Harvard-Yenching Institute names doctoral fellows

Initiated in the 1960s, the Harvard-Yenching Institute’s Doctoral Scholar Program (DSP) now consists of two branches — Harvard-DSP and Non-Harvard DSP. Each year the institute invites Harvard departments of the humanities and social sciences to nominate candidates for the Harvard-DSP scholarship. Although not necessarily faculty members or researchers, these candidates must be from Asia.

The candidates’ applications are presented to a joint selection committee of Harvard-Yenching Institute and Harvard faculty for consideration. Those who are selected receive a three-and-a-half-year scholarship. Harvard-DSP grantees have been nominated and trained in different departments, such as East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Anthropology, History of Art and Architecture, Sociology, the Committee of History and East Asian Languages, and the Committee on the Study of Religion.

The Non-Harvard DSP allows junior faculty members and researchers of universities and research institutes affiliated with the Harvard-Yenching Institute to study abroad for a Ph.D. in the humanities and social sciences with an emphasis on culture at a major university in the United States or abroad.

This year’s new doctoral grantees at Harvard are as follows:

Michio Arimitsu (Japan, Department of African and African American Studies) received his B.A. from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and his A.M. from Keio University. He is interested in the use of body language and the representation of corporeality in American literature in general and African-American literature in particular.

Satoru Hashimoto (Japan, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations) received his B.A. in French art and M.A. in French literature from Tokyo University. His research interest is in the history of modern Chinese aesthetics, focusing on the problem of how aesthetic discourse has contributed to the establishment of “Chinese modernity.”

Wei Hu (China, Department of Comparative Literature) earned an M.A. in English literature from Peking University and an M.A. in comparative literature from Dartmouth College. She is interested in medieval and Renaissance European literatures.

Vipas Prachyaporn (Thailand, Department of Anthropology) received his B.A. in history and M.A. in anthropology from Thammasat University. By focusing on artisans and artisanship, Prachyaporn now concentrates his research on the concept of the social self in post-socialist Laos.