Two USC professors have been named by Mary Anne Fitzpatrick, dean of arts and sciences, to direct area programs.

Karl Gerth, associate professor of history, is the new director of the Center for Asian Studies, while Jeff Persels, associate professor of languages, literatures, and cultures, has been appointed director of European studies.

Gerth teaches modern Chinese and East Asian history with special interest in social history, nationalism, consumer culture, and everyday life under communism. He is the author of China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2003), which examines the connections between nationalism and consumerism in China in the first half of the 20th century.

Persels, who specializes in French literature and culture in the 16th century, has research interests in polemical literature of the French Wars of Religion and the rhetoric of French Evangelical Humanism. He has been active in the restructuring of the European Studies curriculum, promoting study abroad opportunities for students, and the development of a focus within the European studies program on European identities, including the issues confronting Muslims in Europe today.

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