current-phd-students

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.

Hongyi Yu

Hongyi Yu

Field: Modern Chinese History
Advisor: Eugenia Lean
Email:hy2658@columbia.edu

Hongyi is a Ph.D. candidate in the History-East Asia program, specializing in the social and cultural history of twentieth-century China. His research interests revolve around issues relating to propaganda, censorship, print culture, and the history of books in the contexts of modern China and East Asia. His dissertation foregrounds the centrality of Communist grassroots propaganda personnel in the Chinese Communist Party’s road to power—charting how the Party relied on this heterogenous group of individuals to expand its local organizations during the Second Sino-Japanese War and consolidate power in the early years of the People’s Republic. Extending the historical definition of “propaganda,” his research highlights, in addition to mass media and artistic ephemera, the interplay between grassroots propaganda personnel and their audiences as the backdrop against which effective propaganda played out. Ultimately, he seeks to adopt a comprehensive approach to propaganda, illuminating the political organization, sociocultural landscapes, and material conditions underlying the mundane work performed by propaganda personnel in the course of China’s Communist revolution and socialist construction. Besides the dissertation research, Hongyi is also interested in exploring how to situate the Chinese Communist revolution in an international and global context for pedagogical purposes. Courses he plans to design and teach include Communism in East Asia and the People’s Republic as History.
Before coming to Columbia, Hongyi received his BA in history and MA in East Asian Studies from UCLA in 2020.

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Xiaoke Yang

Xiaoke Yang

Field: East Asian Religion
Advisor: Michael Como
Email: xy2504@columbia.edu

Xiaoke Yang is a Ph.D. student in medieval Japanese Religion and Material Culture. Her research interests center on the materiality of religious objects that facilitate relations between humans, objects, and deities. She focuses on how religious objects generate and empower living networks that translate tangible materials into intangible religious and socio-political benefits. She is also interested in how religious objects described in literary works like folktales, myths, and performative texts serve similar functions as actual offerings in cultic belief construction.

Xiaoke received her BA in East Asian Studies from New York University (2020), and MA in Japanese Religion from Columbia University (2023).

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