Prof. Robert Entenmann
Robert Entenmann

Professor of History and Asian Studies
Ph.D., Harvard, 1982;
China, Japan, and Southeast Asia;
Asian Studies
x3427
entenman@stolaf.edu

Robert Entenmann, a graduate of the University of Washington, earned an M.A. in East Asian Studies at Stanford and a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard. He also studied at the Inter-University Center for Chinese Language Studies in Taiwan, where he also acted for a couple of days as an extra in a long-forgotten martial arts feature film. In 1980, he married Sarah Johnson, a graduate of Carleton College. Two years later, he came to St. Olaf College.

Entenmann teaches history and interdisciplinary courses on China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. His research studies the social history of Chinese Catholics in eighteenth-century Sichuan, a topic that has taken him to archives in China, France, and the Vatican.

His publications include two chapters in Daniel H. Bays, ed., Christianity in China from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Stanford University Press, 1996) and a contribution to Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, volume 1: 635-1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2001). Five of his essays have been translated into Chinese by Gu Weimin 顾卫民, a historian at Shanghai Normal University, and published in  Yan Huayang ,鄢华阳 [Robert Entenmann] et al., Zhongguo Tianzhujiao lishi yiwenji   中国天主教历史译文 (A Collection of translated essays on the history of Chinese Catholicism; Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, 2010).

In 1995 Entenmann was field supervisor of St. Olaf's Term in Asia and in 1997 he was a visiting scholar at Sichuan University. He has served on the board of directors of the Association for Asian Studies and was Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor at Carleton College in 2002-2003. In 2007 he gave the fall Mellby Lecture at St. Olaf College on "The Life and Times of Andreas Ly [李安德 1693-1774], Chinese Catholic Priest." Entenmann served as president of the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs in 2008-2009.

He and Sarah have two children - Leah, a graduate student at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, and David, a St. Olaf student.