Constantine Lignos

Field: Sino-Tibetan History & Religion
Advisor: Gray Tuttle and Jacob Dalton (UC Berkeley)
Email: cjl2212@columbia.edu

Constantine’s research focuses on the history of public ritual performance in Tibet and its Mongol and Manchu adoption in the borderlands.  He is interested in the transference of religious ritual performance (particularly ‘cham/‘chams, the masked monastic dance) to the social and political spheres during the ascendence of the Fifth Dalai Lama and the establishment of the Ganden Phodrang.  More broadly, his project explores the relationship between public ritual and sacral rulership to reconsider the nature of the “theatre state.” He is also compiling a glossary of Tibetan terms relevant to the LGBTQ community. Previously, he received his MA in Tibetan Studies from Columbia and his MA in Performance Studies from NYU Tisch.

Yilun Li

Field: Chinese Cinema, Media, and Arts

Advisor: Ying Qian

Email: yl4587@columbia.edu

Yilun Li is a Ph.D. student in Chinese Cinema, Media, and Arts at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALAC), where he is also pursuing a graduate certificate in Comparative Media through the Center for Comparative Media (CCM). He hails from China (B.A., Tsinghua University) and holds an M.A. in Film and Media Studies from Columbia University. 

Standing at the intersection of cinema and media studies, art history, and environmental humanities, his research investigates the politics and aesthetics of Chinese experimental media practices, with a particular focus on their entanglement with urban development, infrastructural construction, resource extraction, environmental degradation, and biopolitical governance. Other interests include nonfiction cinema, modern and contemporary visual arts, media archaeology, and feminist and queer science and technology studies (STS). His academic writing has been published in journals such as Dianying Yishu (Film Art).

Melissa Li

Field: Japanese Literature
Advisor: Haruo Shirane
Email: gl2595@columbia.edu

Melissa Li is a Ph.D. student in premodern Japanese literature. During her graduate studies, she intends to untangle the theatrical experience of late Edo kabuki through literary analysis, theatre criticism and cultural studies. She is interested in the duality of kabuki theatre, both as a form of entertainment to be performed and consumed, and an agency to shape commoners’ reading preferences, dramatize circulating texts, and further construct a new communal identity of Edo that overlaid the city’s previously shared historical memories centered on samurai and household. Her current project engages with the continuities and transformations in the dramaturgy of 19 th -century Edo kabuki, through a comparative study of representative sewamono (contemporary-themed) plays by Tsuruya Nanboku IV, Segawa Jokō III, and Kawatake Mokuami. Melissa received her B.S. in Applied Mathematics from UCLA in 2015.