Current Graduate Students

The Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures attracts East Asia scholars from all parts of the country and the world, bringing together a variety of different personalities and projects.  The following are some of these students:

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Raised in North Carolina, Michael Chan earned a BA from Dartmouth and an MA from Columbia before entering the program in 2007. His primary interests have concerned the textual, visual, and cinematic representations of the family structure and the nostalgia for home as they have shifted and developed during the Taisho and Showa periods. More broadly, he is interested in the reception of “Western” literature and the formation of literary genres, including the formation of contemporary Japanese literature. Michael is also an avid reader of contemporary Japanese popular fiction and a fan of contemporary Japanese popular music.

Ryan Cook began his work at Yale in 2005 and is now pursuing interdisciplinary studies in the combined degree program between East Asian Languages and Literatures and Film Studies.  His interests include cinematic inspirations in modernist literature, particularly in the writings of Inagaki Taruho, adaptation and media history, film writing and historical film theories, political and sexual scandals and controversies in literature and film, and contemporary Japanese fiction.  He is also currently working with New Haven based documentary filmmaker Socheata Poeuv (New Year Baby, 2008) on the Khmer Legacies project, which collects video testimonies of survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia.  Before coming to Yale, Ryan lived and taught junior high school in northern Japan with the JET Program.  He holds a BA from Cornell and an MA from Georgetown University.

Jessica Dvorak grew up in Maine and graduated with a BA in Classics from Kenyon College.  She taught English in northwest China for two years before returning to New England in 2007 and completing an MA in East Asian Studies at Yale.  Now in her PhD work, her interests include Bronze Age poetry and religious ritual; women’s literacy, education and literature in Late Imperial China; and modern language pedagogy.  In her spare time, she enjoys cooking and baking, music performance, and outdoor sports such as running and skiing.

Nikki Floyd majored in history at Ohio University and earned an MA in Japan Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  Her dissertation work concerns Japanese and Korean proletarian literature of the late 1920s and early 1930s.

After receiving his BA in East Asian Studies at Yale in 2006, Josh Frydman returned to his alma mater for graduate work in 2007. Drawn to ever earlier periods of history since he first discovered Japanese literature, he now works primarily on the Nara Period (710-784). Focusing on the oldest extant works in Japanese, such as the Kojiki and Nihonshoki chronicles, he aims to explore the construction of cultural identity in the emerging Yamato state, including its development in the context of East Asia during the sixth through tenth centuries. Josh has also done research on the modern reinterpretation and translation of various classical works into such contemporary forms as manga and light novels. In addition to his research, he writes fiction and offers commentary on pop-cultural trends from both sides of the Pacific.

Before coming to Yale in 2003, Robert Goree earned an MA in English at Columbia University and worked at the MLA in New York City and McKinsey & Company in Tokyo. His interests encompass early modern and modern Japanese literature, visual culture and cultural history. He has taught at Yale for classes on Japanese language, literature, and history, and is a graduate affiliate of Berkeley College. His dissertation, titled “Literary Tradition and Geographical Imagination in late Early Modern Japan,” examines the history of meisho-zue, a popular genre of encyclopedic guidebooks about famous places around Japan. Focusing on the cities of Kyoto and Edo, as well as the region around Lake Biwa, it contends that the editors of these guidebooks used poetry, together with visual images and various representational strategies, to turn travel into a virtual experience with implications for how readers interacted with their cultural, social and geographical environments. Last year, Robert conducted archival research at Tokyo University with Robert Campbell on a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship and is now a fellow at the Historiographical Research Institute (Shiryo Hensanjo) with the support of an East Asian Prize Fellowship from the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale.

Frederik H. Green received a BA in Chinese Studies from Cambridge University and worked at Tokyo's Institute for Oriental Cultures for two years before coming to Yale for his PhD in 2002. He is currently finishing his dissertation on the writer Xu Xu (1908-1980) in the context of literary Romanticism, while simultaneously teaching an undergrad seminar on 20th century literature from and about Shanghai. Fred will soon leave New Haven for Saint Paul, MN, where he will join the faculty of Macalester College to teach Chinese literature. Having only just taken up the cultivation of roses, he greatly regrets that he will soon be faced with an even shorter growing season.

Kendall Heitzman graduated from Northwestern University with majors in theater and English, and earned MA degrees at Johns Hopkins University and Dartmouth College.  He is working on a dissertation about the postwar writer Yasuoka Shotaro and literature as history.

Originally from Chicago, Lucas Klein graduated from Middlebury College and lived in Beijing and Paris before coming to Yale in 2003.  Having broad interests in the issues of translation and globalization in Chinese poetry, his dissertation looks at the definition of World Literature in the poetics of Bian Zhilin and Yang Lian in the twentieth century and Du Fu and Li Shangyin of the Tang Dynasty, examining their reconciliation of foreign-influenced poetic forms with the nativizing historiography in their poems’ content. Through a cross-temporal take on globalization and international influence, he aims to expand the scope of post-colonialist discourse and examine the impact of translation on literary systems. Aside from his dissertation work, Lucas edits the online journal of creative translation, www.CipherJournal.com, and writes book reviews for publications that deal with non-mainstream American and international literature. He is a published translator of French and Chinese poetry and, with Haun Saussy and Jonathan Stalling, he has recently co-edited a book, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition, by Ernest Fenollosa & Ezra Pound (Fordham University Press).

Cécile Lagesse was born in Mauritius and raised in France, where she received a BA and MA in Chinese from the National Institute of Languages and Civilizations and a BA and MA in film at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.  In 2003, she was editor-in-chief of the online art magazine Arsinica and wrote on Chinese contemporary artists visiting Paris.  She had a particular interest in the works of film director Jia Zhang-ke, whom she has since personally interviewed and written about academically.  Her most recent article, “Jia Zhang-ke’s Still Life: Realism in the Age of the Digital” was published in the December 2008 issue of Cahiers du Cinéma.  Cécile studied at the Beijing Film Academy in 2005 and entered the Combined PhD program in Film Studies and East Asian Languages and Literatures in 2007.   She has a zealous interest in film theory – specifically issues of realism, representation, technology, and political critique – and is currently focusing on contemporary Chinese independent films.  In her spare time, Cecile enjoys frequenting local restaurants.

Ashton Lazarus received his BA from Tufts in 2005 and studied Japanese in Yokohama before entering the program in 2007.  His intellectual foray into Japanese literature was incited by representations of violence and tragedy in medieval warrior epics (gunkimono), a fascination that has branched out into the study of modern and premodern war narratives, medieval performance and ritual, and medieval Buddhist painting.  More recently, he has been drawn to considering Japanese court poetry (waka) from a performance studies angle.  Finally, he has an abiding interest in examining the question of literariness, specifically the line between literature and history, in texts such as The Tales of the Heike (Heike monogatari).  When not deciphering classical Japanese, Ashton enjoys playing classical guitar and spending long afternoons in the kitchen attempting to live up to the culinary prowess of his forebears.  He is also an organizer for GESO, the student union.

Arthur Mitchell entered the PhD program in 2005. After earning a BA in literature from Yale with a senior thesis on the prosody of waka poetry, he spent several years living in Japan where he studied at the Inter-University Center and Sophia University. While there, he also worked for a newspaper in Kanazawa and an economic think tank in Tokyo before coming back to continue his studies at Yale. He is now developing a dissertation on literary modernism in Japan, with a specific interest in the way Japanese modernist fiction engages and critiques modern society through strategies of language and narrative form. Through this project, he hopes to delineate integral connections between literature and history and to reconceptualize modernist literature from an international perspective. In addition to literature, Arthur also has an active interest in issues of Japanese language pedagogy. Originally from Bronxville, NY, Arthur regards New Haven as his second hometown and enjoys exploring the city and its surroundings.

Kevin (Casey) Schoenberger is a native of New Orleans.  A curiosity with sushi menus and Japanese anime was what led him to teach himself Japanese during high school.  He double-majored in Japanese and Chinese at Washington University in St. Louis, a major that took him to study abroad in Kyoto, Beijing, and later Taiwan.  Casey spent two weeks as a law student at Tulane Law School before Hurricane Katrina interrupted his plans, leading him back to Asian studies and enrollment in the program in 2006.  His current research interests are in Yuan and Ming Dynasty dramatic literature, Ming and Qing vernacular fiction, Japanese Noh Drama, esoteric Buddhism, and Sanskrit.  Casey is a member of the swing dance society and the anime club, and a long time student of preying mantis style kung fu.

Brian Steininger was born and raised in Minnesota where he received his BA from Macalester College before coming to Yale in 2003.  He traces his fascination with the reception of Chinese culture in ancient Japan to his puzzlement, upon first reading Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book, at the numerous references to Tang poetry.  His dissertation focuses on the bureaucratic, poetic, and exegetical writing produced by mid-Heian literati as a vehicle for analyzing the interface between intellectual history and literary form.  He is particularly concerned with issues of literacy, hermeneutics, and translation.  Brian spent 2007–08 living in Sendagi and studying at Tokyo University on a Fulbright fellowship, and he is now completing his dissertation in New Haven.  While he misses scavenging the used-book stores in Kanda, he’s very happy to have a fully functional kitchen once again.
Website: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~brs28/

Born in Berkeley, CA, Ellen Tilton mostly grew up in Indiana, but also spent time as a child living in Texas, Illinois, and Tokyo.  After receiving her BA in English and Japanese from Carleton College, she studied Japanese in Yokohama and worked as a Coordinator for International Relations in the Aomori Prefectural Government before coming to Yale in 2006.  Her research is focused on modern Japanese poetry and fiction, with specific interests in the representations of women.  She is currently coordinating the Modern Japanese Poetry Colloquium Series at Yale.  In her free time, Ellen likes to sing (especially folk and choral music), putter around in the kitchen, read and write, and go camping and hiking.

Grace Ting joined the program in 2008 after receiving her BA from Wellesley College and pursuing Japanese language studies at the Inter-University Center in Yokohama. She has previously been engaged with analyzing gender as well as drawing parallels between problems of race and class in contemporary Japanese fiction. With a deep interest in psychoanalysis, she currently finds herself most drawn to examining issues of trauma and loss in the works of writers such as Kono Taeko and Ogawa Yoko alongside broader themes of women and illness in postwar Japan. A fluent speaker of Chinese, she is also invested in studying the cultural exchanges between Japan, Taiwan, and other areas of the Chinese diaspora. Other interests include finding connections between literature, film, and performance studies. In her free time, Grace enjoys reading wuxia fiction (Chinese martial arts novels) and playing classical piano.

Takuya Tsunoda joined the combined program in Film Studies and East Asian Languages and Literatures in 2008. A native of Osaka, he earned a BA from Waseda University in Tokyo before he finally realized his long-term plan of coming to the US to work on film. He obtained a second BA in film studies and an MA in Japanese literature from Columbia University, during which time he also held jobs at Merchant Ivory Productions and DCTV. His current research interests center on spectatorship and the transformation of perception in modern Japan while his broader interests include media culture, Japanese literature, and Japanese film theory and its parallels with European intellectual discourses. Besides film, Takuya is also a great fan of modern ballet and contemporary dance.

Edwin Van Bibber-Orr grew up on organic dairy farms in Nova Scotia and Maine. After finishing a BA in Chinese at Middlebury College, he entered the program in 2005.  His dissertation will focus on the transmission and reception of the poetry of Song dynasty women poets Li Qingzhao and Zhu Shuzhen.  He is especially interested in the identification of male literati with women poets. Apart from his interest in Chinese poetry, Edwin is an avid baseball fan, serious video gamer, and amateur creative writer.

Paul Vierthaler entered the program in the fall of 2008 after completing his MA in East Asian studies at Yale. He graduated from the University of Kansas in 2005 with a BA in East Asian Languages and Cultures (Chinese) and Political Science. He is primarily interested in Ming and Qing fiction. From Dodge City, Kansas, he is also a runner and closely follows Kansas sports.

Before entering the program in 2005, Naoki Yamamoto received his BA and his MA from Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. Intellectually drawn to the relationship of cinema to its cultural, historical, and political contexts, he has published articles in Japanese on such topics as the German/Japanese wartime co-production, Japanese New Wave films of the 1960s, and recent Hollywood blockbuster films. He has also translated numerous essays on film into Japanese, aiming to provoke dialogue and intellectual exchanges between scholars in the US and Japan. He is currently at work on his dissertation, which deals with the emergence and development of realist film theory and practice in Japan from the 1930s to the 1950s.  Through his scholarship, he seeks to contribute constructively to the field of cross cultural film studies.  Aside from his academic pursuits, Naoki is a semi-professional chef specializing in Spanish and Japanese cuisines.  He also loves music from the ‘60s and the ‘80s and continues playing the drums and the bass guitar during his free time.

Qiangqiang Zhang was born and raised in China, received his BA from Qingdao University, and did several years of graduate work at Fudan University before joining the program in 2005.  He had studied Chinese classical literature, linguistics, and intellectual history when his readings of New Criticism drew him to the study of English poetry.  At Yale, he has delved into Milton, the Romantics, Stevens, and Hart Crane, and has developed a critical interest in interpretive methods and the development of institutional taste.  His dissertation project traces the reception in China of the Six Dynasties poet Xie Lingyun from his contemporaries through to the present.  He will use this study to pry open issues of reading culture and examine the idea of “poetry” underlying the invented tradition of Chinese poetry.  Qiangqiang writes poetry of his own, some of which has been published in China.  He is also an enthusiast of world music and long distance cycling. 

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