current-phd-students

Xinyi Zhao (趙心怡)

Xinyi Zhao (趙心怡)

Field: Japanese Film and Media
Advisor: Takuya Tsunoda
Email: xz2468@columbia.edu

Xinyi Zhao is a doctoral candidate in Japanese cinema and media; she is also pursuing a graduate certificate through the Center for Comparative Media. Xinyi’s dissertation delves into the history of cinema in Manchuria through the lenses of race/ethnicity, media archaeology, and feminist historiography. This project has been supported by Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and Donald Keene Research Grant in Japanese Studies. Her other scholarly works can be found in Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Dangdai Dianying (Contemporary Cinema), Humanities, Women Film Pioneers Project, and Routledge Companion to Queer Theory and Modernism (forthcoming). 

Prior to the PhD program, Xinyi received her M.A. in Film and Media Studies from Columbia University, M.A. in Chinese Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Joint B.A. in Economics and Japanese from Shanghai International Studies University.

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Fran Zhao

Fran Zhao

Field: Chinese Theater
Advisor: Wei Shang
Email: f.zhao@columbia.edu

Fran Zhao is a PhD candidate in Chinese Theater. Her research focuses on early Ming court theater and its historical context.

She has taught topics in Chinese history, religion, and visual culture, and has contributed illustrations and maps to academic publications.

Education:

BSocSci, Geography – NUS

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Iris Zhang

Iris Zhang

Field: East Asian Religion
Advisor: Michael Como
Email: iris.zhang@columbia.edu

Iris Zhang is a PhD candidate in premodern Japanese religions. With an interest in the interplay between speech acts and religious rituals, her research project focuses on the use of chanting practices in late Heian Japan. In her dissertation, she analyzes how lay people perceived ritually formatted language as efficacious and how chanting practices were integrated in the quotidian life of the populace. Her second ongoing project is an extension of her M.A. thesis, which examines the deification of Murasaki Shikibu at Ishiyama Temple near Kyoto, Japan. Iris received her B.A. in Economics with a minor in East Asian Studies from University of California, Los Angeles and her M.A. in EALAC at Columbia before joining the PhD program.