Academic Background

• Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Washington, Seattle, December 2001.

Dissertation title: "Japanese Cultural History as Literary Landscape: Scholarship, Authorship and Language in Yanagita Kunio's Native Ethnology" abstract

• Research Fellow, Kokugakuin University, Tokyo, October 1997 to March 1999.

• Certificate, Stanford Inter-University Center, Yokohama, Japan, June 1995.

• Master of Arts, Comparative Literature (Japanese and German), University of Washington, Seattle, June 1994.

• Bachelor of Arts, Comparative Literature (Japanese and German), University of California, Berkeley, May 1992.
  

Teaching Experience

Assistant Professor
Program in World Literature
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Simon Fraser University
July 2008 - present

Assistant Professor of Japanese and Comparative Literature
Department of Comparative Literature
Hamilton College
January 2002 - June 2008

Publications

“(Re)animating Folklore: Raccoon Dogs, Foxes and other Supernatural Japanese Citizens in Takahata Isao's Heisei tanuki gassen pompoko" Special issue of Marvels and Tales, on Japanese fairytales (Forthcoming).

“Brave Dogs and Little Lords: Some Thoughts on Translation, Literary Style, and the Debate on Childhood in Mid-Meiji," in Translation in Modern Japan, ed. Indra Levy (Routledge, forthcoming).

“Yanagita Kunio’s Bunshô sekai Essays.” Introduction and translation, in An Anthology of Meiji Literature, edited by Robert Campbell, Charles Inouye, and Sumie Jones. (University of Hawai’i Press, forthcoming).

“Narrative Realism and the Modern Storyteller: Rereading Yanagita Kunio’s Tôno monogatari” Monumenta Nipponica Vol. 64 No. 1 (Spring 2009), pp. 127-165.

“Brave Dogs and Little Lords: Some Thoughts on Translation, Literary Style, and the Debate on Childhood in Mid-Meiji” Review of Japanese Culture and Society No. 20 (December 2008), pp. 178-205.

“Yanagita Kunio to Nihon no kindaika: Tôno monogatari kara sengo no kyôkasho made” Yanagita Kunio kenkyû ronshû No. 6 (August 2008), pp. 49-57. 

“National History as Otaku Fantasy: Kon Satoshi’s Millennium Actress” in Japanese Visual Culture, ed. Mark MacWilliams. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2008), pp. 274 – 294.

“Surveying Comparative Literature from the Pacific Rim.” Coauthored with Charlotte Eubanks. ADFL Bulletin 38.3/39.1 (Spring/Fall 2007), pp. 34 – 39.

“Teaching Modern Japanese History with Animation: Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress.” Education About Asia 12.1 (Spring 2007), pp. 62 – 65.

“Indexing the past: Visual Language and Translatability in Kon Satoshi’s Millennium Actress.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 14.4 (2006), pp. 278 – 291.

The Modern Murasaki: Women Writers of Meiji Japan. Coedited with Rebecca Copeland. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

“Kano Shiho” (interview of the Japanese avant-garde filmmaker by Scott MacDonald). Translation. In A Critical Cinema 5: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

“Sketching Out the Critical Tradition: Yanagita Kunio and the Reappraisal of Realism” in Japanese Poeticity and Narrativity Revisited: Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies, West Lafayette, 4-5 October 2002, ed. Eiji Sekine. West Lafayette: AJLS, 2003, pp. 184 - 193.

“The I-Novel” in Encyclopedia of Life Writing, ed. Margaretta Jolly. 2 vols. London: Fitzroy-Dearborn Publishers, 2001. Vol. 1, 453 - 454.

“Fictional Fantasy or Historical Fact? The Search for Japanese Identity in Miyazaki Hayao's Mononokehime” in A Century of Popular Culture in Japan, ed. Doug Slaymaker. Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000. 199 - 228.

Invited Lectures

• "An Introduction to Anime: The History and Culture of a Transnational Medium." Invited by the Asian Educational Media Service at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. April 29, 2009.

• "Gender in Japanese Anime." Led faculty seminar for the St. Lawrence University Asian Studies Initiative. November 12, 2004.

• "Ethnology and Dialect: Yanagita Kunio and the Authorship of National Language." Japanese Humanities Lecture Series at the University of Washington. May 23, 2003.

• I have done a number of guest lectures in courses taught by colleagues, on a variety of subjects: The Tale of Genji, the haiku, and Japanese animation.

Conference Presentations

• “Child as object or subject? Connecting Research and Education in the Writings of Yanagita Kunio" at AAS (Association of Asian Studies) Annual Meeting. Chicago, March 26-29, 2009.
• “Teaching Children to Do Things With Words: Yanagita Kunio and the Postwar Education Debate” at AAS (Association of Asian Studies) Annual Meeting. Atlanta, April 3-6, 2008. abstract
• “Yanagita Kunio to Nihon no kindaika: Tôno monogatari kara sengo no kyôkasho made” at the Yanagita Kunio no kai. Ôtani University (Kyoto), July 28, 2007.
• “Indexing the Past: Visual Language and Translatability in Kon Satoshi’s Millennium Actress” at Kinema Club Conference VIII. Frankfurt (Germany), April 23, 2007. abstract
• "National History as Otaku Fantasy: Kon Satoshi’s Millennium Actress" at ACAG 2006 (International Conference on Asian Comics, Animation and Gaming). York University, Toronto, May 18-19, 2006. abstract
• "Authentic(ating) Voices of the Folk: Yanagita Kunio's Criticism of Language Reform." at AAS (Association of Asian Studies) Annual Meeting. Chicago, March 28-31, 2005. abstract
• "Landscape and the Lonely Traveler: Yanagita Kunio and Sugae Masumi" at the Association for Japanese Literary Studies Annual Conference. University of Washington, October 22-24, 2004. abstract
• "Yanagita Kunio's Reflections on Snails and the Role of Dialect in Authoring National Language" at the Modern Languages Association Annual Convention. San Diego, December 27-20, 2003.
• "Miyazaki Hayao's Spirited Away: Escaping Japan?" at The New York Conference on Asian Studies (NYCAS) 2002 Annual Meeting. Skidmore College, October 25-26, 2002. abstract
• "Sketching Out the Critical Tradition: Yanagita Kunio and the Reappraisal of Realism" at the Association for Japanese Literary Studies Annual Conference. Purdue University, October 4-5, 2002. abstract
• "Competing Conceptions of Modern Selfhood: Native Ethnologist Yanagita Kunio and the Meiji-Taishô Literary Community" at the DIJ Humanities Study Group. Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien, Tokyo, May 23, 2001. abstract
• "Travel Writing and Reimagining the Native Landscape: Yanagita Kunio's Kainan shôki" at AAS (Association of Asian Studies) Annual Meeting. Chicago, March 22-25, 2001. abstract
• "Japanese Native Ethnology and Modern Travel Writing: Literary Genre and National Identity" at the Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (ASPAC) 2000 Annual Meeting. University of Oregon, June 16-18, 2000. abstract
• "Fictional Fantasy or Historical Fact? The Search for Japanese Identity in Miyazaki Hayao's Mononokehime" at Beyond Babel: Common Language, Common Differences, Common Ground. UC San Diego, October 14-16, 1999. abstract
• "Miyazaki Hayao no Mononokehime ni okeru shizenkan" at Nihon Minzoku Gakkai dai 50kai nenkai. Bukkyô University, Kyoto, October 3-5, 1998.

• SSHRC Travel Grant, 2009

• World Literature Research Grant (SFU), 2008.

• Japan Foundation Research Fellowship for 10 months of research in Japan, 2006.

• Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research Fellowship for 10 months of research in Japan, 2006.

• Wason Library Travel Grant, Cornell University, 2005.

• Class of 1966 Career Development Award, Hamilton College, 2004.

• Hewlett Grant for incorporating diversity into the curriculum, Hamilton College, 2003.

• Alvord Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Washington, academic year 2001-2002.

• Member of the Society of Scholars at the Simpson Center for the Humanities, academic year 2001-2002.

• Dissertation research fellowship at the Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien (DIJ) in Tokyo, Japan, April-July 2001.

• High Pass on the Japanese Proficiency Test Level 1, an internationally administered standardized test, 1998.

• Monbusho Fellowship for a year and a half of study at a Japanese university, 1997-1999.

• Cultural studies and intellectual history of 20th-century Japan
• Influences of European literature and critical theory on modern Japanese literature
• Comparative folklore studies
• Film and popular culture in contemporary Japan
• Translation theory and practice
• Children's Literature and World Literature

Related Experience and Service

Workshop leader
As a recruiting event for the World Literature Program, presented a workshop for high school teachers in the Surrey area titled "Incorporating Graphic Novels into the Curriculum." May 1, 2009.

Panel Chair and Organizer
Successfully proposed and organized a panel, entitled "Text, Nation and the Battle for Childhood in 20th Century Japan," for the AAS Annual Conference, April 3-6, 2008.

Panel Chair and Organizer
Successfully proposed and organized a panel, entitled "Bringing Scholarship to the Classroom: Japan studies" for the ASIANetwork Annual Meeting, March 14-16, 2008.

Manuscript Review
Review articles for Japanese Language and Literature, journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese; member of editorial board, Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies.

Panel Chair and Organizer
Successfully proposed and organized a panel, entitled "Subversive Languages: Writing at the Margins of Modernity in 'Japan,' 1895-1945" for the MLA Annual Conference, December 27-30,2003.

Panel Chair and Organizer
Successfully proposed and organized a panel, entitled "Imag(in)ing the Real Janpan: Representations of Japan in Postwar Film" for The New York Conference on Asian Studies (NYCAS) 2002 Annual Meeting, October 25-26, 2002.

Panel Chair and Organizer
Successfully proposed and organized a panel, entitled "Travel Writing: Discovering the Landscape of Modern Japanese Literature," for the AAS Annual Conference, March 22-25,2001.

Foreign Languages

Modern Japanese:  excellent reading, writing and speaking abilities
Classical Japanese:  very good reading ability
German:  excellent reading, writing and speaking abilities
Spanish:  good reading, speaking ability
Classical Chinese:  fair reading ability

Professional Memberships

This page was last updated on January 15, 2010.