recent-phds

Filed Under: recent-phds

Joshua Batts

Joshua Batts

Field: Japanese History
Advisor: Gregory Pflugfelder
jpb2157@columbia.edu

 

 

 

 

Joshua Batts received his B.A. from Whittier College (2006) with an emphasis on Japanese history. He began work on a Ph.D. in Japanese history at Columbia in the fall of 2009, teaching English on the outskirts of Tokyo in the interim. In spring 2017, Joshua completed his dissertation, “Circling the Waters: The Keichō Embassy and Japanese-Spanish Relations in the Early Seventeenth Century.” The project examines Japan’s pursuit of trans-Pacific trade with colonial Latin America, Spain’s guarded response, and the unraveling of diplomatic relations between the Tokugawa shogunate and the Habsburg Spanish Empire. The work connects this specific episode to broader questions of the embassy form as a diplomatic tool and the challenges of diplomacy and commerce in the Pacific world.

by

Filed Under: recent-phds

Allison Bernard

bernard

Allison Bernard

Field: Chinese Literature
Advisor: Shang Wei
Email: aeb2197@columbia.edu

Allison is a Ph.D. candidate in premodern Chinese literature, focusing on the Ming and Qing periods. Her research interests include the intersections of literary and historical writing, book history and print culture, and the world of Chinese theater. Her dissertation engages the literary world of Kong Shangren’s seminal historical drama The Peach Blossom Fan, using the play and its network of related texts to examine ideological resonances among stage, society, and writerly legacy. The dissertation begins by assessing connections between theater and politics in Kong’s work, framed through its engagement with the notorious politician and playwright Ruan Dacheng, and Ruan’s infamous romantic comedy, The Swallow Letter. The project then considers some of the diverse discursive contexts in which Kong situated his play: its connections and responses to Tang Xianzu and the Linchuan drama school; how issues of history writing and historical legacy are figured in chuanqi drama; and Kong’s own expertise in ritual and music, which is closely tied to his family background as a member of the Confucian Kong lineage. Before joining Columbia’s PhD program in the fall of 2012, Allison received her BA from Middlebury College in Chinese and History (2010), and an MA from Columbia’s EALAC department in Chinese Literature (2012). She also has research interests in Japanese literature and theater, poetry, art history, translation, and media studies.

by

Filed Under: recent-phds

Sau-yi Fong

Sau-yi Fong

Field: Chinese History
Email: sf2686@columbia.edu

Sau-yi Fong is a doctoral student in Chinese history. She received her BA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2008) and her Mphil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2013). Her research interests lie in the intersection of military history, intellectual history and the history of science and technology, with a focus on late imperial gunpowder technology, the manufacture of armaments and literati conceptions of war and violence in Qing China. She worked as a translator in Hong Kong for more than 5 years before joining Columbia in 2014.

by