In today’s episode, we chat with Wenjiao Cai - a PhD Candidate in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University - about the environmental history of early modern Korea such as agricultural settlements in the northern Korean peninsula during the 15th century.

In today’s episode, we chat with Victoria Liu - a PhD student on the History-East Asia track with a focus on Tibetan and Chinese visual culture at Columbia University - about how portrait photography can better help us understand Tibetan identity.

In this episode, Yuting Dong - a PhD Candidate in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University - talks about modern Japanese history; more specifically, about the social and technological history behind the construction of colonial urban infrastructure in Northeast China under Japan’s influence and control. Her paper "Red Brick Know-how" will be published soon in "Technology and Culture."

In this episode, Catherine Tsai - a PhD Candidate in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University - talks about 20th century Taiwanese history including Kominka, a Japanese colonial reform program, and Catherine’s own personal experience with COVID-19.

Editor's Note: in the episode, Catherine states that the Tongxiao or Tsusho Shrine is in Taoyuan but it is actually in Miaoli. There is also a Shinto shrine in Taoyuan, which is called the Taoyuan Martyr’s Shrine.

In our second episode of season two, Becky Bae, a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute, examines Park Chan-Wook’s film "The Handmaiden" and how it subverts common tropes in the portrayal of the Japanese colonial era in contemporary Korean cinema and the rise of Korean webtoons in contrast to the older medium of Korean manhwa.

In our first episode of the second season of the Silver Lining podcast, Columbia PhD candidate Abigail MacBain, explores the origins of buddhism in Japan, how it was used as a tool in extending state authority, and what buddhism is like in the regime today.