Field: Modern Chinese literature and culture
Advisor: Lydia Liu
Email: yan.l@columbia.edu
Yan Liu (刘衍) is a Ph.D. student in modern Chinese literature and culture. His research probes the entanglements between art, literature, and politics, with a focus on the Chinese Revolution in the twentieth century, the cultural Cold War in the Sinophone world, and the political history of China’s avant-garde movements.
Field: Chinese History
Advisors: Robert Hymes and Zhaohua Yang
Email: xl3020@columbia.edu
Xinzhi is a Ph.D. student in pre-modern Chinese history, he studies the political, intellectual, and religious history of the Song dynasty. His primary research focuses on the development of the Song emperorship system, the evolving roles of emperors and those high officials, the changing nature of the imperial-subjects relationships, also how Song emperors were able to position themselves above religious hierarchies through political maneuvers on the one hand and ideological reframing of religion on the other hand.
Xinzhi was born in the ancient capital city of the Song- Kaifeng, in Henan Province of China, and grew up in Flushing, New York. Xinzhi received his BA in History and International Relations from Syracuse University in 2020 and his MA in EALAC from Columbia in 2022.
Field: Chinese Media, Cinema, and Science
Advisor: Ying Qian
Email: yl4587@columbia.edu
Yilun Li is a Ph.D. student in Chinese Media, Cultural, and Science Studies at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALAC). He is pursuing a graduate certificate in Comparative Media through the Center for Comparative Media (CCM), and he is affiliated with the Center for Science and Society. He holds a B.A. from Tsinghua University in China and an M.A. in Film and Media Studies from Columbia University.
His research examines how communication technologies, scientific knowledge, and media cultures intersect in shaping concepts, practices, and imaginaries of (inter)national development, biopolitical governance, and social organization, with a particular emphasis on the history of cybernetics and systems thinking as well as their ramifications in distinct epistemic, material, and media configurations. Broad interests include: comparative media history and theory; history of science and philosophy of technology; history of Chinese cinema and media; documentary and nontheatrical cinema; and the intersection of arts and sciences.
His academic writing has been published in journals such as Dianying Yishu (Film Art). He has curated the exhibition and series of film screenings and discussions Working with Harun Farocki: The Labor of Images and the Distribution of the Sensible – Voices from China at CACHE Space in Beijing, a retrospective of essay films, experimental documentary, and artists’ moving image in China from the mid-2010s to mid-2020s. He also worked as a filmmaker and producer in China.
