Selina Wang 王和

Field: Japanese Literature
Advisor: David Lurie and Haruo Shirane
Email: hw2687@columbia.edu

Selina is a PhD student in premodern Japanese literature. She focuses on the literary construction and development of humor in premodern East Asia, specifically how people invent and record humor through Literary Sinitic, kana systems, or a mixture of both. She treats humor as a creative crossover point between high and low culture, power hierarchies, and boundaries between wit and emotions. She is also interested in literary theory and the epistemological relationship between writing system and language in East Asia and is pursuing a graduate certificate in the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.

Selina received a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Society and Philosophy from Columbia University (2022), where she completed a senior thesis focusing on how humor transcended temporal and sociopolitical realities in Shishuo xinyu and Makura no sōshi.