Meet Our New Graduate Students

Submitted by Curtis A. Dye on

This Fall, five new graduate students entered the Asian Languages and Literature Graduate Program.

Four came to study Chinese and one to study Hindi and Sanskrit. They have very diverse backgrounds, and come to us by way of Harvard, Brown, Capital Normal University in Beijing, as well as from our own UW. Here is a little introduction for each of them. Welcome to our Department and we wish them success in their academic pursuits!

 Siyuan Fu completed her BA in Art History at the University of Washington in 2014 and is pursuing her graduate degree in Chinese literature. Siyuan will be working with Dr. Knechtges and is interested in researching Medieval Chinese literature and Chinese art history. 

 Sasha Prevost is a happy returnee to UW and Seattle. She completed a double BA in History and Comparative Religion at the University of Washington and also holds a Masters of Divinity in Religion from Harvard University. She has been interested in Hindu devotional literature and Hindi poetry since encountering them in a Nonwestern Literature Course while a student at Centralia Community College. She has also studied Urdu in Lucknow while on a FLAS scholarship and is starting Persian this year. She is interested in studying the interaction between Hindu and Sufi devotional literature in medieval and early modern north India, and pursuing her broader comparative religious interests when possible. Outside of school, she enjoys social dancing and studying classical Persian dance.

 Yin Yin Tan graduated with a BA with Honors in Chinese from this department. Yin Yin learned Cantonese and Mandarin by watching television, which ultimately led to her interests in Chinese linguistics and China's ethnic minority languages. Yin Yin plans to conduct research relating to dialectology and language preservation. Other than Chinese, she is very interested in fashion and food.

 Wandi Wang is from Beijing, China. She was a double major in Comparative Literature and English at Capital Normal University, where she got her Bachelor’s Degree. She received her Master’s degree from Stanford University, studying pre-modern Chinese Literature. Her research interest includes pre-modern Chinese poetry, prose, literary translation and comparative literature.

 Diana Shuheng Zhang completed her triple BA in Philosophy, Classics and East Asian Studies from Brown University in Year 2014. Diana will be working with Professor Boltz and is interested in Inner Asia Studies, particularly philology, comparative translation, textual studies, and manuscripts along the Silk Road. She has studied Latin and Sanskrit, and will start Tocharian, Gandhari, also hopefully, biblical Hebrew, next year.  

Share