in China, digital humanities, and public-facing art. Her current major project, provisionally titled Play in China: The Trifling, the Wicked, and the Sacred, examines changing views of play in China through religious and philosophical classics, commentaries on these works, as well as paintings and playthings.
She has served as co-chair of the Confucian Traditions Unit of the American Academy of Religion. At Saint Louis University, she is the co-founding director of the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Center and, with Rachel Lindsey, co-director of the initiative Lived Religion in the Digital Age (religioninplace.org), supported by a Henry R. Luce Foundation grant for advancing public scholarship on religion and theology.
In her spare time, she is an avid figure skater.
Neve Dole
AMES Center student administrator
neve.dole@slu.edu
Neve Dole is a senior majoring in psychology with a double minor in political science and Asian studies. She currently serves as co-president of the student-led cultural organization Asian American Association.
Dole hopes to pursue a master’s in public health, with goals of leading health initiatives, designing wellness programs, and assessing prevention effectiveness to connect underserved communities with essential resources, such as mental health assessments.
In her spare time, she participates in the Collective Identity Lab and volunteers with the National Alliance on Mental Illness St. Louis. Outside of academics and extracurricular activities, she enjoys running, reading and watching New Girl.
Dru Swadener
AMES Center coordinator
dru.swadener@slu.edu
Affiliated Faculty
Vincent Caseregola, Ph.D.
Vincent Casaregola, Ph.D., teaches American literature and film, creative writing
and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. Since 2012, he has taught a course
on Chinese and Chinese American film that examines how cinematic images of China and
the Chinese people have shaped American attitudes. He regularly presents scholarly
papers and publishes essays on a range of subjects in film and media studies.
Mary Chittooran, Ph.D.
Mary (Rina) M. Chittooran, Ph.D., NCSP, is a professor and school psychologist in the School of Education at Saint Louis University. Her teaching and research interests include professional and research ethics, teacher and student well-being, the responsible use of artificial intelligence, and international students.
Cathleen Fleck, Ph.D.
Cathleen A. Fleck, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, teaches art history courses at Saint Louis University, concentrating on topics related to the medieval era and the Mediterranean region, including Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East, as well as the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Her publications focus recently on images of the holy city of Jerusalem, including her book Reimagining Jerusalem's Architectural Identities in the Later Middle Ages (Brill, 2022). She is also co-authoring a forthcoming book titled Encounters: The Crusades in 50 Objects (Routledge, 2026).
Hisako Matsuo, Ph.D.
Hisako Matsuo, Ph.D., is a professor of research methodology and sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and a core faculty member of the Public and Social Policy Program at Saint Louis University. Her expertise includes research methodology (research design, statistics and qualitative study), immigrants and the healthcare system.
Her current research focuses on refugees and their cross-cultural adaptation, as well as successful aging among immigrants. She uses both quantitative and qualitative approaches for data collection and analysis.
Matsuo has secured external grants as principal investigator, co-investigator or as part of the research team from the Lilly Foundation, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Regional Health Commission and Missouri Foundation for Health.
She launched the "Culturally Appropriate Transformation to Culture of Health (CATCH)" program, through which SLU volunteer students offer personalized health coaching to immigrant communities by collaborating with an interdisciplinary faculty team and community organizations. She is also the director of SLU’s Minor in Research Methodology.
Ani Honarchiansaky, Ph.D.
Ani Honarchiansaky, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of early Christianity and late
antiquity at Saint Louis University. My research focuses on Armenian, Iranian and
Islamic studies, with an emphasis on religious and social theories surrounding empires
and their subjects.
In her teaching, she incorporates geographical digital tools to engage students with travel narratives and historical perspectives. I teach Christian Tradition I and Religion and Paideia at the graduate level, and Islam: Society, Religion and Culture and Faiths on the Move: Mapping Travel Stories from the Early Medieval Period at the undergraduate level, the latter being a new collaborative inquiry core course.
Nicolò Sassi, Ph.D.
Nicolò Sassi is an assistant professor of ancient and medieval Christianity in the
Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. His research focuses
on the ancient and medieval literatures of the Christian East. He has published studies
on Byzantine mysticism, Syriac literature, the Nag Hammadi library and Ethiopic hagiography.
He is currently working on a monograph about the circulation of tales across Eastern Christian communities, engaging the broader theoretical question of how the migration of stories shapes the religious imagination.
Helen De Cruz, Ph.D.
Helen De Cruz, Ph.D., holds the Danforth Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University. She is the author of Wonderstruck: How Awe and Wonder Shape the Way We Think (Princeton University Press, in press) and Religious Disagreement (Cambridge University Press, 2019). She also edited and illustrated Philosophy Illustrated: Forty-Two Thought Experiments to Broaden Your Mind (Oxford University Press, 2022).
In addition to her Ph.D. in philosophy (2011, University of Groningen), she holds a Ph.D. in archaeology and art sciences (2007, Free University of Brussels).
Joya Uraizee, Ph.D.
Joya Uraizee, Ph.D., is a professor in the English Department, where she teaches African
and postcolonial literature and film. Some of the courses she has taught include:
- English 4680, Major Postcolonial Writers
- English 4670, Women Writers from Eastern Africa
- English 3500 (formerly 325 & 385): Postcolonial Literary Traditions
- English 322: Women in Literature
- English 2750 (formerly 270): Film, Culture & Literature
She is the author of four books:
- Makalaangow: Memoirs of an African Woman (Africa World Press, 2024), co-authored with Gobey Haji
- Writing that Breaks Stones: African Child Soldier Narratives (Michigan State University Press, 2020)
- In the Jaws of the Leviathan: Genocide Fiction and Film (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010)
- This is No Place for a Woman: Nadine Gordimer, Nayantara Sahgal, Buchi Emecheta and the Politics of Gender (Africa World Press, 2000)
She is currently working on a manuscript about African child refugee narratives.
Yun A. Lee, Ph.D.
Yun A. Lee, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Chinese and the program coordinator
for Chinese and Asian Studies. Her research interests include modern Chinese and Sinophone
fiction and film, translation studies and cultural studies.
Her primary work concerns the transformation of the Chinese short story at the beginning
of the 20th century, as well as contemporary Sinophone fiction and film that explore
identities, historical perspectives and various forms of cultural exchanges.
She received her Ph.D. from Ohio State University and her M.A. from Columbia University.