Andrew Kahn

Andrew Kahn is a PhD student in Japanese film and media. His current research seeks to understand how concepts of “indigeneity” functioned to define nation and self in discourses of the 1960s and 1970s. He takes an interdisciplinary approach, examining film and works of literature alongside their critical reception, and is fascinated by the remediation in modernity of the premodern past. He is pursuing graduate certificates from the Center for Comparative Media and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Andrew received an M.A. in EALAC from Columbia, where his thesis project situated Imamura Shōhei’s filmmaking practice in the 1960s within contemporary discussions about autochthony (dochaku). Before that, he received a B.A. in Literature from Yale. In between, he worked as a journalist, programming web interactives and writing on culture, and performed sketch comedy in New York City. He collects Edo-period Japanese porcelain. For more information, please visit andrewmkahn.com

Xun Zheng

Xun Zheng is a PhD student in Japanese film and media. Her research interest focuses on early television and media theories in postwar Japan, which she seeks as a prism to explore the textuality of media experience and the political/ethical implications of broadcasting techniques in the 1960s. Her other interests include Japanese modernist discourse on media and mediation, information studies in Japan, and the history of Chinese television. Prior to joining Columbia for PhD, she received her B.A. from Oberlin College and M.A. from Columbia EALAC.

Fran Zhao

Field: Chinese Theater
Advisor: Wei Shang
Email: f.zhao@columbia.edu

Fran Zhao is a PhD candidate in Chinese Theater. Her research focuses on early Ming court theater and its historical context.

She has taught topics in Chinese history, religion, and visual culture, and has contributed illustrations and maps to academic publications.

Education:

BSocSci, Geography – NUS