Early Modern

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)

Gregory M. Pflugfelder

Gregory Pflugfelder

Associate Professor

Office: 408 Kent Hall
Office Hours: T 4:00–5:30 PM (walk-in basis), or by appointment (via Zoom)
Phone: (212) 854-5035
Email: gmp12@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Harvard University (’81)
MA: Waseda University (’84)
PhD: Stanford University (’96)

Classes Taught
ASCE UN1361 Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: Japan
HSEA UN3871 Modern Japan: Images and Words
HSEA GR6009 Graduate Colloquium on Early Modern Japan
EAAS UN3888 Cultural History of Japanese Monsters
Research Interests

Early-Modern and Modern Japanese History, Gender, Sexuality, Visual Culture

Gregory Pflugfelder specializes in Japanese history and gender studies. He received his A.B. from Harvard, his M.A. from Waseda, and his Ph.D. from Stanford. His books include Seiji to daidokoro: Akita-ken joshi sanseiken undōshi (Politics and the kitchen: a history of the women’s suffrage movement in Akita prefecture), which received the 1986 Yamakawa Kikue Prize, and Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950. His current work engages the the historical construction of masculinities, the history of the body, and representations of monstrosity.

Selected Publications

“The Nation-State, the Age/Gender System, and the Reconstitution of Erotic Desire in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies (2012)

Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950 (University of California, 1999)

JAPANimals: History and Culture in Japan’s Animal Life (co-editor, University of Michigan, 2005)

Matthew McKelway

mckelwayMatthew McKelway

TAKEO AND ITSUKO ATSUMI PROFESSOR OF JAPANESE ART HISTORY

Office: 919 Schermerhorn Hall
Phone: (212) 854-3182
Email: mpm8@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Columbia University (’99)

Classes Taught

HUMA OC1121 Masterpieces of Western Art
AHIS GR8609 Calligraphy in East Asia
AHIS GR8128 Edo Period Painting

Research Interests

Japanese Art History, Urban Representation, Materiality of Painting

Matthew McKelway specializes in the history of Japanese painting. His research has focused on urban representation in rakuchū rakugai zu (screen paintings of Kyoto), the development of genre painting in early modern Japan, Kano school painting, and individualist painters in 18th century Kyoto. Interests in the materiality and techniques of Japanese painting and the early Kano workshop have led to recent articles and a current book project on fan paintings as media for social intercourse and pictorial experimentation. In addition to his research on fan paintings, he is conducting an ongoing study of the painter Nagasawa Rosetsu.

The courses McKelway offers include surveys of Japanese art and more specialized undergraduate courses on painting and Buddhist art. Topics of graduate seminars and lectures have ranged from narrative handscrolls and Muromachi ink painting to the Kano school, Rimpa, and Edo-period painting. To graduate students in Japanese art history and other disciplines he also offers instruction in reading early Japanese scripts (hentaigana/kuzushiji). Current doctoral students have received research fellowships from the Fulbright commission, the Japan Foundation, the Japanese Ministry of Education, and the Shinchō Foundation.

Professor McKelway has been the Ishibashi Gastprofessur at the University of Heidelberg, and has also held visiting professorships at the Free University of Berlin and Waseda University. His Department of Art History & Archaeology page can be found here.

Selected Publications

Silver Wind: The Arts of Sakai Hōitsu (1761-1828) (Japan Society/Yale University Press, 2012)

Capitalscapes: Folding Screens and Political Imagination in Late Medieval Kyoto (University of Hawaii, 2006)

Traditions Unbound: Groundbreaking Painters from Eighteenth-Century Kyoto (San Francisco Asian Art Museum, 2005)