Graduate Students

Emily Lopez studies contemporary Japanese literature from the 1960s to the 1980s, focusing on representations of activism, violence, and resistance. She earned her B.A. in Japanese from the University of California, Davis, in 2020, followed by an M.A. in...

Ben Hales entered Harvard’s History and East Asian Languages (HEAL) program in 2024. He researches the modern history of China’s relationship with Central Asia, focussing in particular on settler-indigenous and sedentary-pastoral relations from the 1940s...

Crystal Cheng's research revolves around early modern Japanese theater, literature, and visual culture, with a particular focus on the portrayal of murders and suicides of female characters. Her work aims to explore how the trope of selfless, sacrificial...

Mayako’s primary interest is understanding the modes and patterns of colonial and post-colonial interactions across Japan and Korea. In her master’s thesis, she explored some of these complex formations under imperial war mobilization in Korea, i.e. late...

Emily Wan received her B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and spent one year as a Fulbright Fellow at Waseda University. Her research focuses on renga (Japanese medieval linked verse), a collaboratively, spontaneously, and orally composed...

Julie Yau Lee Chan is a student of early modern Chinese literature. Her research interests revolve around theatre, performance, and media studies. Prior to joining Harvard, she received her B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature from the Chinese...

Ami Tanahashi studies contemporary Japanese literature, focusing on portrayals of girlhood and feminine adolescent identity. She received her B.A. from Soka University of America in 2017 and recently received her M.A. from the University of Washington in...

Rachel McVeigh comes to Harvard with a B.A. in Chinese from Oxford and a Master’s in pre-modern Chinese literature from Peking University, where she wrote her thesis on “Form and Change in the Elegiac Poetry of Early Medieval China”. She works on the...

Mengyuan Li 李梦媛 received her B.A. in Chinese History from Nankai University and her M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia. Her Master's thesis examines the intellectual development of the prominent seventeenth-century Chinese...

Shae (Chae Lin) Kim received her B.A. in Asian Studies and a Master's degree in Korean literature from Yonsei University. In her master's thesis, she examined a 17th-century poetry book created for a courtesan, known as the Poetry Book for Chosaeng...