Research Fields: comparative literature and cultural history, world literature, and the literatures and cultures of East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan), as well as the Indian Ocean Rim (South and Southeast Asia, Middle East, Africa); Asian diasporas and intersections among Asian and Asian American studies; medical humanities, health humanities (including chronic illness, epidemics/pandemics, death and dying, mental health, and disability); environmental humanities, ecocriticism, sustainability, climate change; displacement, migration, diaspora; social justice, including inequality, and economic, gender, health, racial, criminal, and environmental justice; gender, Asian/global feminisms, gender and leadership; empire, postcolonialism, transculturation, translation, intertextualization; trauma; global and comparative indigeneities. Research languages include Chinese (modern and classical), French, German, Japanese (modern and classical), and Korean, as well as some Hindi/Urdu, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and limited Indonesian and Swahili. A 2006 PhD from Harvard’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literatures), Professor Thornber is a cultural historian and scholar of Asian literature and media working primarily in the fields of environmental humanities; medical and health humanities; gender justice, environmental justice, climate justice, and other forms of justice; and transculturation (e.g., translation studies, world literature, comparative literature). Professor Thornber conducts research in more than a dozen Asian and European languages, modern and classical. In addition to publishing actively (6 single-author scholarly books, 80 scholarly articles/chapters, several (co)edited volumes), Professor Thornber has held a range of leadership and service positions at Harvard and well beyond and taught, advised, and mentored graduate and undergraduate students from across the humanities and related social sciences.