Hana Lethen

Hana works on premodern Japanese performance, with a focus on medieval nō theater. She received her A.B. in comparative literature from Princeton in 2017. Hana’s research investigates the theatrical processes by which madness (monogurui) serves as a nexus for gendered notions of spirit possession, emotional trauma, dance, and obsession operative in premodern Japan. By articulating how madness and gender constitute each other in nō plays, Hana seeks to utilize madness as a means for engaging in particular with the “feminine” and the nonhuman in nō, while yielding insights to performative representations of gender more broadly. A firm believer in scholarship informed by praxis, Hana has been taking nō dance and chant lessons for several years.