Sochuiwon Priscilla Khapai

Lost & Found Archival Research Fellow

Sochuiwon Priscilla Khapai is in her 3rd year PhD student in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY and her research is at the intersection between Literature and Science. Khapai has an interdisciplinary background with a B.Sc. in Physics (hons) and an M.A. in English. Her research looks at how concepts from physics and other sciences along with literature, can inform and deepen our understanding of the world. In thinking about the arts and their potential, she is actively exploring concepts from scientific research which reveal truths about the nature of reality, time, matter and the way natural phenomena exists in the world. She studies the works of classic romantic poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Clare; the modernists, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, H.D. ; and New American poets, Robert Duncan, Charles Olson and Denise Levertov. Khapai reads them alongside Charles Darwin, Gregory Bateson, Albert Einstein, Sylvia Wynter and other scientific thinkers of the 20th century. I also look at the work of two visual artists, Adrian Piper and Isamu Noguchi, who strove to combine the technical excellence of western art and philosophy with the deep spiritual practices of eastern cultures. Through her work, she hopes to break down some of the boundaries that exist between disciplines to help illuminate pathways for interchanging ideas and methods between literature and the sciences. Khapai teaches at Baruch College.