current-phd-students

Jiaqi Wang

Jiaqi Wang

Field: Premodern Chinese Literature
Advisor: Wei Shang
Email: jw3983@columbia.edu

Jiaqi Wang is a PhD student of premodern Chinese literature. She is primarily interested in late imperial Chinese fiction, intellectual history, and cultural history. Her current project focuses on the popular publications, literary writings, and theatrical performances during the Ming-Qing transition to examine the dynamic relationships among media and investigate the political and historical significance of literary writings during the dynastic transition. Before joining the EALAC PhD program, Jiaqi received her B.A. in Chinese literature (2017) and M.A. in classical Chinese literature (2020) from Peking University, and M.A. in East Asian studies from Columbia University (2022). An abridged version of her M.A. thesis (2020) has been published in Chinese as “Shilun Honglou Meng de wenzhang jiegou (On the Compositional Transitions and Narrative Structure of The Story of the Stone)” in Honglou Meng xuekan (Studies on “A Dream of Red Mansions”), 2022(04).

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Isaac C.K. (Chun-Kiang) Tan

Isaac C.K. (Chun-Kiang) Tan

Field: Modern Japanese History
Advisor: Paul Kreitman and Gregory M. Pflugfelder
Email: i.tan@columbia.edu

 Isaac C.K. (Chun Kiang) Tan is a Ph.D. candidate in modern Japanese history. He has completed a double degree program, receiving a B.A. (History) from the National University of Singapore and a B.A. (International Liberal Studies) from Waseda University, Japan. Before coming to Columbia, he was teaching history and mathematics at a public high school in Singapore. His dissertation project looks at the history of bloodtype research in Japan—charting its historical development since the 1910s and highlighting its wider political, social, and cultural implications in contemporary Japan. His wider research interests include environmental and natural history, memory studies, and the history of modern East Asia. He has written journal articles on topics ranging from geopolitics in medieval East Asia to the natural history of British colonial India; and has recently received the 2021 AIHP Glenn Sonnedecker Prize for a manuscript on the dispensing separation issue in Japan.
More information on his academic profile can be found at https://tckisaac.wordpress.com.

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Tracy (Howard) Stilerman

Tracy (Howard) Stilerman

Field: Tibetan Buddhism
Advisor: Gray Tuttle
Email: t.stilerman@columbia.edu

Tracy (Howard) Stilerman is a PhD candidate in Tibetan Buddhism whose research focuses on the history of Buddhist sites and Tibetan engagement with the landscape in the 17th to 20th centuries. Before beginning the PhD program she received a BA in Tibetan Studies from Columbia University, worked as a translator and interpreter of Tibetan language in the US and Tibet, and spent one year at Waseda University in Tokyo as an exchange researcher.

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