Michelle Mood

Michelle S. Mood (surnamed Strauss from 1976-1985) is the daughter of itinerant academics, having lived mostly in the East and Midwest United States on such campuses as Vassar College, Kalamazoo College and smaller universities before going to college to study comparative politics and political theory at Oberlin College. Her interest in China sparked by an honors project there, she went on to teach English at the remote China Institute of Mining and Technology before returning to study comparative politics, political theory and East Asian studies at Cornell University, receiving her Ph.D. in 1996.

She was Assistant Professor of East Asian Politics at Providence College for a few years, during which time she taught both Asian politics and comparative politics classes as well as the introductory first-year political theory course, "Introduction to Ideologies."

Since 1998 she has made her home with her family in Gambier, interrupted by years abroad, first as a post-doctoral fellow in Sweden (where her and partner Associate Professor Steve Van Holde's older son, Sam, was born) and then as a senior research fellow in China (while Professor Van Holde was Fei Yi-ming Professor of Comparative Politics) at the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing program in 2003-2004 and 2006-2007. Starting in 2000, Professor Mood has taught in political science, international studies and in the new Asian studies joint major.