The Department of Comparative Thought and Literature is pleased to announce that Christopher Taylor will join as a postdoctoral fellow on July 1, 2024. Prior to his postdoctoral appointment, Chris was a Blakemore Freeman Fellow in 2020-2021, a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science visiting research fellow at the University of Tokyo in 2021-2022, and, most recently, an AGHI graduate research fellow in 2023-2024. Chris completed his PhD in Comparative Thought and Literature with a certificate in film and media at Johns Hopkins University and holds a BA in Philosophy from Yale University. His current project investigates the production of novel concepts of artificial humanity—human-constructed humans—and animacy in 20th-century Japan. His comparative research interests focus on the history and theory of animated media (broadly conceived) in relation to modernism, visual culture, world cinema, and the history of technology.