School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 201-300 of 303 Results
-
Ashkan Nazari
Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2023
Iranian Studies - Iran Media Projects, Iranian StudiesBioAshkan Nazari
M.A. Ethnomusicology, Tehran University of Art, Tehran
B.A., Music, University of Tehran, Tehran
A Kurdish-Iranian musician and researcher, Ashkan is currently an ethnomusicology PhD student at Stanford. He holds a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Tehran and a master's in ethnomusicology from Tehran University of Art.
Ashkan's more than 15-year-long research career has centred upon Kurdish classical and folk musics as well as Iranian classical music. The core area he is pursuing at Stanford covers the intersections between music, on the one hand, and genocide, war, violence, intellectual movements, Islam and Kurdish identity, on the other. His interest also includes the development of ethnographic studies of the relationship existing between maqām as a cultural-musical concept, with ethnicity, racism and colonialism.
In his quest to explore those realms, Ashkan has already been prolific back home, with three titles: The Concept and Structure of Maqām in Kurdish Music, The Structure of Musical Modes in Hawrāmi Music, the Anthropological Aspects of Maqām Music of Iraqi Kurdistan, with the latter set to be released soon. Many of his numerous articles have additionally appeared across prestigious Iranian journals, others presented at international ethnomusicology conferences.
As the founder and conductor of the first-ever philharmonic orchestra in his Kurdish hometown of Paveh, Ashkan also taught Iranian music theory and Iranian ensembles, while instructing setār performance and analysis of Iranian classical music at the University of Kurdistan and the University of Art and Culture in Kermanshah and Sanandaj, respectively. -
Andrew Patrick Nelson
Ph.D. Student in Japanese, admitted Autumn 2018
Ph.D. Minor, History
Ph.D. Minor, LinguisticsBioI am a PhD Candidate in the Japanese Linguistics track of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. My research is motivated by two primary areas of inquiry: first, to what extent can methods in linguistic science be applied to historical documents to recover a speaker/writer intent and reader/listener interpretation? Second, in what ways are language changes perceived, categorized, and valorized; in what ways do those perceptions, categories, and values shape language ideology; and in what ways does language ideology in turn change language use? My work brings together methods in psycholinguistics, semantics, and pragmatics in analyzing texts on language written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with Japanese texts as a primary case study, but also leveraging sources in English, French, and German for a transnational perspective.
-
Bertrand Ngong
Ph.D. Student in German Studies, admitted Autumn 2023
BioMy name is Bertrand C. Ngong. I am originally from Cameroon, a Central African country that still bears the scars of German colonial presence in linguistic, architectural, toponymic, cultural, political, and even memorial aspects to this day. Growing up, this dual African and German heritage became deeply ingrained in me, guiding my steps first toward Germanic studies and then towards African studies. My reflections aim to comprehend how these two legacies interconnect, mutually influence each other, and shape the present-day relations between the German-speaking cultural space and Africa. I am particularly interested in the cultural and intellectual productions of Black people in the German language and/or about Germany. Historically, I investigate the African sources of the historiography of German colonization in Black Africa. Moreover, I closely follow current German-African affairs, especially concerning issues of reparations, restitution of artworks, and repatriation of African remains stolen during German colonization in Black Africa. Lastly, my reflections also seek to challenge and decolonize a certain perception of Germanic studies that would limit this field exclusively to the borders of Germany and Germanic countries.
-
Quyen Nguyen-Hoang
Ph.D. Student in Art History, admitted Autumn 2022
BioQuyên Nguyễn-Hoàng is a writer and translator born in Hà Nội.
Her recent translations include the English translation of Chronicles of a Village, a novel by Nguyễn Thanh Hiện (Yale University Press 2024), and the Vietnamese translation of Samuel Caleb Wee’s poetry collection https://everything.is/ (AJAR Press 2024).
While a curator at Sàn Art, she wrote Masked Force (2022), a bilingual book interleaved with the war photographs of Võ An Khánh. Her poems, essays and translations have appeared in Poetry, Jacket2, Modern Poetry in Translation and other venues. -
Samuel Page
Ph.D. Student in Slavic Languages and Literatures, admitted Autumn 2021
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEastern European literature; Eastern European religions; literary theory.
-
Nancy Rico-Mineros
Master of Arts Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2024
CCRMA Student Assistant, MusicBioNancy Rico-Mineros is currently a first-year grad student at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Prior to Stanford, Nancy attended NYU in which she received a Bachelor of Music in Music Technology.
-
Serena Shah
Ph.D. Student in History, admitted Autumn 2021
BioSerena is a PhD candidate in History in the United States field. She is in her fourth year and she works on the history of ideas in the nineteenth century: particularly, how Americans thought about the ancient past as they entered modernity. Her dissertation examines the history of oriental scholarship in the United States. It explores Americans' post-Civil War investment in pre-classical antiquity and the Eastern Mediterranean, Bronze Age world that they called the Orient. She is also currently writing a research article on Greek and Roman slave-naming practices and the classicism of American slavery.
-
Jie Shen 沈劼
Ph.D. Student in East Asian Languages and Cultures, admitted Autumn 2021
BioJie Shen 沈劼 is a Ph.D. student in Chinese Archaeology, in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University. She mainly focuses on the crafting technology of bone artifacts in ancient China. Using the use-wear analysis, residue analysis, and experimental archaeology, Jie explores the variation and development of bone crafting techniques, and how the crafting industry was involved in social progress such as the formation of the early state. Also, she is interested in the religious and political meaning of animal-related artifacts, which are significant for understanding the human-animal relationship.
-
Aatika Singh
Ph.D. Student in Art History, admitted Autumn 2023
Ph.D. Minor, Comparative Studies in Race and EthnicityCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsCaste Studies, Art History & Cultural Studies, Race Studies and Modernism
-
Adele Leigh Stock
Ph.D. Student in History, admitted Autumn 2020
SHI Discussion Leader, Stanford Pre-Collegiate StudiesCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsHistory of environment, religion, and technology in 20c urban Africa
-
Merve Tekgürler
Ph.D. Student in History, admitted Autumn 2019
Masters Student in Symbolic Systems, admitted Autumn 2023BioMerve Tekgürler is a PhD candidate in History (ABD) and an M.S. student in Symbolic Systems. In AY 2023-24, they hold the inaugural Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship. Merve has a BA degree in History and Social and Cultural Anthropology from Freie University Berlin and an MA in History from Stanford.
Merve’s dissertation, tentatively titled “Crucible of Empire: Danubian Borderlands and the Making of Ottoman Administrative Mentalities” focuses on the Ottoman-Polish borderlands in the long 18th century (1760s-1820s), examining the changes and continuities north of the Danube River in relation to Russian and Austrian expansions. They study Ottoman news and information networks in this region and their impact on production and mobilisation of imperial knowledge.
As part of their dissertation project, Merve is training a handwritten text recognition model for 18th century Ottoman Turkish administrative hand and developing AI-based natural language processing tools for Ottoman Turkish. Their aim is to compile a large machine-readable corpus of manuscript news communiques and employ computational text analysis methods. In AY 2022-23, they were a Digital Humanities Graduate Fellow at Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) with their project on topic modeling in Ottoman court histories from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Merve’s research on the borderlands ties to their passion for maps and spatial humanities. They are the co-PI in Cistern: A Database of Geographical Knowledge in the Ottoman World, which they started with Adrien Zakar in Winter 2020. They also contributed to their advisor Ali Yaycıoğlu’s Mapping Ottoman Epirus project, building a placenames dataset from an Ottoman transportation map and developing a 3D model of the late-nineteenth century Ottoman Empire with exaggerated elevation data.
Previously, Merve was a G.J. Pigott Scholar (AY 2022-23) and graduate coordinator of Stanford Humanities Center Eurasian Empires Workshop (AY 2021-22 & 2022-23). They also worked as senior graduate mentor for the Undergraduate Research Internship at CESTA from Spring 2021 to Fall 2022. Outside academia, Merve enjoys playing tennis, doing gymnastics, and all kinds of DIY projects. -
Kedao Tong
Ph.D. Student in Religious Studies, admitted Autumn 2018
BioKedao Tong is a PhD candidate in Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religious Studies. His research focuses on the socio-cultural history of Chinese Buddhism and topics related to animals in the Chinese and the broader East Asian contexts. He is currently finishing his dissertation, tentatively titled "Animal Liberation as Human Endeavor: The Practice of Releasing Lives (fangsheng) in Chinese Religions, 400s–1940s."
Kedao received an MA in Chinese Literature and Culture from Stanford University, where he wrote a thesis that studies the writing of women’s epitaphs from China’s Northern Dynasties (439-581 AD). Prior to coming to Stanford, he received an Honors BA in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto. He has taken up coursework and language training in Hong Kong and Japan, and has a background in editorial work in academic and other settings. -
Calvin Van Zytveld
Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2023
BioCalvin Van Zytveld is pursuing a Ph.D. in Musicology at Stanford University. His research interests include hymnody of pre-industrial America and agricultural practices of the early modern period.
Calvin graduated summa cum laude in music from Princeton University, with a certificate in cello performance. Following graduation, he began master’s degrees in music composition and cello performance at the University of Michigan, but lost his vision suddenly in the second year of his studies due to Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON). Unable to read music, Calvin performs and writes music less frequently now, though he can be heard performing with the Plymouth Chamber Players, a grassroots chamber collective he co-directs with violinists Paolo Dara and Karisa Chiu in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Calvin enjoys organic vegetable gardening, drinking tea, and walking with his guide dog, Wake. -
Dejan Vasic
Ph.D. Student in Art History, admitted Autumn 2023
BioDejan Vasić is an art historian and curator of late modern and contemporary art and moving image media. He specializes in the transnational avant-garde and conceptual art, concentrating primarily on performance, video art, photography, and artists’ films and media works. His research intersects art, power, war, and everyday life, with methodological grounding in historical materialism, memory politics, decolonial, gender and feminist theory, and affirmation of critical thinking as a public good. Dejan is passionate about the history of exhibitions, museology and curatorial practice; he is invested in writings in the first person, and frequently collaborates with artists who battle social, economic and political problems.
Prior to coming to Stanford, Vasić had over a decade of experience in Serbia and the Yugoslav region, where he engaged in radical curatorial practices and critical writing that delves into the politics and ethics of aesthetics. Since 2012, he is a member of the International Association of Art Critics AICA and has served on the Program Advisory Board of AICA-Serbia (2020-2023). Dejan curated visual arts program at the Center for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade (2017-2023), co-edited the Beton - Cultural Propaganda Kit (2018-2023), was part of the Four Faces of Omarska Working Group (2010-2015), the Culture of Memory curatorial platform (2010-2014) and Kontekst Collective (2009-2013). -
Vannessa Velez
Ph.D. Student in History, admitted Autumn 2017
Master of Arts Student in History, admitted Spring 2025BioVannessa is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. history with an interest in racial capitalism, science and technology studies, and urban environmental inequality. Her dissertation traces the environmental and political history of metro Atlanta’s rapid economic development from the beginning of national urban renewal in 1949 to 1996 when the city cemented its status as a global hub after hosting the Centennial Olympics. In particular, she focuses on how Atlanta’s early and enthusiastic embrace of globalization and new urban planning and engineering trends led to great economic success and widespread celebration as the new "Black Mecca" for African American business and culture. Unfortunately, this progress came at the expense of the city’s most vulnerable communities and their local environments—the consequences of which Atlanta is struggling to overcome today.
Her research has been supported by numerous institutions, including the Stanford Humanities Center, the Eisenhower Institute, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the MIT SHASS Fellowship program, and the University of Pennsylvania's Provost Predoctoral Fellowship program. -
Katherine Whatley
Ph.D. Student in Japanese, admitted Autumn 2019
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research examines the relationship between the written and the spoken word in Classical Japan. I take this relationship as the starting place and explore the role of music in Classical Japan through looking at words-as-song. From this vantage point, I argue that music was a primary mode of communication amongst people (especially women) and their surroundings—interpersonal, international, and inter-environmental. I am also a composer and koto performer working on a dissertation composition.
-
Crystal Yu
Master of Arts Student in East Asian Languages and Cultures, admitted Autumn 2024
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsModern and contemporary Chinese literature; comparative literature.
![Bran[don] Papineau](https://profiles.stanford.edu/proxy/api/cap/profiles/247069/resources/profilephoto/350x350.1731824285281.jpg)
