Field: Contemporary Art, Modern Chinese Literature, Southeast Asian Literature, Economic Philosophy
Advisor: Lydia H. Liu
Email: david.borgonjon@columbia.edu
David Xu Borgonjon’s dissertation, “Revolution’s Middlemen,” examines the politics of the Chinese language in modern Indonesia through the media and literature of the Sinophone left from 1945 to 1965. He also has an interest in Asian-American studies and contemporary and modern art of East and Southeast Asia.
Nicolle Marr BertozziField: Japanese History
Advisors: Gregory Pflugfelder and David Lurie
Email: nmb2166@columbia.edu
Nicolle is a PhD student in medieval and early modern Japanese history. Before coming to Columbia, she received her BA in East Asian Languages and Civilizations and English Literature from the University of Chicago (2017). Her research interests include material culture, craft knowledge, the repurposing of objects, and the tea ceremony. She has spent over a year apprenticing with sudare screen artisans in Kyoto and studying tea.
Field: Chinese History
Advisor: Robert Hymes
Email: neb2134@columbia.edu
Nolan Bensen got his BA from New College of Florida and his MA here at Columbia. He studies the history of the early Ming Dynasty, founded in 1368. His research focuses on Ming foreign relations, large-scale Ming state projects, and the effects of former inclusion in the Mongol Empire on Ming China’s sense of the rest of Eurasia.
