Department Head, Professor of Modern Japanese Literature and Popular Culture

Associate, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice

Education:

PhD in Far Eastern Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan, 1989

Research Interests:

1. The visual and narrative culture of wartime and Occupation era Japan (1930s-1950s), especially prose fiction, magazines for women and children, and kamishibai; the nature and function of propaganda, and the censorship of cultural products.

2. Narratives of the post human in modern Japanese fiction, film, manga and anime; science fiction generally, particularly the queering of ontological boundaries.

3. Postwar women’s fiction in Japan and its engagement with the body; gender, sex, and sexuality generally.

4. Anomalous embodiment in popular culture products in the modern period in Europe, North America, and East Asia.