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John Thompson

johnthompsonJohn Thompson

Field: Chinese History
Advisor: Eugenia Lean
Email: jbt2112@columbia.edu

John’s dissertation, “Air Defense and the Bombing War in China, 1932–1945,” examines the history of bombing and politics in China during the War of Resistance against Japan and the Second World War. Combining insights from political theory, the history of technology, and critical war studies, it examines how China’s Nationalist Party used air defense to build a fascist political community united in life and death, and how air defense developed into a government logic with legacies inherited by the present day. Before coming to Columbia, John received a BA in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago and a MA in Regional Studies – East Asia from Harvard University.

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Filed Under: recent-phds

Tristan Revells

revells

Tristan Revells

Field: Chinese History
Advisors: Madeleine Zelin and Eugenia Lean
Email: ter2121@columbia.edu

Tristan works on the history of the renewable energy industry in China. His dissertation focuses on the dongli jiujing  biofuel program of the late 1930s and 40s, an alternative fuel program which emerged from the research of Chinese and Japanese biochemists and microbiologists in the late Qing and early Republican era. His most recent work is a digital humanities project initiated at the Science History Institute which uses 3D modeling software to rebuild China’s first large-scale ethanol plant from archival blueprints and photographs. Tristan received his BA from the University of Chicago in 2008 and studied at National Taiwan University prior to the start of his PhD.

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Filed Under: recent-phds

Carolyn Pang

Carolyn Pang

Field: Japanese Religion
Advisor: Michael Como
Email: cp2596@columbia.edu

Carol is a Ph.D. candidate in Japanese Religion. Her research interests focus on East Asian religious practices and folk beliefs, and extend to the study of traditional ritual performances in Japan, specifically kagura. Carol is currently in Japan doing her dissertation fieldwork on the Izanagi-ryū, a folk religion that is still practiced in contemporary Kōchi, Shikoku. Through a study of the scriptures and ritual practices of the Izanagi-ryū, Carol’s research investigates how peripheral regions in Japan used local cultic practices to position themselves in relation to the capital center, and how religion functioned in these distant provinces’ construction of their local identities. She received her B.A. (2005) and M.A. (2010) in Japanese Studies from the National University of Singapore. During this period, she participated in research programs at Waseda University and Rikkyo University in Tokyo.

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