current-phd-students

Anna Dai

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.

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Roya Grace Chu

Roya Grace Chu

Field: Modern Chinese History
Advisor: Eugenia Lean & Madeleine Zelin
Email: rgc2145@columbia.edu

Roya is a Ph.D. student in the History-East Asia Program. She is interested in the interface between science and technology, local society and state-building processes in late imperial and modern China. Her current research revolves around the artisanal tea industry in China, with an aim to trace its participation in transnational circuits of knowledge coproduction and to explore the tensions between quotidian lives, state ambitions and global currents. Before joining the program, she received a B.A. (Hons) in History with distinction from University College London (2021) and an M.A. in Regional Studies: East Asia from Columbia University (2023).

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Hyoseak (Stephen) Choi

Hyoseak (Stephen) Choi

Field: Japanese Literature
Advisor: Tomi Suzuki
Email: hc2963@columbia.edu

Stephen focuses on the notion of childhood and its role in the development of modern Japanese literature and culture. His dissertation project looks at how the modern notion of childhood and its various iterations (shōnen, shōjo, jidō, etc.) initiated the creation of new spaces in publishing, which are interwoven with ideas about social development, nation, education, as well as art. He is also utilizing his Korean background to include colonial systems of children’s writing and suggest a rethinking of colonial subjectivities and agencies through the voice of children. Before joining Columbia, he received an MA degree from the Department of East Asian Studies at University of Toronto. He writes fiction in both English and Japanese and also has an avid interest in cinema and visual storytelling, with experience studying filmmaking at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.

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