Xinyi Zhao

Field: Japanese Cinema and Literature
Advisor: Takuya Tsunoda
Email: xz2468@columbia.edu

An interdisciplinary scholar by training, Xinyi Zhao aims to reappraise the history of East Asian cinema through unexplored historiographies: transnational, media archaeological, and feminist. Her M.A. thesis excavates the emergence of film culture and spectatorship in colonial Manchuria with respect to the cross-cultural articulation of colonial modernity. Currently she is investigating the shifting postwar Japanese media ecology to reflect on the cinema’s historical interactions and theoretical overlaps with other media practices across East Asia. She is also interested in women’s participation in early film industry worldwide (as a research fellow of the Women Film Pioneers Project), anime, transnational melodrama, and sound studies.

Prior to relocating to EALAC, Xinyi received her M.A. in Film and Media Studies from Columbia University (2017), M.A. in Chinese Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2014), and Joint B.A. in Economics and Japanese from Shanghai International Studies University (2012).

Fran Zhao 赵洁敏 

Field: Premodern Chinese Drama and Fiction
Advisor: Wei Shang
Email: z.francesca@columbia.edu

Fran Zhao is being trained in premodern Chinese drama and fiction here at Columbia. Prior to coming to Columbia in 2018, Fran studied history and geography at the National University of Singapore. She is also interested in all aspects of teaching and learning. She is currently serving as the department’s Lead Teaching Fellow (Academic Year 2020-21).

Yifan Zhang

Field: Chinese Literature
Advisor: Shang Wei
Email: yz2681@columbia.edu

Yifan is a Ph.D. student in Chinese literature, with a focus on the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1912). He received his B.A. (2014) from Peking University and M.A. (2016) from Columbia University. He works primarily on Ming-Qing short and long narratives, fiction in particular, and has a keen interest in examining how they speak to the issues that derive from and respond to urban history, local history, elite society, print culture, and material culture. His current dissertation project explores language practice and cultural innovation in the Wu dialect area that centers on Suzhou, the economic and cultural pivot in early modern China.