Graduate Students
Current Students
Please note that many of the dissertation titles listed here are tentative.
Scott Aalgaardaalgaard@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
My field of study is contemporary Japan. My main interest is in the ‘historicity’ of modern and contemporary Japanese social development, with particular emphases on political economy, the challenges facing rural communities, the hegemony of ‘culture’ and the drive to survive. I seek to reveal something of the desires at work engineering society by considering these through the lens of popular music and musical engagement, paying particular attention to the manner in which historically and geographically specific individuals affected by the world at large may take meaning from specific genres, artists or songs, and why. My academic experience has been counterbalanced by stints farming radishes, working in sumo restaurants, working with local social service agencies and working in the music industry in Japan.
Nicholas Albertsonnea@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
My dissertation research focuses on late-Meiji poetry by Shimazaki Toson, Doi Bansui, and Yosano Akiko. During the 2009-10 academic year I did research at Tohoku University in Sendai, on a Fulbright-Hays grant.
Katherine Alexanderklalexander@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
My dissertation research focuses on late Qing and early Republican era baojuan — "precious scrolls." My interest in the social life of stories, based in my earlier work with Ming fiction and drama, lead me to these texts that sit at the murky border between religious ritual and entertaining performance. My dissertation explores their production and place among other religious and entertainment texts. I'm interested in how these texts function as ritual objects, agents of moral change, and sources of entertainment.
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: 19th and 20th century history and literature of Japan, specifically language standardization and colonial language policies, kokubungaku, and prewar minzokugakusha research on dialect.
P. Ernest Caldwell IVB.A.,M.A.,LL.M
pec@uchicago.edu
Area of Study: Early China, Legal History
Interests: My interests are broadly directed at the development of traditional Chinese legal culture and comparative legal history. More specifically, my dissertation utilizes archaeologically excavated legal documents from the 4th to 2nd centuries BCE to analyze the influence of the technology of writing on the form and function of particular legal texts. Dissertation Title: "Writing Chinese Laws: The Form and Function of Lü (Statutes) in Qin Legal Culture"
Ling Chan
Wei-Ti Chen
Richard Davis rmdavis@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
I focus on pre-1945 Japanese cinema, and the relationships between aesthetic and industrial practices (genre, advertising, transmedia) on the one hand, and discourse on modernity, nation, history, and gender/sexuality on the other. I’m also interested in theories of perception and spectatorship, both global and specific to urban mass culture of the 20s and 30s.
Lin Du
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
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.
Kelsey Jacobs
Daniel Johnsondjohn@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
I entered EALC through the joint program in East Asian Cinema with the department of Cinema and Media Studies. My research interests include social media in Japan (Nicovideo in particular), group language cultures, jimusho and branding/genre in television and music, practices of amateur performance, "local" commercial cinema in East Asia during the Cold War, Nikkatsu action, and critique of area studies and Japan studies models of research.
Thomas Kellytkelly1@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Interests: Ming and Qing literature, with particular interests in drama and informal prose; late imperial print culture; the evolution of drama criticism; twentieth century literary historiography.
Ji Young Kim
So Hye Kimsohyekim@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Korean Cinema
Interests: Korean independent films and Korean diaspora films
David Krolikoskidavidkroli@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Korea and Japan
Interests: Korean and Japanese literature
Nick Lambrechtlambrecht@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Interests: Modern Japanese literature and criticism; Japanese colonial literature; "minor" literatures in Japanese; publishing culture and literary prizes; patterns of literary consumption; problems of modernization and centralization; translation in theory and practice; the Kansai region and its dialect.
David Lebovitzdlebovitz@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Early China
My research interests center on Warring States Chinese thought and culture. I am particularly interested in how beliefs (philosophical or religious) are transmitted and interpreted, and the role that figurative language plays in the process.
Jae-Yon Leejaelee@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Korea
Interests: 20th-century Korean fiction and criticism, periodical studies in East Asia, and the transcultural circulation of literary and social ideas. I am currently completing my dissertation, entitled “Magazines and the Collaborative Emergence of Literary 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
Daniela Licandrodlicandro@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Interests: Chinese literature of the late Qing-early Republican period; modern Chinese literature and film; tradition versus modernity as manifest in the uneasy relation between innovation and re-appropriation of the past; the impact of Buddhism and the influence of foreign literature on modern Chinese literature in a cross-cultural perspective. I am also interested in the center/margin dialectics and poetics of exile; issues of cultural/national identity and notions of "Chineseness."
Daniel Patrick Morgan dpmorgan@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Early China
Interests: the history of early imperial astronomy, calendars, the sociology of science, manuscript culture, the occult.
Dissertation title (tentative): Knowing Heaven: Astronomy, the Calendar, and the Case for Science in Early Imperial China
Awards: 2011 Mellon Fellowship for US Based Scholars at the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge
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 Personjperson@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Japan
Interests: modern intellectual history, history of social movements and intellectual practices, theories of aesthetics, historiography of fascism, censorship practices and their effects on intellectual production, history of media, historiography of nationalism and race, 19th and 20th century German philosophy
Dissertation title: Philosophizing 'Japan': Minoda Muneki and the Question of Japaneseness
Anne Rebull
Adam Schwartzadam888@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
My interests include early Chinese paleography and grammar, intellectual history, and commentary to the Classics.
Tomoko Seto tseto@uchicago.edu
Area of Study: Japan
Interests: Early socialism, popular theater performance, urban social movement, political culture, gender studies, spatial practices.
Dissertation title: 'Socialism as Spectacle: Activism and the Culture of Entertainment in Downtown Tokyo, 1904-09'
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
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 Tharsenjcarlsen@uchicago.edu
Area of study: Early China
Interests: Chinese phonology and morphology; the early development of Chinese poetics and literary forms; excavated texts and paleography; comparative ancient poetics.
Chun Chun Tingccting@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
Interests: 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 Wangyiwang1@uchicago.edu
Area of study: China
My academic interests include cultural history, with a recent focus on antiquities and folklore study.
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)?
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.
