Daniel Penner-Hashimoto

Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Daniel is a PhD candidate in Japanese literature and cultural history. His dissertation, “Languages of Critical Enlightenment: Science, Literature, and the Aesthetics of Writing in Meiji Japan,” examines emergent cultures of knowledge production, organization and circulation in the Meiji period (1868-1912). In particular, the dissertation focuses on how the demands of translation brought issues of language, orthography, and rhetoric to the forefront in the critical engagement with Euro-American conceptions of nature and society. Before coming to Columbia, Daniel received a BA in Mathematics at Princeton in 2014, and an MA in Statistics at Stanford in 2016. He is also an avid rock musician and language learner.