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Ariel Stilerman

Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures

BioI study premodern Japan through its manuscripts, objects, and languages.

My first book, Court Poetry and the Culture of Learning in Japan (Harvard, 2026), charts the transformation of the poetry of the imperial court into a shared language for military and priestly elites, lower-ranking warriors, and eventually urban merchants.

My second project, Meet the People Who Built Japan, investigates the emergence of a “culture of work” in early medieval manuscripts and artifacts.

I welcome inquiries from students interested in classical through early modern Japanese literature through the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, as well as those pursuing transdisciplinary work through the program in Modern Thought and Literature, and grad makers in the humanities through Making and Creative Praxis.

I advocate for a “maker mindset” in the humanities. My research is just as much about building and doing as about reading and writing. My courses involve hands-on experiences and are often co-taught with colleagues in Classics, English, Religion, History, Mechanical Engineering, or Physics.

More broadly, I am interested in how we engage with the world through our senses and skills, exploring fields such as the tea ceremony, psychoanalysis, woodworking, sailing, olfactory cultures, technology, and design.

Michael Still

Adm Assoc 3, Music

Maxi Corona Stiller

Affiliate, Psychology

BioMaxi is a Masters student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Technology Dresden, Germany. Her research explores how emotional processes influence mental health, combining insights from clinical psychology, affective science, and neuroscience. She has a particular interest in fMRI and has previously studied neural activity and connectivity related to emotion processing and regulation in early-onset depression. As part of her Master’s thesis, she is currently working at the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. David Preece and Prof. James Gross. Her work there centers on understanding mechanisms behind alexithymia, with a focus on its neural underpinnings and the role of experiential avoidance. Maxi is passionate about bridging clinical practice and research. In the long term, she hopes to contribute to more personalized and effective treatments by integrating physiological markers into psychological care.