Nicole Roldan

Faculty Interview:


Saving Endangered Languages

Lydia Liu’s interview on NPR about her co-edited book Global Language Justice

Global Language Justice explores the socioeconomic transformations that both accelerate the decline of minoritized languages and give rise to new possibilities through population movement, unexpected encounters, and technological change. The book also critically examines the concepts that are typically deployed to defend linguistic diversity, including human rights, inclusiveness, and equality. Contributors take up topics such as mapping language communities in New York City, and how Indigenous innovation challenges notions of linguistic purity.

Lydia Liu, one of the editors, discusses the book with NPR. For the full interview, please visit the Columbia News website.

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Yingchuan Yang

Yingchuan Yang

Early Career Fellow

Office Hours: Email for appointment
Email: yingchuan.yang@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Columbia University (2024)
BA: University of California, Los Angeles (2016)

Classes Taught

HESA GU4882: History of Modern China II
EAAS GR6200: M.A. Workshop in East Asian History

Research Interests

Yingchuan Yang is an Early Career Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. With broad interests in modern Chinese history, he works at the intersection of knowledge (often in the form of science and technology), culture, and politics in modern China. He is preparing a book manuscript, Revolution on the Air: Radio and the Mass Technology of Chinese Socialism, that offers a new understanding of Chinese socialism as a mass technological project. By investigating the state-sponsored popularization of radio technology and expertise as well as its unexpected consequences from the 1950s to the 1980s, this book will be one of the first monographs on the history of technology in modern China. This project has been supported by a Mellon Humanities International Travel Fellowship, the Association for Asian Studies, the American Council of Learned Societies, the D. Kim Foundation for the History of Science and Technology in East Asia, and numerous internal grants.

His second major project, “South of the Sea: Transnational Migration and the Reformation of Coastal China,” places the economic and environmental development of China’s coastal areas and Hainan, China’s largest island, in the transnational circuit of people, capital, and expertise between East and Southeast Asia. Other in-progress projects cover topics such as astrology, weather modification, and a little-known campaign of annotating ancient Chinese texts during the late Cultural Revolution.

Selected Publications

“Connecting the Countryside: Radio Networks and the Infrastructure of the Masses in Socialist China.” Radical History Review no.147 (2023): 111–36.

Hyoseak (Stephen) Choi

Hyoseak (Stephen) Choi

Adjunct Lecturer, Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture

Office: 614 Kent Hall
Office Hours: F 1:00- 3:00
Email:  hc2963@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Saint Mary’s University
MA: University of Toronto/Columbia University
PhD: Columbia University

Classes Taught

AHUM UN3830: Colloquium on Modern East Asian Texts
EAAS GU4150: Childhoods in Modern Japanese Literature

Research Interests

Modern Japanese Literature, Publishing Culture, Childhood, Social Theory, Translation

Stephen Choi received his PhD from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia
University in May, 2024. His research focuses on the diverse iterations of “childhood” that is represented
in literary works, as well as the role that the idea of “childhood” plays in the production, distribution,
and reception of texts. Exploring the many social and political functions of childhood utilized for
legitimating ideologies, proliferating propaganda, and promoting policies, the research aims to gain a
deeper understanding of existing socio-political narratives and consider possible future narratives that
can serve to protect actual children. He is currently working on book projects in both English and
Japanese.