Lecturer

Yong-ha Kim

Yong-ha Kim

Tang Center Postdoctoral Research Scholar; Lecturer, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Email: yk2727@columbia.edu
Office Hours: Mondays 1:50–3:50 p.m. and by appointment

Educational Background

PhD: Columbia University

Classes Taught

ASCE UN1002 Intro to Major Topics: East Asian Civilization – Making and Experiencing the State in East Asia

Yong-ha is a Tang Center Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, specializing in early Chinese history. His research focuses on the tension between early Chinese empire formation and local diversity. Yong-ha’s dissertation, “Rethinking Unification: Ideology, Standardization, and Local Accommodation in the Qin Empire (221–207 BCE),” critiques the concept of “unification” by examining how it can shroud the violence of conquest and obscure the accommodation of local diversity in the process of early Chinese empire-building. He deploys excavated texts, archaeological materials related to local administration as well as received texts to reconstruct the history of this era. He is also interested in the comparative history of ancient empires and civilizations and is building a database of ancient artifacts held in museums around the world. He is additionally engaged in translating scholarship on ancient civilizations beyond China into Korean.

Nianpo Su

Nianpo Su

Lecturer in Chinese

Office: 506 Kent Hall
Office Hours: MW 4:10-5:10 PM
Phone: TBD
Email: ns3834@columbia.edu

Educational Background

Ph.D. in Linguistics, Cornell University, 2026
B.A. in  Japanese Language and Literature, Tsinghua University, 2021

Research Interests

Theoretical syntax
Syntax-semantics interface
Experimental semantics
East Asian linguistics
Second language acquisition

Nianpo Su joined Columbia University as a full-time Lecturer in Chinese in the fall of 2026. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Cornell University, with a minor in Cognitive Science. Her dissertation, titled “Classifiers and DP Structure: Marking Definiteness and Beyond”, investigates how classifier languages encode definiteness, using both theoretical and experimental approaches. She has conducted fieldwork on Nuosu Yi and Northern Qiang, two minority languages spoken in Southwest China. Her research on definiteness in Nuosu Yi was published in Glossa in 2025. Before joining Columbia, she taught Chinese language courses at Cornell University.

Publications

Nianpo Su & Helena Aparicio. (forthcoming). Two types of demonstratives: Experiments in Mandarin and Nuosu Yi. Proceedings of the 36th Semantics and Linguistic Theory.

Nianpo Su. (2025). Classifiers and DP structure in Nuosu Yi: Evidence from tone. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 10(1).

Nianpo Su. (2025). A head movement analysis of Nuosu Yi CLF-D order. Proceedings of the 48th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference.

Nianpo Su & Helena Aparicio. (2023). NPI licensing and intrusion effects in Japanese. Proceedings of the 58th Chicago Linguistics Society Annual Meeting.

Nianpo Su & Yunchuan Chen. (2022). Can the head quantifier phrase reconstruct in doubly embedded Chinese relative clauses? Proceedings of the 45th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference.

Valerie J. Cranmer

Valerie J. Cranmer

Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute; Lecturer of Modern Japanese History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Office:  602 Kent Hall
Office Hours: M, R 10 am-12:00 pm and by appointment
Phone Number: 602 Kent Hall
Email: vjc2122@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: University of St. Andrews, 2026
MA: Norwich University, 2021
BA: Colorado College, 2010

Classes Taught

HSEA GU4847 Modern Japan

Research Interests

Modern Japanese history, transnational and comparative history, war and society, history of East Asia, gender and the military

Valerie J. Cranmer is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. Her research explores the intersections of the military and society, through interdisciplinary lens, such as popular culture and gender. Broadly, she is interested in the history of conflict and colonialism in East Asia in the modern era. She is completing a scholarly monograph, tentatively entitled Enabling Abuse: The Imperial Japanese Army’s Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Organization and Its Place in Global Military History.

Selected Publications

“In Judgment of Unit 731: A Comparative Study of Medical War Crimes Trials After World War II.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 30. No. 1 (2023): 32-60.