Literature

Ying Qian

ying_qianYing Qian

Associate Professor

Office: 930 IAB
Office Hours: F 4 PM-6 PM, Appointment required

Phone: (212)854-5027
Email: yq2189@columbia.edu

Educational Background

AB: Harvard University
MPhil: University of Cambridge, UK
PhD: Harvard University (’13)

Classes Taught

EAAS UN3322 East Asian Cinema
EAAS GU4572 Chinese Documentary Cinema
EAAS GR8998 Media Cultures in China

Research Interests

Chinese-language cinema and media; documentary, industrial and scientific films; progressive and activist cinema; labor, craft and industry in media production; media ecology.

As a scholar of cinema and media, Ying Qian is interested in understanding the role of media and mediation in shaping politics, forming knowledge, and connecting realms of experience. Within the Chinese language context, she’s particularly interested in how politics, techniques and aesthetics of mediation have been integral to the processes of (semi-)colonialism, warfare, revolutions, popular movements, and (post)socialisms. Her forthcoming book, Becoming Reality: Documentary Cinema in Revolutionary China, studies the making of documentary cinema – broadly defined to include newsreels, educational, industrial and scientific films – in 20th century China, treating it as a prism to examine the role of media in producing and regulating the epistemological and emotional upheavals inherent to radical re-orderings of the society. Her new projects investigate theories and practices of creative labor in a variety of media production contexts, including film, television and digital media; and explore the ecological as a method to understand mediation as a fundamental operation underlying our (historically and politically specific) being in the world. At Columbia, she teaches on Chinese photography, cinema and other visual and media cultures. Drawing from her experiences in filmmaking, she has incorporated creative assignment options in her classes, guiding students to try their hands on film and video production. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Critical Inquiry, New Left Review, China Perspectives, Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, New Literary History of Modern China, and other journals and volumes. Besides academic work, she continues to make videos as part of her involvement in social activism.

Selected Publications

“When Taylorism Met Revolutionary Romanticism: Documentary Cinema in China’s Great Leap Forward”, Critical Inquiry (forthcoming, spring 2020).

“The Spectre of Liu Shaoqi,” in A New Literary History of Modern China (Harvard, 2017)

“Working with Rubble: Montage, Tweets, and the Reconstruction of an Activist Cinema,” in China’s iGeneration: Filmmakers, Films and Audiences in a New Media Age (Continuum, 2014)

“Power in the Frame: Independent Documentary in China,” The New Left Review (2012)

John Phan

John Phan

Assistant Professor

Office: 620 Kent Hall
Office Hours: Wednesdays 9-11am via Calendly https://calendly.com/jp3720/office-hours

DUS Office Hours: Thursdays from 9:30-11:30am via Calendly https://calendly.com/jp3720/ealac-undergrad-office-hours

Phone: (212) 854-5744
Email: jp3720@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Saint Olaf College (’02)
MA: Columbia University (’05)
PhD: Cornell University (’12)

Classes Taught

ASCE UN1367 Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: Vietnam
AHUM UN1400 Colloquium on Major Texts: East Asia
EAAS 8630 Braided Languages: Diglossia and Cosmopolitanism in Premodern Vietnam
EAAS GU4412 History of Writing in a Cosmopolitan East Asia
EAAS UN3710 Fiction & Film in the Making of Modern Vietnams
HSEA GR6300 Vietnamese Studies: Historiography & Methodology

Research Interests

Vietnamese Writing Systems and Vernacular Scripts, Historical Linguistics, Linguistic Contact between China and Vietnam

John Phan is currently completing his first book focusing on the history of Sino-Vietic linguistic contact, and is cocurrently working on the emergence of vernacular literary practice in medieval Vietnam.  In addition to the nature of linguistic contact and broad issues in linguistic change and historical phonology, he is keenly interested in the cultural and intellectual ramifications of multiple languages coexisting in single East Asian societies, of linguistic pluralism in general, and of the transformation of oral languages into written literary mediums in historically diglossic cultures of East and Southeast Asia.  His current work focuses largely on the rise of the vernacular Vietnamese script known as Chữ Nôm, and its development alongside a sustained and flourishing tradition of Literary Chinese composition.

For a complete list of publications, please visit his personal website.

Selected Publications
“Sesquisyllabicity,  Chữ Nôm, and the Early Modern embrace of vernacular writing in Vietnam.” In Journal of Chinese Writing Systems, Online First advance version (2020), pp. 1-14.
“Vietnamese Lexicographic Practices in the 19th and 20th Centuries.” The Cambridge World History of Lexicography (2019). Edited by John Considine. Cambridge University Press, pp. 356-365.
“The 20th Century Secularization of the Sinograph in Vietnam, and its Demotion from the Cosmological to the Aesthetic,” Journal of World Literature (2016)

“Rebooting the Vernacular in 17th Century Vietnam,” in Rethinking East Asian Languages, Vernaculars, and Literacies, 1000-1919 (Brill, 2014)

“Chữ Nôm and the Taming of the South: A Bilingual Defense for Vernacular Writing in the Chỉ Nam Ngọc Âm Giải Nghĩa,” The Journal of Vietnamese Studies (2013)

David Lurie

lurieDavid Lurie

Wm. Theodore and Fanny Brett de Bary and Class of 1941 Collegiate Professor of Asian Humanities and Associate Professor of Japanese History and Literature

Office: 622 Kent
Office Hours: Click here to make an appointment.
Phone: (212) 854-5316
Email: dbl11@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Harvard University (’93)
MA: Columbia University (’96)
PhD: Columbia University (’01)

Classes Taught

JPNS GU4519 Introduction to Kanbun
EAAS UN2342 Mythology of East Asia
CPLS 3900 Introduction to Comparative Literature and Society
JPNS GR8040 Graduate Seminar in Premodern Japanese Literature

Research Interests

Japanese History and Literature, Technology of Language in Premodern Japan

In addition to the history of writing systems and literacy, David Lurie’s research interests include: the literary and cultural history of premodern Japan; the Japanese reception of Chinese literary, historical, and technical writings; the development of Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias; the history of linguistic thought; Japanese mythology; and world philology. Professor Lurie’s first book investigated the development of writing systems in Japan through the Heian period. Entitled Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing, it received the Lionel Trilling Award in 2012. Along with Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki, he was co-editor of the Cambridge History of Japanese Literature (2015), to which he contributed chapters on myths, histories, gazetteers, and early literature in general. He is completing a new scholarly monograph, tentatively entitled The Emperor’s Dreams: Reading Japanese Mythology.

Please see his website for a complete list of publications and contributions.

Selected Publications

“Japanese Lexicography from ca. 1800 to the Present,” in The Cambridge World History of Lexicography, ed. John Considine, Cambridge University Press, 2019

“Parables of Inscription: Some Notes on Narratives of the Origin of Writing,” History and Theory 56, December 2018

Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011)

“The Development of Japanese Writing,” in The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change (SAR Press, 2012)