John Bundschuh

Dr. John Bundschuh is an Assistant Professor of Japanese at Swarthmore College, where he teaches Japanese language, linguistics, and classical literature. He earned his Ph.D. in Japanese Linguistics from The Ohio State University after completing his M.A. in Linguistics from Tulane University and spending five years teaching English in Japan.

His research focuses on Japanese Buddhist texts, East Asian writing systems, and the history of the Japanese language. Dr. Bundschuh's dissertation examined the relationship between narrative structure and grammatical expression of time in early Japanese translations of Chinese Buddhist sutras. He investigates how linguistic features like tense, aspect, and modality contribute to narrative construction in classical texts.

Current projects explore how Sanskrit grammatical structures were translated into Japanese through Chinese renditions. Dr. Bundschuh incorporates his research on linguistic variation and historical language change into classroom teaching.