Hana Lethen is a 2026–2027 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. She received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University in May 2026, and before that, her AB in Comparative Literature from Princeton University.

She participated in the inaugural New Directions in Noh workshop in 2024. There, she received invaluable mentorship and feedback on an article draft that resulted in her first peer-reviewed publication, "Moving Spectacles: Madwomen and Human Trafficking in Noh's Peripheries," in Verge: Studies in Global Asias (Spring 2026).

The article was adapted from a chapter of her dissertation, Choreographies of Eccentricity: Madness, Dance, and Gender in Medieval Noh Theater, which she is currently developing into a book manuscript. In it, she examines how a medieval identification of madness with dance shaped embodiments of difference on the noh stage, revealing the cultural contingency of madness and the gendered body.

Hana has presented on noh and premodern Japanese culture more broadly at numerous nationwide conferences, including on a 2023 Association for Asian Studies panel that she organized entitled “Theatricality and Gender in Premodern Japan,” which featured fellow working group members Susan Klein and Matthew Chudnow.

In future workshops, she plans to present further work from her manuscript as she prepares it for submission to an academic press, as well as work from an additional project on premodern performing arts in anime.