current-phd-students

Emily Ren

Emily Ren

Field: East Asian Religion
Advisor: Michael Como
Email: yr2529@columbia.edu
Emily Yian Ren is a PhD student specializing in medieval Japanese religion. Her research focuses on children and sexuality, particularly on youthful acolytes known as chigo, adolescent boys who received accommodation, education, and material support in exchange for companionship and sexual relations with high ranking clerics or elite courtiers between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. Her broader interests include female patronage, gendered perception, goddesses and demonesses, constructions of motherhood, and the negotiation of sexual taboos and transgression within religious contexts. Before joining EALAC, Emily received her B.A. in Art History from New York University (2023) and M.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University (2025).

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Xinmeng Guo

Xinmeng Guo

Field: Premodern Chinese Literature
Advisor: Wei Shang
Email: xg2436@columbia.edu

Xinmeng Guo is a Ph.D. student of late imperial Chinese literature and cultural history. Prior to joining Columbia, she received her B.A. and M.Phil. from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her master’s thesis traces how seventeenth-century narratives registered the anxieties accompanying the era’s economic and social changes and envisioned new possibilities of selfhood. Her current research centers on Southeast China and the ocean during the early stages of globalization (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), where she explores the intersection of literature, historiography, and visual culture during this episode of maritime plurality and interconnectedness.

Xinmeng is also pursuing a certificate in the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.

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Kaitlin Hao

Kaitlin Hao

Email: kh3124@columbia.edu

Kaitlin Hao is a PhD student in the East Asian Languages and Cultures Department at Columbia University. Her research concerns overseas Chinese-run industries (1980s-2000s) in sites like the island of Saipan and New York City. She is interested in using film, media, and literature to trace the experiences of overseas migrant women employed in industries like garment manufacturing, sex work, tourism, and entertainment. Her work has received support from the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Columbia Center for Political Economy.  She received her MA from the Columbia EALAC program, and holds a BA in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard College. Kaitlin is passionate about public education and social media-based pedagogy, and has pursued projects in collaboration with the Asian Art Museum, Harvard Art Museums, and Museum of Chinese in America.

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