Recent Dissertations

For graduate students who have passed the General Examination and advanced to doctoral candidacy, students focus their energies on original research work and significant contributions to knowledge in the field of East Asian Studies. The doctoral dissertation demonstrates the student’s capacity to pursue independent research at the professional academic level.

Dissertations published within the last ten years are listed below. Each title is linked to its entry at the Princeton University digital repository (Dataspace), and each author is linked to their EAS profile. The full list of doctoral dissertations on DataSpace is available here.

YearTitleAuthor(s)
2024Bridging the Other World: Pure Land Buddhism and Literati Culture in Song Dynasty China (960–1276)Zhang, Hanruo
The Crafts of the Hidden Hands: Scribal Culture and the Making of Texts in Early ChinaXiao, Yunxiao
Expressing Time: Cybernetic Aesthetics and Cold War JapanChen, Junnan
Contending for Merit and Power in Early Medieval China: An Intellectual History of the Nine Ranks SystemBai, Yuzhou
Classic Chinese Novels and Global Media Climate: Ecological Form, Affective World-Making and Infrastructural NetworkYim, Tsz Kit
Aural Texts and the Association of Sound and Meaning in Early ChinaRominger, Gian Duri
2023The Synthetic Tongue: Speech, Writing, and "Speech Writings" in Early ChinaZhuming Yao
Godly Politics: Ise, the Court, and Japanese Religion 1330-1615David Lee Romney
Business Magnates, Public Philanthropists, and Art Connoisseurs: Suzhou Gentry and the Nationalization of Lijin in Qing ChinaShengyu Yang
Claiming China Against North-South Divide: Classical Traditions and Literati Culture in the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (1115–1234)Lili Xia
Well-Ordered Textures: The Book of Odes and the Study of Wu in Mid-Qing ChinaYingtian He
2022Seeing Like Steelworkers: The Media Ecology of Metal During the Cold War and Its Afterlife in KoreaChan Yong Bu
When China Was Gone: Identities and States of the Shatuo Turks (895-979)Soojung Han
Conciliators and Fixed Points: Dispute Resolution in Fifteenth Century JapanMegan Elizabeth Gilbert
Instituting Ideas: The Reclamation of Scholarly Subjects in the High Qing (1723-1795)Ziyao Ma
Mediating Me: Digital Sociality and Smartphone Culture in Contemporary JapanKimberly Hassel
The Enchantment of Erudition: Models and Manifestations of Literary Culture in Han-Wei ChinaYixin Gu
2021Dutch Formulations and Family Secrets: Medicine and the Marketplace in Early Modern JapanClaire Elise Cooper
2020Writing History Through the Biographical Genre in the Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE)Yuanxin Chen
Qing China’s Discovery of Central Eurasia: Geography and Statecraft, 1759-1881Xue Zhang
2019Provincial Identity in China: Thinking Central-Local Relations in Guangdong, 1870-1910Ying-kit Chan
Yu Xin and the Sixth-century Literary WorldYiyi Luo
The Third Day of the Third Month in Early Medieval Chinese Texts: Literary Composition as Ritualized PracticeKay Jane Duffy
Sailing under a Rising Sun: A Global History of Japanese Shipping in Empire and at WarElijah J Greenstein
When the South Matters: Imagination of Chu and Canonization of Chuci (Verses of Chu)Su Fu
Writing and Materiality in the Three Han Dynasty Tombs at MawangduiLuke Waring
Knowing Number: Mathematics, Astronomy, and the Changing Culture of Learning in Middle-Period China, 1100-1300Jinsong Guo
The Lineage Orientation and Its Critics: Paths to Pluralism in Chinese Classicism and PoliticsMagnus Ribbing Gren
2018Narrating Vengeful Spirits and Genealogies in Premodern Japanese LiteratureKaoru Hayashi
Literary Celebrity in Early Twentieth-Century JapanDavid Boyd
Towards a Materialist Conception of Science—Science Debates in Interwar & Wartime Japan, 1920-1945Qinyuan Lei
Bond Beyond Nation: Sinographic Network and Korean Nationhood, 1860–1932Songyeol Han
2017The Criticality of Criticism: Visions of "Literature" in Meiji JapanMiyabi Goto
The Invention of Chinese Buddhist Poetry: Poet-Monks in Late Medieval China (c. 760–960 CE)Thomas James Mazanec
Changing Along with the World: Adaptive Agency in Early ChinaMercedes Valmisa Oviedo
2016The Vicissitudes of Late Imperial China's Accommodation of Arabopersian Knowledge of the Natural World, 16th-18th CenturiesDror Weil
Terrestrial Rewards as Divine Recompense: The Self-Fashioned Piety of the Peng Lineage of Suzhou, 1650s-1870sDaniel Burton-Rose
Making China's Greatest Poet: The Construction of Du Fu in the Poetic Culture of the Song Dynasty (960-1279)Jue Chen
Diversifying the Center: Authority and Representation within the Context of Multiplicity in Eighteenth century Qing Imperial MedicineSare Aricanli
2015Family Matters: Managing Illness in Late Tokugawa Japan, 1750-1868William Evan Young
Nature's Helper: Mikimoto Kōkichi and the Place of Cultivation in the Twentieth Century's Pearl EmpiresKjell D. Ericson
Manchu and the Study of Language in China (1607-1911)Mårten Söderblom Saarela
2014The Mirror of China: Language Selection, Images of China, and Narrating Japan in the Kamakura Period (1185-1333)Erin Leigh Brightwell
Chinese Military Men and Cultural Practice in the Early Nineteenth Century Qing Empire (1800-1840)James Bruce Bonk
Assisted Takeoff: Germany and the Ascent of Japan's Aviation, 1910-1937Juergen Paul Melzer