Ry is interested in modern Japanese poetry, particularly Nakahara Chuya. He has published two volumes of translations of this poet's work, including Poems of the Goat (2002) and Poems of Days Past (2005). He took his M.A. in Spring 2004, writing his thesis on the Taisho-era poet Tominaga Taro. Other areas of interest include comparative literature, translation theory and practice, kickboxing, slide guitar, and quality beer. Ry took his B.A. in English and Japanese from the University of Notre Dame in 1997 (spent 95-96 year at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan), and worked for five years after graduation in Fukuoka. Ry's translations can be viewed at www.nakaharachuya.com. Ry is currently a Fulbright fellow at the University of Tokyo, researching for his dissertation on form in 20th century Japanese poetry.

Dong Tiezhu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Chinese program. He received his M.A. degree from Peking University, China. While there, he focused on the relationship between early Chinese myth and Taoism, paticuarly the Zhuangzi. Now he mainly focuses on early Chinese thought and literature from Pre-Qin to the Han dynasty.

Matthew Fargo is a third year student in Japanese Literature. He likes Showa literature and "Buraiha" authors in particular. He also enjoys composing music and fiction and sandwiches.

BARRETT J. HEUSCH (Japanese Literature)

Barrett is a doctoral student specializing in pre-modern Japanese literature. After receiving his B.A. in Japanese from Pomona College he spent several years teaching in Japan and traveling throughout Asia and Central Europe. Possibly because of this, one of his main research interests is travel literature; others include medieval poetry, especially waka, and exile. His M.A. thesis was a study and translation of Michiyukiburi, a travel diary written in 1371 by Imagawa Ryoshun. His dissertation will continue his work on Ryoshun.

Harrison Huang is a doctoral candidate in classical Chinese literature who received his B.A. studying continental philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he was initially drawn to ideas about ethics in early Chinese thought, such as the notion of virtue as a kind of virtuosity. His master's thesis focused on the role of desire in Mencius' notion of self-cultivation, with special attention given to court performance roles, prompts for pleasure and rhetorical modes in Mencius' dialogues with rulers. He currently works on Six Dynasties poetry and hermeneutics, thinking through issues like the uses of allusion in landscape poetry. For fun, he has a website under construction on the Classic of Poetry (http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hh/odes/) that collates Han and Song dynasty commentaries.

Janice received her B.A. in Dance as a Performing Art from UC Santa Barbara and, after an interlude in Japan, began graduate studies at UC Berkeley in 2000.  Receiving her M.A. in Asian Studies in 2002, her thesis explored the position of Keichû’s Man’yô daishôki within the commentarial tradition of Man’yôshû studies.  Since spending the 2005-2006 year in Kansai as a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellow, she has been writing her dissertation titled “Extraordinary Exemplars in the Period Pieces of Chikamatsu Monzaemon.”  Her main research interests include all genres of performed narratives, ranging from the recitation of military tales to utazaimon; performance theory; historicity and topicality in period pieces (jidaimono) and historical fiction; representations of exemplary conduct in print and on stage; and transgender identities.

JAMI PROCTOR-XU (Chinese Literature)

Jami Proctor-Xu is a Ph.D. student in Chinese Literature with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Having advanced to candidacy in 2002, she is currently working on her dissertation on cultural ruins in contemporary China. Her research interests include ruins, urban space in China, feminist theory, and contemporary Chinese poetry.

C. MIKI WHEELER (Japanese Literature)

Miki is a doctoral candidate in classical Japanese literature with a special interest in the thematic, structural, and topical associations between historical documents, historical narratives, and courtier diaries kept by both men and women from the mid-Heian through the early Kamakura periods. She treats these concerns in her dissertation, titled “Tamakiwaru, A Gem-Glistening Spirit: Kengozen and her Early Kamakura Court Memoir,” in which she also provides an annotated translation of the text. She recently returned from Tokyo where she studied primarily with Imazeki Toshiko, under the auspices of the Fulbright-Hays program. After Tamakiwaru, she anticipates that her next project will be to translate and annotate Imakagami, a historical narrative centering on court activity during the so-called insei period of the late eleventh through twelfth centuries.

Abbie is a doctoral candidate in Japanese literature with a strong interest in colonial Korean literature. She is a native of Tsukuba, Japan, where she lived until she was seventeen. She received her B.A. in comparative literature from Barnard College in 2001 and received her M.A. from UC Berkeley in 2005. Her master's thesis was titled “Modern Faces of Kaguyahime: Figures of Young Women” and compared the figure of the protagonist Kaguyahime in Taketori monogatari (“The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”) to later fiction which featured her. From 2003-2004 she lived in Seoul, Korea, studying Korean in preparation for her dissertation research. From 2005-2006 she spent time at UCLA, and for the year 2007, she is conducting research in Japan on a Japan Foundation Fellowship. Her main interests include the influence of colonialism and modernism on identity formation and transformation as expressed in literary texts.

Angie Yuan is a third year Ph.D. student concentrating on Late Imperial and Modern Chinese Literature. She is interested in themes of dislocation, urban space and its relationship to narrative form and translation practices. She is currently working on some translations of Eileen Chang's short stories as well as selections of Qing lyric poetry.Angie also has an MFA in creative writing and recently had poems published in Fence Magazine and the Boston Review.