Maggie Childs, Associated Professor and Chair, EALC

Maggie Childs, Associated Professor and Chair, EALC

Bio

I earned a B.A. at Gettysburg College in History in 1972, having started my study of Japanese at Middlebury Summer School in 1971 and attended Princeton University to study Japanese language, history, and literature and Chinese Art History as a visiting student for my senior year (1971-72). My first job was teaching English in Tokyo to businessmen. Then I worked in small Japanese owned businesses in New York City until I started an M.A. program at Columbia University, which I paid for with money I had saved from teaching English in Japan. I enjoyed the privilege of studying with Donald Keene there, but in 1976 I moved to the University of Pennsylvania for my Ph.D., since the Director of the Middlebury Summer Japanese School, Dr. Hiroshi Miyaji, invited me to study with Dr. Barbara Ruch, a specialist in medieval Japanese literature, with the financial support of a Japanese Language Teaching Assistantship. I earned my Ph.D. in 1983 and began my teaching career at Southern Illinois University. I was happy to come to K.U., where there is a much larger community of East Asian scholars, in 1987.