Maho Miyazaki

Field: Japanese Literature
Advisor: Haruo Shirane
Email: mm4909@columbia.edu

Maho Miyazaki is a PhD candidate in premodern Japanese literature. Before joining Columbia she received her BA (2012) and MA (2014) in English literature from Kyoto University. Her research project focuses on theories on cross-dressing in noh plays; how men in the 14th to 15th centuries imagined and recreated female body, and how gender and age of actors have affected the theorization of female impersonation. Her research also includes comparisons with two other transvestite theatrical genres, kabuki and English Renaissance theatre, and the changes and evolvement in female impersonation brought about by the participation of female professional noh performers since the 20th century.

Yuqing Luo

Field: Chinese History
Advisors: Robert Hymes and Zhaohua Yang
Email: yl3592@columbia.edu

Yuqing is a Ph.D. student in pre-modern Chinese history. Her research interests include Song popular religious texts, medieval ritual performance and cross-cultural mortuary traditions. Yuqing received her BA in Chinese Language and Literature from Zhejiang University (2013), and her MA from Stanford University’s East Asian Languages and Cultures Department (2015). Her MA thesis examines the relationship between Song literati and spirit writing tradition. Before joining Columbia’s Ph.D. program in the fall of 2016, she spent a year working as an intern at Zhejiang University Museum of Art and Archaeology.

Eason Lu

Field: Chinese Literature and Cultural History

Advisor: Shang Wei

Email: eason.lu@columbia.edu

Eason is a Ph.D. student of premodern Chinese literature and cultural history, with special attention to the performance traditions, drama, and material culture. His doctoral research centers on the burgeoning of theater as a form of entertainment during late imperial to early modern China, examining the accompanied engagement and anxiety among literati of the period. Eason holds an M.A. from EALAC at Columbia University, and his thesis analyzes nüshu, the “women’s script” in China, exploring the academic and artistic reifications and (mis)interpretations. Eason is an award-winning television and animation producer. He also contributes scholarly work on contemporary East Asian media cultures and popular entertainment. His recent work, Remapping spatiality in contemporary East Asian media engagement: reevaluating China’s Got Talent, can be found in Media, Culture & Society.