current-phd-students

Hana Lethen

Hana Lethen

Field: Japanese Literature
Advisor: Haruo Shirane
Email: hana.lethen@columbia.edu

Hana works on premodern Japanese performance, with a focus on medieval nō theater. She received her A.B. in comparative literature from Princeton in 2017. Hana’s research investigates the theatrical processes by which madness (monogurui) serves as a nexus for gendered notions of spirit possession, emotional trauma, dance, and obsession operative in premodern Japan. By articulating how madness and gender constitute each other in nō plays, Hana seeks to utilize madness as a means for engaging in particular with the “feminine” and the nonhuman in nō, while yielding insights to performative representations of gender more broadly. A firm believer in scholarship informed by praxis, Hana has been taking nō dance and chant lessons for several years.

by

Joanna Suwen Lee-Brown 李素文

Joanna SW Lee-Brown 李素文

Field: Modern Chinese Literature
Advisor: Lydia H. Liu
Joanna is a PhD student of modern Chinese Literature associated with the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Her proposed dissertation project examines literary exchanges between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Arab World to explore the shifting relationship among global Islam, socialism, and Third World internationalism from the 1940s to the present. Her broader research interests include Marxist thought and problems of translation, difference, and alterity. Joanna received a BA in Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and worked at Yale-NUS College in Singapore prior to beginning her PhD at Columbia University.

by

Hetty Ye-Jae Lee

Hetty Ye-Jae Lee

Field: Korean Cultural History
Advisor: Theodore Hughes
Email: yl2693@columbia.edu

Hetty is a PhD student in EALAC focusing on modern Korean cultural history. Her research interests include Korean socialist feminist literature and Science, Technology, and Society (STS) studies. Under this umbrella, she is interested in analyzing women’s writing, censorship, and the intersections between colonialism, socialism, and the history of science and technology in 20th century Korea.

Hetty received her BA in comparative literature from Princeton University in 2017 with a focus on German and Ancient Greek literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. She received her MA in modern Korean literature and cultural studies from Columbia University in 2023.

by