Colleen Laird
Research Area
Education
Ph.D., University of Oregon, 2012. (East Asian Languages and Literatures).
Monbukagakushō Visiting Research Scholar, Tsukuba University, Tsukuba, Japan. 2010-2011.
Professional Advanced Japanese Language Training, Inter-University Center (IUC), Yokohama, Japan. 2007-2008.
M.A., University of Oregon, 2006. (East Asian Languages and Literatures).
B.A., Macalester College. 2002.
Study Abroad, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. 2001-2002.
About
Research Interests
Japanese media and gender studies—female directors, film stars, and audiences.
Cinema, video games, and streaming media.
Film theory, transnational cinemas and star texts, and feminist and queer theory.
Japanese Women Directors Project: Digital Dialogue Series
2022 Formal Analysis and Japanese Cinema Series
(Open Education Resource)
2021 J-Horror Video Series
(Open Education Resource)
Recent Event Participation
Co-organizer of the in-residence workshop “Embodying the Video Essay” hosted at Bowdoin College, Maine, July 9-16, 2023.
“Eye-Camera-Ninagawa.” Invitied research presentation/seminar at Leeds University, May 10, 2023.
“Kūki.” Videographic essay presented at the Workshop on Videographic Criticism hosted at Western Washington University. April 6, 2023.
“The Japanese Woman Directors Project: A Collaboration of Amplification.” Opening talk for the symposium “Promoting Women in the Arts in the Digital Era.” University of South Carolina, March 24, 2023.
Film Introduction for Ozu Yasujirō’s Equinox Flower (1958), screened at the Pickford Theatre in Bellingham, Washington on March 22, 2023.
Film Introduction for Tanaka Kinuyo’s Love Under a Crucifix (1962), screened at the Pickford Theatre in Bellingham, Washington on March 11, 2023.
“Japanese Cinema and the Video Essay.” Brown bag talk for the Japanese Studies program in the Asian Studies Department. January 18, 2023
“Women’s Film History Roundtable.”De-Westernising Horror Conference. October 31-November 1, 2022. Kings College London, UK.
“Eye-Camera-Ninagawa” at the “Theory and Practice of the Video Essay: A Conference” International Conference on Videographic Criticism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Sept. 22-23, 2022.
“Women Directors in Contemporary Japanese Cinema.” Online recorded talk for The Japan Foundation, Toronto. June 9, 2022.
Discussion/Event Moderator: Massy Reads book launch for Chris Rea, Ervin Malakaj, and Kyle Frackman. March, 2022.
On Miike Takashi’s Audition. Invited film introduction and Q&A panelist for the GlobalEYES film festival. Online. Vancouver, BC. March 25, 2021.
What is this Place? On Finding a Research Path through Troubled Times and Spaces. Keynote speech. Asian Studies Graduate Student Conference. University of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC. March 13, 2021.
The Ghost of Kurosawa. Online public talk for the Vancouver Public Library as part of the Contemporary Asian Stories lecture series. December 10, 2020.
AAS Digital Dialogue on Gender Equity and Fair Practices. Panelist. Hosted online by the Association for Asian Studies. October 14, 2020.
Utsukushiki Ikari: Seeing Red in Ninagawa Mika’s Cinema of Extremes. Online presentation for the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia as part of the Visual and Material Culture Seminar. Vancouver, Canada. September 17, 2020.
Teaching
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Articles, Book Chapters, Essays, and Videographic Criticism
Kūki. MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture. Forthcoming, Winter 2023.
Eye-Camera-Ninagawa. In[Transition]: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 10.2, 2023.
I am Yakusho Kōji. Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays, No. 11, 2023.
Crossing Thresholds: Contemporary Female Directors at Home in Japanese Cinema. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 15:1, pp. 37-54, 2023.
One Ghost, Two Shells: The Transnational Treasure Text of Kikuchi Rinko. Feminist Media Studies. Taylor and Francis. February, 2020.
Imaging a Female Filmmaker: The Director Personas of Nishikawa Miwa and Ogigami Naoko. Frames Cinema Journal. Special Issue: “Promotional Materials.” May 2013.
Star gazing: Sight lines and studio brands in post-war Japanese film posters. The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 3: 2, pp. 95–115, 2012.
- Reprinted by request in Japanese Cinema. Edited by Julian Stringer and Nikki J. Y. Lee. London: Routledge. 2014.
Japanese Cinema, the Classroom, and Swallowtail Butterfly. Jump Cut. No. 52, summer 2010.
Tanada Yuki. The World Directory of Cinema: Japan, 3rd Edition. Edited by John Berra. Intellect Ltd. 2015. Essay.
Kawase Naomi’s Mogari no Mori. The World Directory of Cinema: Japan, 2nd Edition. Edited by John Berra. Intellect Ltd. 2012. Essay.
Nishikawa Miwa’s Dear Doctor. The World Directory of Cinema: Japan, 2nd Edition. Edited by John Berra. Intellect Ltd. 2012. Essay.
Nishikawa Miwa’s Yureru. The World Directory of Cinema: Japan, 2nd Edition. Edited by John Berra. Intellect Ltd. 2012. Essay.
Ogigami Naoko. The World Directory of Cinema: Japan, 2nd Edition. Edited by John Berra. Intellect Ltd. 2012. Essay.
Other Contributions to Film and Media Studies
“Dreams/夢中人.” Video essay collaboration for Dr. Ian Garwood’s “Indy Vinyl” project. Published online June 8th, 2023.
Video Games and the Media mix. In Media Res. Theme Week Coordinator for UBC graduate students Iman Isa, Catherine Tran, Yuewei Wang, Anika Kudzyk, and Bianca Chui. March 21-25, 2022.
Japanese Paratexts. In Media Res. Theme Week Coordinator for UBC graduate students Ai Yamamoto, Oğuzhan Kaya, Rosaley Gai, Lilian Higashikata, Jaylene Laturnas, and Alisa Guo. August 17-21, 2020.
Feminism in the Works: Japanese Women Directors and Behind-the-Scenes Collaboration. In Media Res. November 13, 2019.
Sight and Sound as Compromised Witness: Kore’eda’s “The Third Murder.” In Media Res. August 29, 2019.—Featured as a “Staff Pick” highlight and reposted on November 24, 2019.
Awards
Ishibashi Foundation/The Japan Foundation Fellowship Program for Japanese Art. Japan Foundation, Los Angeles. June, 2023.
SSHRC Connection Grant: Embodying the Video Essay: Methods in Videographic Theory Through Global Communities of Practice. 2023.
British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund: Collaborative Digital Heritage Studio (CoDHerS). University of British Columbia. 2022-2024.
OER Implementation Fund. University of British Columbia. 2022
SSHRC Connection Grant: Japanese Women Directors Project. 2022
Arts & Culture and Japanese Studies and Intellectual Exchange Grant. Japan Foundation. 2022
Hampton Fund Research Grant in the Humanities and Social Sciences: New Faculty Grant. University of British Columbia. 2020-2022.
Japan Foundation Japanese Teaching Materials Purchase Grant. 2018; 2019.
2013-2014 Teaching Excellence Award. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, College of Arts and Sciences. Greensboro, North Carolina.
Academic Activities
Recent Conference Presentations
What is Home but Four Walls, a Floor, and a Ceiling? The Suitcase in the Works of Contemporary Japanese Women Directors. Videographic essay presented at the European Association of Japanese Studies (EAJS) annual conference. Ghent, Belgium, August 17-20, 2023.
Kūki. Video essay presentation as part of a roundtable at the Doing Women’s Film and Television History conference. University of Sussex, UK. June 14-16, 2023.
Reflecting Ashizawa Akiko. Roundtable presentation for the “New Voices in Cinephilia” series at the University of Leeds, UK. May 3, 2023.
The Accented Video Essay: Ashizawa Akiko. Videographic essay presented as part of a roundtable for the Society For Cinema And Media Studies (SCMS) National Conference. Denver, CO, USA. April 12-15, 2023.
Kūki. Videographic essay presented at the Workshop on Videographic Criticism hosted at Western Washington University. April 6, 2023.
Women’s Film History Roundtable. Participant. De-Westernising Horror Conference. October 31-November 1, 2022. Kings College London, UK.
Eye-Camera-Ninagawa. Videographic essay presented at the “Theory and Practice of the Video Essay: A Conference” International Conference on Videographic Criticism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Sept. 22-23, 2022.
Nishikawa Miwa’s Way with Words: Gender, the Japanese Film Industry, and the Art of Adaptation. Paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference. Chicago (online). April 2, 2022.
Japanese Past as Chinese Present: Mukokuseki in Genshin Impact. Paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies annual International Conference. Honolulu, Hawai’i. March 26, 2022.
What is This Place: HBO’s Westworld and Orientalism of the Future. Paper presented at the 16th International Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies (EAJS) Conference. Ghent, Belgium. August 25-28, 2021.
Shifting the Syllabus: Reframing the Masculine Narrative in Japanese Cinema Classrooms. Paper accepted presented at the Teaching Women’s Filmmaking Conference. International Conference. Online. April 16-17, 2021.
Butterflies and Blood Spatters: The Ostentatious Scopophilia of Ninagawa Mika’s Feminine Fantasies. Paper presented at Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual International Conference. Online. March 25, 2021.
Extravagance and Extremes: Seeing Red in Ninagawa Mika’s Female Narratives. Paper accepted for presentation at Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) National Conference. Online. March 19, 2021.
Japanese Cinema: De-centering Film Studies and Visual Literacy Pedagogy. Paper presented at the Japan in the World, The World in Japan International Symposium. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. September 16-17, 2019.
Gender Troubles and Gendered Directors in Contemporary Japanese Cinema. Presented by invitation at the Feminist World-Building in Japanese Cinema / Building Feminist Worlds in Japanese Cinema Symposium. University of California at San Diego, USA. May 2-3, 2019.
Made In Japan: Netflix Original Content and Mobile Transnationalism. Paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) National Conference, on the panel “Streaming Japan.” Seattle, Washington, USA. March 17, 2019.
Eastern bodies in a Western world: Post-Human Selves and Japanese Others in HBO’s Westworld. Presented at the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Japan Studies Association Conference. Honolulu, Hawai’i, USA. January 5, 2019.
A Career in Transition: The Queer Trajectory of Ogigami’s Naoko’s On-Screen Reflections. Paper presented at the Asian Studies Conference Japan (ASCJ) Annual Conference. International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan. July 1, 2018.
Ogigami Naoko’s Cinematic Transitions: A Queer Journey from Homosociality to Transsexuality. Paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual International Conference, on the panel “Constructing Gender and Sexuality in Japan.” Washington DC, USA. March 24, 2018.
Screened and Not Heard: the Transnational Treasure Text of Kikuchi Rinko. Paper presented at the regional conference of Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (ASPAC). Willamette University in Salem, OR, USA. June 11th, 2017.
Recent Invited Lectures
New Horizons: Print Scholarship, Videographic Criticism, and Japanese Women Directors. Research talk for the Japan Foundation in Tokyo, Japan. June 29, 2023.
Ninagawa Mika’s Scopophilic Authorship. Video essay featured for presentation at the University of Leeds, UK. May 10, 2023. International.
Collaborative Amplification: The Japanese Woman Directors Project. Invited talk for “Promoting Women in the Arts in the Digital Era: Mini-symposium and Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon” at the University of South Carolina. March 24, 2023. International.
Japanese Cinema and the Video Essay. Invited talk for the Japan Studies Lecture Series organized by the Dept. of Asian Studies at The University of British Columbia. October 30, 2019. Local.
Japanese Women Directors and Contemporary Cinema. Lecture and Q&A recorded 5/20/2022. Made available to the public online 06/2022. Japan Foundation, Toronto.
Coding Culture: Japanese Video Games and Japan in Video Games. Michigan State University. December 2, 2021.
What is this Place? On Finding a Research Path through Troubled Times and Spaces. Keynote talk. Asian Studies Graduate Student Conference. University of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC. March 13, 2021.
The Ghost of Kurosawa. Online Public Talk for the Vancouver Public Library as part of the Contemporary Asian Stories lecture series. December 10, 2020.
Iwai Shunji’s Swallowtail Butterfly. Invited online discussion for the University of California San Diego in Prof. Daisuke Miyao’s course “LTEA 138 Japanese Films: Introduction.” San Diego, California. October 7, 2020.
Utsukushiki Ikari: Seeing Red in Ninagawa Mika’s Cinema of Extremes. Invited online talk for the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia as part of Visual and Material Culture Seminar. Vancouver, Canada. September 17, 2020.
Mind the Gap: Japanese Women Directors and Commercial Cinema. Invited talk for the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA. November 18, 2019.
Crossing the Threshold: Home-Leaving and Home-Making in the Works of Japanese Female Directors. Invited talk for the IAR Centre of Japanese Research at The University of British Columbia. October 30, 2019.
Japanese Cinema: De-centering Film Studies and Visual Literacy Pedagogy. Invited e-poster presentation for the Institute for the Scholarship of Teach and Learning (ISoTL) event “Celebrate SoTL” at The University of British Columbia. October 24, 2019.
Fellowships
Affiliate Visiting Scholar. Meiji University. 2023.
Affiliate Visiting Scholar. University of Leeds. 2023
Doing Women’s Global Horror Film History Fellowship. University of Leeds, UK. 2022-2023.
Scholarship in Sound and Image Fellow. Middlebury College, Vermont, U.S.A. June 2022.
Public Humanities Faculty Fellowship. University of British Columbia. 2021
Japan Foundation Short Term Teacher Training Fellowship. Japan Foundation Japanese Language Institute, Urawa, Saitama, Japan. Summer, 2017
Long-Term Research, Study, and Employment Experiences in Japan
06/2023—Research stay and affiliation with Meiji University, Tokyo
06/2017-08/2017—Japan Foundation Japanese Teacher Training Fellowship: Saitama
07/2015-08/2015—Research trip funded by the Bates College Faculty Development Fund: Tokyo, Kyoto, & Shimonoseki
2010-2011 (Japanese AY)—As a Monbukagakusho Research Scholar at Tsukuba University: Tokyo & Tsukuba
2007-2008 (AY)—As a Language Student at The Inter-University Center: Yokohama
2003-2004—As an ALT with the JET Program: Hiroshima Prefecture, Onomichi City
2001-2002—Study Abroad at Waseda University: Tokyo