Introducing the new LRCCS & Tang Junyi Postdocs
LRCCS is excited to announce three new LRCCS postdoc students and one Tang Junyi postdoc starting this year. Here’s some info about these fantastic four:
Sonya Ozbey (Tang Junyi Postdoc)
Originally from Turkey, Sonya received her MA and PhD in philosophy. Her dissertation is titled "Discontinuities in Immanent Worlds: The Human/Nonhuman Animal Split in Spinoza and the Zhuāngzĭ [庄子]." Sonya is currently working on producing a classical Chinese to Turkish translation of the Dàodéjīng 道德经, which has been attempted once before in the late 60's, before the unearthing of the Mǎwángduī 马王堆 and Guōdiàn 郭店 texts. She is currently also working on an article that explores the tension between the Zhuāngzĭ's political apathy on the one hand, and its expression of radical politics (where current structures of exclusion and power are betrayed and attacked) on the other. Sonya has a large collection of Franco-Belgian comics, Lucky Luke in particular, about which she is equally proud and embarrassed.
Laurence Coderre (LRCCS Postdoc)
Laurence grew up in a little town just south of Montréal called Knowlton, Québec, and is a huge tennis fan. She recently published an article in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture titled "Meaningful Mobility and the Ties That Bind: 1988 as Postsocialist Road Story." Here’s a quote from that piece:
“The road story genre, in espousing a notion of “freedom” made manifest on the open road, is itself precariously positioned in relation to market interests; it is a monument to the disruptive potential found in mobility, even as that mobility requires the use, and often ownership, of a vehicle. Like Han Han himself, the road story seems to thrive on the tension between critical intervention and market collusion, and, as a result, it offers the perfect point of entry into Han Han’s novel, his persona, and how they both speak to the contemporary, postsocialist moment in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).”
Yasmin Cho (LRCCS Postdoc)
Born and raised in Seoul, but thinks of herself as a nomad, spending much time in China and the US. Yasmin’s current research focuses on Tibet and China, Buddhist nuns, religion, materiality, and mobility. Here’s a quote from her dissertation:
“As they sit in buses and visit local restaurants, temples, and monasteries in Tibetan towns, the pilgrims to Yachen first sense the dirt on the bumpy roads, the high altitude sickness and nausea of the journey, the smell of the butter lamp in the shrine, and the loud and undecipherable recorded lectures of Tibetan lamas on the streets. It is in such experiences that I found the rawness of the sacred. The most mundane and profane experiences are congealed together in the pursuit of the sacred.”
Glenn Tiffert (LRCCS Postdoc)
Glenn grew up in New York City and Florida, but now calls Los Angeles home. He once had an otherworldly, close encounter with a shoal of scintillating reef squid 80 feet under the Caribbean. His proudest publication is titled “Epistrophy: Chinese Constitutionalism and the 1950s,” which was featured in the book Building Constitutionalism in China. Here’s a quote:
“The 1954 Constitution bridged a century of intellectual trends and political movements, joining together several generations of jurists in an authentically Chinese discourse knit from disparate traditions.”
Check out Glenn’s Academia.edu profile here: https://berkeley.academia.edu/tiffert