Graduate Students

Vanessa’s research centers around the political and literary publications that circulated in Japan and Korea in the first half of the twentieth century.  In particular she is interested in the construction of national identity, the definition of the new woman, the alliances formed between Japanese and Koreans in literary and political endeavors, and the role of literature and visual art to engender social revolution.

Monica's research interest lies in the study of post-colonial South Korean literature by female writers, especially by writers of wŏllam background. She is particularly interested in exploring how gender, identity, and nationalism is constructed through memories of violence, trauma and Diaspora. She is also interested in how the state sponsored construct of gender and femininity, often found in propaganda language and media (i.e. Taehan Nyusŭ), has influenced literature and popular culture. In addition, she is interested in the (in)translatability of culture, experience, and memory through text.

Zach Gottesman is interested in Korean popular culture, new media forms, and transnational culture flows in Japan and South Korea. He studies online and offline communities in order to understand how today's participatory media reflects contemporary South Korea and the larger world system.

Sue's primary interests lie in an art historical and socio-economical analysis of contemporary Korean cinema.
She is interested in investigating the visualization of the dilemma of time and what these representations may portray about Korea's counterintuitive preoccupation with the past/collective memory (nostalgia) and its relationship to morality. Sue hopes to anchor her research with critical theories of temporal anxiety, transitional identity, and cultural/political space.

Henry specializes in traditional Chinese fiction. He is interested in the complex relationship between author, text, commentator, and reader in novels of the Ming and Qing periods. In his future research project, Henry plans to investigate novel sequels as works of both innovation and intervention, engaged in radical dialogues with earlier traditions of fiction narrative.

Tian's current research mainly focuses on if and how East Asian popular culture can address healing or moving forward from historical conflicts, traumatic memories, and contemporary cultural tensions in East Asia. In particular, her project deals with the paradoxes of nationalism/ transnationalism, translatability/untranslatability, and the potentiality of reconciliation/ disunion through examining the co-consumption of Korean popular culture and Sino-Korean media coproduction in the Chinese postsocialist context.

Xu’s specialties are traditional Chinese literature, social history, gender studies, popular religion, textual culture, and modern spatial and gender theories. Her dissertation project examines women’s alternative social space in late imperial China. She explores how the physical and imagined female spaces evoked a gender and cultural continuum that activated, accommodated, and adjusted women’s spatial and spiritual orientation. Xu’s research interests also lie in women’s literacy practice vis-a-vis the printing boom and book history from the Song dynasty to early modern China.

Sara is interested in modern Japanese literature, particularly the biographical novels of Setouchi Jakucho on the new women of Japan in the early twentieth century. She is also interested in Japanese Buddhism, shamanism, and new religions.

Adam's main interest is contemporary Japanese literature and film, especially within the context of Japan’s postcolonial relations. He is currently exploring narratives dealing with the disruption of Okinawan culture and society by Japanese and American forces. Adam is also interested in humor theory, the connection between aesthetics and politics, Kyōgen plays, anime, and other popular Japanese art forms.

Anat's dissertation project examines contemporary South Korean feminists’ narratives, identities, and community-making. In particular, Anat is interested in the construction of feminist communities and identities online, and in-person activism beyond a spatial-temporal framework. Her specialized areas of interest are gender and sexuality studies, modern Korean history and literature, cultural studies, and media studies. Anat's CV can be accessed at:  http://anatschwartz.com/

Eun Young is currently working on her dissertation about historical constructions and cultural representations of ethnicity, with an emphasis on Korean people moving across borders since the 1920s. Her research explores how ethnic culture is being created and reimagined through transnational interactions among people who repeatedly travel and settle in different countries beyond their homeland. Her dissertation consists of three case studies that analyze modern reinterpretation of classical Korean literature by Korean and Japanese intellectuals during the early twentieth century, cultural representations of traveling Korean dancers in Japan, Germany and the United States, and cultural interactions between North and South Korean immigrants living in Japan in the 1960s.