Denis Gainty

Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2007
phone: 404-413-5111
e-mail: dgainty@gsu.edu

Denis Gainty received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania's Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in 2007. His work investigates how social and biological bodies are envisioned and experienced in the context of modern nations and nationalisms. Rather than considering bodies as defined and limited by social forces, his work asks how bodies and embodiment are an important medium for local agency in modern nation-building through physical education, sports, martial arts, and other articulations of physical culture.

As a visiting lecturer from 2007 at Georgia State, he taught undergraduate World History and East Asian History survey courses. As assistant professor of world history, he looks forward to adding upper-level and graduate courses in world history and historiography, transnational encounters, and other topics to his bag of tricks.

His publications include a chapter in the forthcoming book Bodies in Asia as well as translations of Japanese articles and book chapters. An article on the late-19th and early-20th-century institutionalization of martial arts in Japan is under review, and he is working on his first book. He lives in Decatur with his wife, children, and ferocious Russian Dalmatian.