David Atherton Japanese Literature

rtb2103@columbia.edu

My research concerns Japanese medieval narratives and oral traditions, particularly honji-mono, which recount the lives of gods and buddhas during a time when they lived as human beings. More broadly, I am interested in late medieval popular fiction and storytelling (otogi-zōshi, sekkyōbushi) and drama, as well as Buddhist anecdotal literature. At some point, I would like to engage in comparative work on the intersection between Buddhism and literature in East and Southeast Asia, using my academic background in Thai literature.

Ramona Bajema Japanese History

Rebecca Best Tibetan History

rsb2124@columbia.edu

Becky Best received her B.A. cum laude with distinction in Religious Studies at Yale University (2005) and an M.A. in Regional Studies: East Asia at Columbia University (2009).  In 2004 she studied in Lhasa with support from a Richter Fellowship and returned the next year as a foreign student at Tibet University.  In 2008 she studied in Beijing and Inner Mongolia with a Weatherhead Training Grant.  She is currently completing coursework in the Ph.D. program on Sino-Tibetan history, with a focus on the role of religion.  Her research interests include masked dance, magic and methods of material history.

Adam Bronson Japanese History

apb2114@columbia.edu

Adam Bronson received his BA from Chicago (2005) and is currently an ABD doctoral candidate in the History-East Asia program. He is currently writing a dissertation in the field of modern Japanese history on critics and intellectuals associated with the influential post-WWII journal Science of Thought.  His research explores issues related to Americanization, the Cold War, mass culture, and competing visions of scientific modernity in the aftermath of world war.  He recently presented a section of his dissertation entitled "Philosophical Youth as a Social Problem: Science of Thought and Kyoto School Criticism" at Waseda University.

Chang Ti-Kai Chinese Literature

tc2364@columbia.edu                            

Ti-Kai Chang received her B.A. in Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University (2006) and an M.A. in Film Studies at Columbia University (2009). Her research focuses on Chinese cinema, drama and visual cultures, with extensive interests in world cinema, film theory and film history. Her M.A. thesis examined the roles of Ang Lee and Eileen Chang as trans-cultural double agents through the close reading of Lust, Caution (Ang Lee, 2007). Currently she is conducting research on Taiwanese documentary and East Asian film culture during colonial period.

Christopher Craig Chinese History

crc2120@columbia.edu

Christopher Craig is currently an ABD doctoral candidate in the History-East Asia program conducting dissertation research in Sendai, Japan. He received his B.A. in History at the University of British Columbia (2004), and his M.A. in History at the same institution (2006).
His research interests include rural social structure and farmers'
movements in prewar Japan, and his dissertation will be a study of the role of influential local figures in the infrastructural development of rural Miyagi Prefecture over the period 1868-1945.

Chad Diehl Japanese History

crd2109@columbia.edu

Chad grew up in the Montana Rocky Mountains and came to Columbia in
2004 to pursue his interest in the modern history of Japan.  His dissertation details the reconstruction of Nagasaki City from 1945 to the early 1970s.  His other interests include judo, the art of cappuccino, composing music, and making guacamole.

Jennifer Guest Japanese Literature

jlg2156@columbia.edu

My interests center on questions of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic interaction, particularly the reception of Chinese texts and Chinese knowledge in Heian and Kamakura Japan; I am interested in the perspectives on China and the Chinese language that emerge from a range of premodern texts, especially wakan texts that make creative use of multiple literary styles. I am planning a dissertation project that will examine the cultural and literary impact of introductory kanbun primers in early Japan -- the ways in which these beginning textbooks mediate the reception of Chinese cultural material, and the implications of this process for the relationship between wa- and kan-style elements in early Japanese society.

Gal Gvili Chinese Literature

gg2336@columbia.edu

Gal is a modern Chinese literature student in EALAC as well a fellow in the Institute of Comparative Literature and society. She received her B.A and M.A from Hebrew University, Jerusalem before beginning her PhD at Columbia in 2008. She is mainly interested in cross-cultural journeys of literary genres, particularly in the rise of realism in modern China in its relation to biblical religions and to the notion of world literature.

Nan Hartmann Japanese Literature

nmh2109@columbia.edu

My research interests are cross-cultural comparison of classical Chinese and Japanese texts, intertextuality, Japanese reception and canonization of Chinese texts, the influence of Six Dynasties and Tang poetry (such as Bo Juyi) on Heian literature, and the impact of Ming-Qing vernacular fiction and criticism on 19th century Japanese prose literature.

Robert Hewitt Japanese Literature

rsh2109@columbia.edu

My dissertation research revolves around the late yomi-hon; historical novels from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I am particularly interested in the function of didacticism and allegorical composition, the role of government censorship, and influence of Chinese vernacular fiction in works by such authors as Ueda Akinari, Takebe Ayatari, Santō Kyōden, and Kyokutei Bakin.

Hino Takuya Japanese Religion

th2275@columbia.edu

Takuya Hino is a Ph.D. student with a focus in East Asian Buddhism. Originally from Japan, he received a B.A. in Chemistry (with a minor in Religion) from Pacific Lutheran University and a M.A. (with honors) in Buddhist Studies from the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley) before coming to Columbia. His research focuses on the history and doctrine of a particular sub-branch of Japanese esoteric (or Tantric) Buddhism-the Tachikawa-ry^u-during the (Japanese) medieval period. His broader research interests include the relationship between science and religion, Christian-Buddhist dialogue, Christian and Buddhist ethics, Buddhism and psychology, Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, Japanese esoteric Buddhism, Daoism, Shugend^o, Shinto, Buddhist literature, anime depictions of Japanese religion, late Heian (1086-1150) Japanese political history, and Japanese imperialism.

Sara Kile Chinese Literature

sek2114@columbia.edu

Sara Kile is a Ph.D. candidate in premodern Chinese literature at Columbia University, working under the guidance of Professors Shang Wei and Dorothy Ko. During the current academic year, she is based in Nanjing and is conducting dissertation research in China with the support of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. Last year she was instructor of Chinese language and literature at Beloit College. Her dissertation, “Experimenting in the Limelight: Cultural Entrepreneurship in Early Qing China,” takes the dynamic case of the literatus Li Yu as a window into the changing cultural and economic possibilities of the early Qing. This project grew out of her M.A. thesis, “Tracking Subversive Things and Migrant Silver in Ling Mengchu’s Vernacular Stories,” in which she explored cultural and entrepreneurial practices and shifting epistemologies as recorded in late-Ming fiction. She seeks to incorporate economic and cultural history, as well as material and visual culture into her study of the literature of the rocky period of the Ming-Qing transition.

Kim Jimin Korean History

jk2315@columbia.edu

Jimin Kim is a Ph.D candidate in modern Korean history. Her research interests include cultural aspect of foreign relations, modernization, and decolonization process of East Asian countries. Her dissertation focuses on American perception of the colonial Korea and how the perception made foundation for the U.S. policy toward Korea in the postcolonial period.

Kim Sujung Chinese and Korean Religion

sk2921@columbia.edu

Sujung Kim completed her M.A. in the philosophy department at Korea University in 2007. During her M.A. program, she focused on learning Indian Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist classical languages. Her thesis was about the concept of upāya in the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa. She has started her doctorate program at Columbia University in 2007 Fall. Currently, she is interested in Korean Esoteric Buddhism in East Asian Buddhist context. For her doctoral work, she plans to research various aspects of Korean Esoteric Buddhism from the Silla period to the Koryŏ (8-14CE) in relation to Chinese Esoteric Buddhism and Japanese Esoteric Buddhism.    

Lin Hsin-Yi Chinese History

hl2555@columbia.edu

I received my BA (2003) and MA (2007) in History from National Taiwan University, and came to Columbia University at 2009. My general research interest is Chinese religion history, including the interaction between Buddhism, Daoism and popular religion, how gender works and women’s beliefs in them. I have explored the idea of dharma’s decline in the medieval China, and how rulers, sangha, and women believers were influenced by and responded to this Buddhist eschatological crisis in my MA thesis. (The Decline of Dharma and Women’s Beliefs in Medieval Chinese Buddhism, Taipei: Dao Shiang Press, 2008). In the future, I plan to deal with women’s belief world from the perspectives of Buddhism-Daoism intercommunication in the medieval China.

Satoko Naito Japanese Literature

snl72@columbia.edu

Pre-modern and early modern Japanese literature. Her dissertation looks at the various images of Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji, to contemplate changing notions of authorship, gender, and genre. 

Gian-Piero Persiani Japanese Literature

gp2029@columbia.edu

My research interests are in classical Japanese poetry and, more generally, in collective, organized forms of cultural production. I look at how the interaction of a broad range of human, material, and discursive elements drives and sustains large-scale cultural phenomena. My dissertation deals with one of the great instances of collective literary efflorescence in antiquity: waka poetry in the mid to late-tenth century.

Pau Pitarch Fernandez Japanese Literature

pp2344@columbia.edu

Pau Pitarch received a BA in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain) and an MA in Language and Information Sciences from the University of Tokyo (Japan). His MA thesis dealt with the Taisho era writings of Sato Haruo and their development of European Aestheticism. Pau joined the Japanese Literature PhD program at Columbia University in 2009, to work on early 20th C narrative and criticism. He is interested in the connections between aesthetics and scientific discourse and the uses of "illness" as a literary and ideological trope.

Daniel Poch Japanese Literature

dtp2105@columbia.edu

A native from Berlin, Daniel received his M.A. in Japanese Studies, Chinese Studies and German Literature from the University of Heidelberg (2006). His dissertation project with the tentative title "Entangled Literacies: Dynamics of Sino-Japanese Intertextuality and Cultural Translation from the 10th to the Late 19th Century" examines and compares textual "sites" -- literary anthologies from the Heian, Edo and Meiji periods -- in which Chinese (kan) and Japanese (wa) styles, genres and poetic discourses intersect and/or merge. His broader interests also include Western (esp. German and French) literature as well as literary/aesthetic theory and philosophy.

Chelsea Schieder Japanese History

css2125@columbia.edu

Chelsea Szendi Schieder is a Ph.D. student in modern Japanese history, specializing in postwar film, political thought, social movements and the happy junctures at which these three intersect. Originally interested in European history east of Vienna, after time lived in Hungary she moved--both literally and figuratively--further East, although she harbors hope that her work retains a global perspective. She is currently working on her dissertation project on gender and community in the radical student Left in Japan.

Shibayama Saeko Japanese Literature

ss2065@columbia.edu

A native of Nagoya, Saeko received her B.A. from International Christian University, Tokyo and her M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Toronto.  Before turning to Japanese literature and entering EALAC in 2004, she studied Yiddish language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and Vilnius University, Lithuania.  Her dissertation examines the evolution of waka as a scholastic discipline in the twelfth century. 

Closely reading discursive texts (commentaries, treaties, glossaries, anthologies, judges' comments from poetry contests and the inventory of a monastic library), she discusses the revival of the genre during a tumultuous period of rule by retired emperors. The recipient of a Shincho fellowship, she worked in Tokyo 2007-09.

Shimazaki Satoko Japanese Literature

ss1116@columbia.edu

My dissertation “Yotsuya kaidan and the Cultural Imagination of Ghosts in Early Nineteenth-Century Japanese Theater and Literature” deals with the meaning of female ghosts in the late Tokugawa period, and with the intertwined performative, visual, and textual contexts of nineteenth century cultural production out of which these ghosts emerged. My interests include kabuki theater and its interactions with narrative fiction, performance and textual theory, actor prints, and Tokugawa period adaptations of Chinese vernacular fiction.

Nathan Shockey Japanese Literature

nps2105@columbia.edu

I am currently developing a project that explores the roles of body and technology in mediating experiences of life and literature in the 1920s through the 1950s. My research focuses on the fiction and criticism of the Neo Sensationists and writers of proletarian literature, as well as the urban ethnography of Yanagita Kunio. My dissertation is tentatively titled "Body Shock: Technologies of Reading and Literary Violence in Japan 1920 - 1950.

Rafal Stepien Chinese Religion

rs2859@columbia.edu

Rafal Stepien received his first B.A., with a double-major in Philosophy and English, from the University of Western Australia. He then studied Italian and Persian language and literature at the Universities of Bologna and Esfehan respectively. Following a stint working as a Persian interpreter in Afghanistan with the International Committee of the Red Cross, he gained a second B.A., this time in Chinese from the University of Oxford, during which time he also spent a period of study at Peking University. Following this, he received an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge, where he worked on classical Persian Sufi poetry.

In 2009 Rafal began his Ph.D. program at Columbia, where he is the Cihui Foundation Faculty Fellow in Chinese Buddhism. He is concerned with poetry as a vehicle for spiritual insight. More specifically, his research, while based primarily within the field of Chinese Buddhism, seeks to explore the intersections between Buddhist poetry in Chinese and Sanskrit and Islamic Sufi poetry in Arabic and Persian.

Ariel Stilerman Japanese Literature

ags2141@columbia.edu

Ariel Stilerman received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2002) and his M.A. in Japanese Studies
(Literature) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (2006) with a dissertation on the role of prose contexts in the construction of the traditional poetic canon. He taught Statistics at the University of Buenos Aires (2003-4) and trained in the Tea Ceremony at Urasenke Konnichian, Kyoto (2006-7). He specializes in premodern Japanese literature with a view on completing a thesis on the interaction of poetry and prose in poetic anthologies, narrative, drama, travel diaries, and hybrid genres. He has interest in translating classical Japanese texts into Spanish to help further develop the field of Japanese studies in Latin America and Spain, where he resided for two years. He regularly contributes articles on gastronomic culture to Vinos & Sabores magazine. He sailed competitively while in college and still dreams of one day crossing the Atlantic ocean under sail.

Myra Sun Chinese Literature

mms2213@columbia.edu

Myra is a first year Ph.D. student focusing on modern and contemporary Chinese literature.  She received her B.A. in Chinese and English literature from UC Berkeley.  She is interested in the relationship between image and text, and the ways in which these modes of representation function and interact in contemporary fiction, vernacular Chinese literature, as well as traditional cartographic practices.  Currently, she hopes to expand her undergraduate research on Hong Kong writer Xi Xi's "picture-book" narratives within larger theoretical frameworks of temporality and space.

Takai Shiho Japanese Literature

st2431@columbia.edu

Shiho Takai received her B.A. from University of Tokyo (2004) in British Area Studies and her M.A. from Washington University in St. Louis (2006) in Japanese Literature before joining the Ph.D. program at Columbia University.  Her general research interests include gender, genre, performance, reception, supernaturals, censorship, and the formation of cultural legends and heroes.  She is now working on her dissertation project on the Edo period theater and law, especially representation of criminal women in sewamono jōruri puppet plays and kabuki, and their relation to the contemporary socio-legal establishment.

Luke Thompson Japanese Literature

lnt2106@columbia.edu

Luke Thompson is a Ph.D. student majoring in East Asian Buddhism.  
Before relocating to Manhattan in the autumn of 2007, he received a B.A. in Japanese Language and Culture from Antioch College (2002) and a M.A. (first class honors with distinction, 2007) in Buddhist Studies from the University of Bristol, England; at the latter institution his studies focused on Theravada Buddhism and Classical Sanskrit. His primary research interest is Buddhist doctrinal transformation during the Kamakura period, particularly amongst the so-called Nara schools, or Nanto-bukkyo.  His broader academic interests include Japanese esoteric Buddhism, the social and doctrinal history of Theravada Buddhism, Buddhist intellectual history, Japanese dietary and agricultural history, and the history of Western Religious Studies.

Dominique Townsend Tibetan History

dt80@columbia.edu

Dominique Townsend completed a BA in Religion from Barnard College in 1999 and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School in 2006. Since then she has been pursuing her PhD at Columbia. Between her undergraduate and graduate studies she lived and worked in Tibetan Buddhist communities in Nepal, India and Tibet. Dominique’s main area of study is Tibetan Buddhism, with a focus on aesthetics and high culture in traditional Tibet. Her research is on the Mindrolling monastic lineage, founded in the late 17th Century. Mindrolling is famous for its literary, musical and visual arts traditions as well as ties to Tibetan government and aristocracy. Dominique’s proposed dissertation title is A Field of Elegance: Mindrolling as Arbiter of Tibetan Buddhist High Culture and Aesthetics.

Robert Tuck Japanese Literature

rjt2110@columbia.edu

Steven Wills Japanese History

smw2003@columbia.edu

Steven Wills is a PhD candidate in Japanese history. His research interests include the urban and social history of Japan from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century, the historicity of human-environmental relations, historical approaches to urban disasters, and visual and material culture.

Charles Woolley Japanese Literature

cew2131@columbia.edu

Despite hailing from Upstate New York, Charles Woolley headed north to receive his B.A. in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto (2007), after the completion of which he was briefly repatriated before being granted the opportunity to research the development, establishment and institutionalization of the 'family restaurant' format within popular culinary culture in Japan under the auspices of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program (2007-2008). In 2008, he was admitted to Columbia's Ph.D. program in Japanese Literature where he continues to explore his interests in the processes of trans-contextual translation and adaptation between the 'West' and Japan and their roles in the construction and elaboration of new linguistic and discursive idioms in the early twentieth century.

Minna Wu Chinese History

mw2222@columbia.edu

Minna Wu received her B.A. (1999) and M.A. (2002) from Peking University and currently is a Ph.D. candidate in early Chinese history at Columbia University.  During this academic year, she is conducting dissertation research in China with the support of a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Research Fellowship in East and Southeast Asian Archaeology and Early History.Her dissertation ,“On the Periphery of a Great ‘Empire’: Secondary Formation of States and Their Material Basis in the Shandong Peninsula during the Late Bronze Age: ca.1045-500 B.C.E.”, focuses on the discussion of the different trajectories and social changes  of secondary states in Shandong peninsular had underwent toward statehood during the Late Bronze Age in China.

Yasuda Anri Japanese Literature

ay105@columbia.edu

The working title for my dissertation is “Seeing and Writing: Paradigms of Artistic Vision in Modern Japanese Literature.” My particular focus will be on how new modern regimes of information processing and consciousness as fostered particularly by changing conditions of visuality and spatiality brought on by technological advancements and urbanization, conditioned writers’ perceptions of themselves as seeing subjects and their ideals of aesthetics. I will concentrate on the late Meiji to early Showa periods, though I am starting to study the contemporary Heisei period as well.

Christina Yi Japanese Literature

csy2103@columbia.edu

Christina Yi's research interests are modern Japanese literature written by Resident Koreans; early 20th century discourse on Japanese imperialism and colonial identity; postcolonial studies in an East Asian context.

Yoshio Hitomi Japanese Literature

hy2163@columbia.edu

Hitomi received her B.A. in English at Yale University (2001) and an M.A. in English at the University of Tokyo (2005).  She is now a Ph.D. candidate in modern Japanese literature at Columbia University.  Her dissertation examines Japanese literary modernism from the interrelated perspectives of gender, urban space and translation culture, in the context of the developing publishing industry and mass media in the 1920s and 30s.  She is currently in Japan doing her dissertation research at Waseda University (2009-10).

Zhong Yurou Chinese Literature

yz2184@columbia.edu

Zhong Yurou is a fourth year PhD student in modern Chinese literature. 
Her research concerns the history of Chinese language reform, the emergence of modern Chinese literature, and translation theory. Her dissertation project investigates the transnational making of modern Chinese language and social reforms in the early 20th century.  Specifically she will be focusing on the Literacy Movement in the Great War, the Chinese Romanization Movement and the Chinese Latinization Movement.