Graduate Students
Current Students
Please note that many of the dissertation titles listed here are tentative.
Nicholas Albertsonnea@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
My dissertation research is on romantic poetry of the late Meiji period. I will spend the 2009-10 academic year at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, on a Fulbright-Hays grant.
Katherine Alexanderklalexander@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Thus far, I've worked mostly with Ming fiction and drama, while dabbling in the Yuan and Qing (and sometimes even the Tang). I was introduced to Chinese literature through the Jin Ping Mei, and have since worked with Honglou meng, Xiyou ji, and most recently, the Xixiang ji, and its Ming adaptation - Li Rihua's Nan Xixiang ji. I'm interested in looking at the social life and development of a story, be that how Scholar Zhang and Yingying's relationship has evolved from classical tale to various dramas, or the audience a late Ming publisher had in mind when collating his collection of all those versions. At present, I am studying for my qualifying exams in early Chinese drama, late imperial vernacular fiction, and Chinese religion.
Brian Bergstrombrbergst@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Interests: Contemporary Japan and the role of youth crime in the social imaginary.
Dissertation title: "Young Boys Doing Terrible Things: Youth, Crime, and Culture in Heisei Japan."
Max Bohnenkampmaxb@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Interests: Theories, Histories, and Practices of Folk, Popular, and Mass Culture in China and the World; Traditional, Humanist, Marxist, Nationalist, and Post-Modern Theories of Literature, Art, and Culture; Music, Oral Performance, Drama, Film, Fiction, Poetry and Visual Art.
Dissertation title: “Revolutionary Folklorism: Folk Literature and Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1942-1966,”
I received a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship for my dissertation to conduct research in China during 2009-2010. I am examining the role of modern theories of folk culture in Communist literary and artistic policy and how adaptations of traditional popular culture where utilized to express revolutionary aspirations from the Yan’an period to the eve of the Cultural Revolution.
Carly Buxtonannecarlton@uchicago.edu
Area of Study: Japan
Interests: Meiji history, specifically Shinto imagery and the aura of the emperor, imperial performances of historical legacy, the emperor as a symbol of national progress, kokugaku literature, and Social Darwinism
Ernest Caldwell pec@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Early China
Interests: My interests are broadly directed toward the development of early Chinese legal culture, late imperial Chinese legal history, and methodologies of comparative ancient legal history. More specifically, my dissertation utilizes excavated legal documents from the 4th to 2nd centuries B.C.E. to analyze the influence of the technology of writing on the form and function of particular types of legal documents. I am concurrently pursuing a Master of Law degree (LLM) in Asian Legal Studies from the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. Dissertation Title: "Writing Chinese Laws: The Origin and Development of Qin Legal Statutes"
Wei-Ti Chen
Heekyoung Chohcho@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Korea
Interests: Appropriation of Russian literature in colonial Korea via Japan; Translation Studies. For the academic year 2008-09, I received Korea FoundationFellowship for Graduate Studies,and I will be a post-doc Instructor at Yale for the year 2009-10.
Brian Cooper cooperbc@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Interests: I am interested in the roles Central Asians have played in China throughout the imperial era, and tied to that, the ways in which religious, political, economic and other pressures have affected how Chinese have dealt with "others" and how those "others" have dealt with Chinese. I aspire to be active in the fields of Silk Road and Dunhuang Studies, Chinese religion, and the history of Islam in China.
Richard Davis 
Mika Endoendo@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Interests: children’s stories, women’s writings, proletarian literature, theories of children and childhood, prewar language and literature education in Japan.
Dissertation title: Experiments for a Children’s Culture: Proletarian Stories and Children’s Writings, 1926-1937
In 2008 I returned from an extended research stay in Japan (Tokyo, Yamagata, Hokkaido) where I studied the seikatsu tsuzurikata movement, a composition-writing movement led by activist teachers throughout Japan and later suppressed by the wartime government.
Awards: 2008-2009 Toyota Centennial Research Assistantship; CEAS Dissertation Writing Fellowship
Helen Findleyhfindley@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Interests: Meiji Buddhist preaching practices, print media, and the advent of Western rhetorical studies in relation to public speech-making; religion and education in modern Japan
Dissertation Title: Moveable Feast: The Place of Sekkyo in Meiji Buddhist Discourse
Awards: 2005-present (currently pro forma status), Neuabuer Presidential Fellowship; 2008-09, Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship
Jonathan Glade
Anup Grewalagrewal@uchicago.edu
Area of Study: China
Interests: modern Chinese cultural history, literature and film; ideologies and practices of sexuality and gender in the inter-war period; Republican era and War of Resistance period women’s movements in the GMD and CCP; Chinese leftist political/aesthetic cultures and their relationship to an international left; Feminist and Marxist histories/theories of class, gender, experience and identification; History and theory of nationalism and the nation-state.
Dissertation Title: “A Revolutionary Women’s Culture: Re-writing Femininity and Women’s Liberation in China, 1926-1949”
Awards 2009-2010: CEAS Dissertation Writing Fellowship
Ethan Harknessharkness@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
My research focuses on excavated technical manuscripts from China of the late Warring States, Qin and Han periods. In particular, the social and cultural role of manuscripts primarily concerned with the selection of auspicious days for a variety of common activities will be the subject of my dissertation entitled “Cosmology and the Quotidian: Day Books in Early China.” I have received a Fulbright-Hays grant to do research in Taiwan in 2009-10.
Kuan-yun (Kevin) Hwangbc551@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
I am studying the newly excavated manuscripts of ancient China and am writing a dissertation titled, “Warring States conceptions of the Confucian Classics."
Tadashi Ishikawatadashi@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Interests: Japanese imperialism and colonialism and particularly in the history of Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule. I have sought to examine the intersection between legal and social history on the family and gender in colonial Taiwan.
Justin Jesty
Fumiko Joofumikoj@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
I specialize in late imperial Chinese fiction and cultural history. Currently I am working on fantastic tales of Ming-Qing China and Tokugawa Japan, Sino-Japanese cultural exchange and gender issues in pre-modern East Asia. I am writing up a dissertation entitled "The Peony Lantern and Fantastic Tales in Late Imperial China and Tokugawa Japan: Local History, Religion and Gender."
Hyun-Ho Joohhj@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Interests: Modern Chinese History, China-Korea Relations, Chinese Journalism
Teaching Experience: Colonizations, Chinese Civilization, Korean Language and Literature
Dissertation Title: “Modernizing the Empire by Traditionalizing the Tributary State: Late Qing ino-centrism and Chosŏn Korea”
Award for 2008-09: Dissertation Writing Fellowship, Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago
Jae-Yon Leejaelee@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Korea
Interests: Magazine culture, writing practice, and knowledge circulation in literary production in 1920s Korea. I am currently writing my dissertation, "Magazines and the Making of Modern Writers in Korea, 1919-1927."
Awards 2008-09: Korea Foundation Graduate Studies Fellowship; SSRC Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop. 2009-10: Humanities Overseas Dissertation Research Grant; Korea Foundation Graduate Studies Fellowship
Yuhang Liliyuhang@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Interests: material culture, gender and religion, the cult of Guanyin, women writers, painters and embroiderers in late imperial China.
Dissertation title: “Gendered Materialization: An Investigation of Late Imperial Chinese Women’s Artistic and Literary Reproductions of Guanyin”
Awards: 2008-09, CEAS Dissertation Writing Fellowship; 2009-10 Humanities Mellon Dissertation Write-up Fellowships
Daniel Patrick Morgan 
Camelia Nakagawaracamelian@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Interests: Japanese gardens as a means of artistic expression and as a form of social and cultural discourse; the Japanese garden phenomenon, not only as a strictly “Japanese” cultural construct, but one that has acquired a global ability to propagate a self-sustaining image with powerful performative and political implications; gardens as “built” environment and their conceptualization in dialectical tension with the socially constructed notion of “nature”; Japanese gardens and the rhetorics of power and the nation; Japanese gardens and their representations; their dialogue with other arts and with literature
Recent publications include “The Japanese Garden for the Mind: The ‘Bliss’ of Paradise Transcended,” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs Vol. 4, No.2, 2004; and “The Dialectic of the Family in Ozu Yasujiro’s Tokyo Story,” Toyo Eiwa College Journal 17, 1996.
Most recent awards include Bob Adams Dissertation Research Fellowship (2005-2006); Toyota Research Fellowship (2007-2008); CEAS Dissertation Writing Fellowship (2008-2009)
Hyun Hee Park
Hyun Suk Parkhyunsook@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Korea
I am currently exploring the eighteenth and the nineteenth-century fictional and nonfictional writings by male scholar-literarti who opted to adopt the female voice and persona.
John Person
Anne Rebull
Adam Schwartz
Tomoko Seto tseto@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Interests focus on early socialism and urban entertainment.
Awards, 2009-10: CEAS Japanese Studies Foreign Student Dissertation Research Fellowship
George Siposgsipos@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Interests: Japanese proletarian literature.
Dissertation title: 'The Narrative as Politics: Kobayashi Takiji, Miyamoto Yuriko and Sata Ineko and the Building of a Proletarian Identity in Japan'
Joshua Solomonjosolomon@uchicago.edu
Area of Study: Japan;
Interests: Tsugaru-jamisen,furusato and the appropriation of that national discourse within the "furusato" itself "Japanese music," dance, competition and tradition,postmodernism, critical theory, cultural hybridization, cultural coding of "ethnic" music in film/popular culture, audio/visual cross cultural performance, and bricolage.
Awards include Delta Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Iota Foreign Language Honors Society; Fulbright Scholarship to Japan; Summer Fellowship, Ursinus College; Association of Teachers of Japanese Bridging Scholarship
Suyoung Sonson@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Interests: Print culture in late imperial China
Dissertation title: Writing for Print: Zhang Chao and Literati-Publishing in Seventeenth-Century China
Mamiko Suzukimcsuzuki@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Research topic: Kishida Toshiko's diaries, women's rights and writing in the late 19th century Japan.
Kathryn Tanakaktanaka@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
My work focuses on writing by patients with Hansen's Disease in the early twentieth century. I explore the purposes and consequences of the genre of "Hansen's Disease literature" for patients and their readers, as well as the effect of including such a distinctive genre within the received literary history. I am particularly interested in the role of the body and experience in patient writing, and the connections between medicine and literature.
Dissertation title: "Hansen's Disease and Modern Japanese Literature, 1919-1944"
My awards include the Fulbright IIE, and with their support I will be conducting my research in Japan during the 2009-2010 academic year.
Jeffrey Tharsen
Chun Chun Tingccting@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Interest: Chinese literature and cinema, gender studies, urban culture, critical theory. Currently working on the escalating spatial politics in Chinese cities in terms of urban demolition and community preservation, my project brings history, memory, decolonization politics, and our future humanity to bear on the debate on development and preservation. I look at social movements as well as literary and cinematic texts, to explore how they challenge the developmentalist vision regarding Chinese cities, propose an alternative understanding of urban life, and constitute a social critique and praxis aiming at transforming the way we live our everyday lives.
Dissertation title: “Reclaiming the City as Home - the Contestation of the Urban in Contemporary Chinese Literature and Film”
Yi Wang
Smadar Winter
Song Xiangpanlune@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
In my dissertation I am exploring Republican Chinese cinema as a modern urban vernacular. While cinema was conceived of and practiced as an instrument of nation-building, it was also developed as a modern vernacular art form that could effectively engage audiences morally and emotionally. Questions I am trying to answer include: What traditional forms and modes were adapted to this montage-based modern medium and media and how? And what resulted when a nation-building ethos and its aesthetics intersected with the imperative to develop a narrative cinema that could appeal to average urban dwellers (especially those in Shanghai)?
Tie Xiaotxiao@uchicago.edu
Area of Study: China
I am interested in the emerging discourses of the crowd in Republican China (1911-1949). I study various modes in which crowds were conceptualized and represented as well as their different aesthetic and political implications in modern China.
Dissertation title: “In the Name of the Masses: The Conceptualization and Representation of the Crowd in Republican China”
Awards: 2009, Provost’s Summer Fellowship, Tave Teaching Fellowship to teach a course: “The Crowd in Modern Chinese Literature and Visual Culture” in the spring of 2010
Peng Xuxupeng@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Interests: Classical Chinese drama as literature, singing and performing art; print culture in late imperial China; Chinese opera films; gramophone recordings of Peking opera; and women’s poetry in late imperial China. During winter 2009 I served as Course Assistant to Judith Zeitlin’s course Chinese Martial Arts Tradition in Literature, Opera and Film.
Dissertation title: “Music, Literature, and Print Culture: The Literati Singing of Kunqu in Late Ming China”
I received a Friends of the Princeton University Library Research Grant for 2008-09.
Han Zhanghanzhang777@uchicago.edu
My research interests focus on the late imperial Chinese fiction, oral literature and cultural studies. Hopefully a further exploration on this field would be helpful to find the root of the transformations that have led to enormous discrepancies between modern and traditional Chinese cultures and shed light on current perplexities and disturbances.
Lidong Zhang
Yijiang Zhongyijiangz@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Interests: Pre-modern and modern Japanese history, Shinto, modernity and nationalism.
