Yi Deng

Field: Japanese Literature
Advisor: Haruo Shirane
Email: yd2366@columbia.edu

Yi is a PhD student in early modern Japanese literature. Some of her interests include historical narratives, classical poetry, Noh plays, ghost stories, revenge tales, and legends of demon-slaying. Her primary focus is late Edo yomihon, where many of these elements converge. Beyond that, she is also interested in the publishing industry, contemporary media, and literary translation.

Yi received her BA in Neurobiology & Behavior from Cornell University (2011), MI in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University (2018), and MA in Japanese Literature from Columbia University (2022).

Anna Dai

Field: Japanese Literature
Advisor: Tomi Suzuki
Email: kd2657@columbia.edu

Anna is a Ph.D. student in modern Japanese literature. She focuses on the cross-fertilization of literature and fine arts during the Meiji and Taishō periods in the cosmopolitan setting of Tokyo. She is interested in the representation and imagination of art objects in fictional spaces. Her research highlights the rise of art journalism and literary circles as potent sites for the translation and circulation of emerging discourses on artistic mediums and aesthetics between Japan and Europe that were relevant to the development of Japanese literature and language at the turn of the 20th century. Her interest in aspects of art in the context of literature is influenced by her previous
background in art history. She received her M.A. in art history from Courtauld Institute of Art (London), with a focus on the Aesthetic Movement, and her B.A. from UCLA.