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Nhat Phuong Ngo Vu

Field: Japanese Literature
Advisor: Haruo Shirane
Email: nn2338@columbia.edu

Phuong is a Ph.D. candidate in premodern Japanese literature. Her research is centered on classical Japanese poetry (waka) of the Heian period, with a special focus on how this versatile form of poetry functioned in the everyday life of the Japanese aristocrat. Using as her primary source a female poet’s personal poetry anthology known as the Ise shū (Lady Ise Collection), which has neither been translated into English in its entirety nor studied in detail in English scholarship, she also hopes to bring attention to the interconnectedness between issues of gender, genres, and patronage in early Heian waka.

Filed Under: recent-phds

Abigail MacBain

Educational Background:

BA: St. Lawrence University

MA: McMaster University

PhD: Columbia University

Classes Taught:

Fall 2021: Intro to Major Topics: East Asia – Religious Landscapes of East Asia

Spring 2022: East Asian Religion: Women in Buddhism

Research Interests:

Japanese Religions, Religious Transmission, Religious Amalgamation, Silk Road Studies

Abigail MacBain is a history of religion scholar specializing in Japanese religions and Buddhist transmission. She received her PhD from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in 2021. Her dissertation titled “Precepts and Performances: Overseas Monks and the Emergence of Cosmopolitan Japan” focused on the arrivals of several Buddhist monks from various parts of the Asian mainland to Japan in the mid-eighth century and their influence on the religious, cultural, and political affairs of the period. Her current research looks at the role that state protection scriptures and deities played in Buddhism’s spread throughout East Asia. She is also looking at how religion-adjacent material cultural such as musical instruments and artistic motifs contributed to the early Japanese court’s awareness of other peoples, countries, and cultures. Her research has been supported by grants from the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture, the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Blakemore Foundation, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and the U.S. Department of Education via the Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship.

Filed Under: recent-phds

Alexander Kaplan-Reyes

Field: Japanese History
Advisors: Gregory Pflugfelder & David Lurie
Email: ak3627@columbia.edu

Alexander Kaplan-Reyes is a doctoral history student in early modern Japanese history. Alexander’s primary research focuses on male-male sexuality among elite samurai networks during the Warring States Period and how fragmented political and cultural authority at this time created spaces for experimentation that in turn influenced normative male-male sexual practices and behavior during the Edo Period. He is also interested in modern popular culture interpretations of major historical figures and events of the Warring States Period and how this shapes and reflects so-called “common knowledge” about them. He received his BA in East Asian Studies from Occidental College in 2011 and his MA in East Asian Studies from University of California, Los Angeles in 2014.