About
My research focuses on literature produced in late medieval and early-modern Japan. In 2017 I published the first English-language, book-length monograph on the prose works of Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693), who is widely held to be the most important writer of fiction in early Tokugawa-period Japan. While pursuing my doctorate in Japanese at Stanford, I concurrently completed a Ph.D. minor in Comparative Literature, with extensive study of Classics and literature in French. My work in these areas continues to inform my approach to texts written in Japanese. As a member of MLA I seek dialogue with scholars of other literatures, and I am very interested in forming transnational panels with colleagues working on texts produced both in countries neighboring Japan and beyond East Asia.
Education
Ph.D., Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University, September 2009. Major: Japanese. Minor: Comparative Literature (emphasis in French Literature). Advisor: Steven D. Carter. Dissertation title: “‘No Barrier Between High and Low’: Love, Ethics, Status and Style in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku.”
Visiting Researcher, Waseda University, Tokyo, September 2006–August 2009. Advisor at Waseda: Taniwaki Masachika.
International Chinese Language Program, Taiwan National University, June–August 2005 (advanced intensive course in Chinese language).
Goethe-Institut, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, August–September 2004, (advanced intensive course in German language).
Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, Yokohama, 2002– 2003 (advanced intensive course in Japanese language). Advisor: Hiroko Ōtake.
M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara: Japanese Studies, December 1999. Thesis title: “Kitamura Tōkoku’s ‘Pessimistic Poets and Women’ and the Romantic Idealism of And Then, Snow Country, and Spring Snow” (Includes a translation of Kitamura Tōkoku’s “Ensei shika to josei”). Advisor: Robert Backus.
B.A., Residential College, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Individualized Concentration: Modern Languages: Spanish, French and German, April 1985.
Publications
BOOKS:
Parody, Irony and Ideology in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku (Brill, 2017):
https://brill.com/view/title/34417
ARTICLES, BOOK REVIEWS:
“The Two Paths of Love in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku,” forthcoming in Gary P. Leupp, James McClain, and Tao Demin, eds.,
The Tokugawa World (Routledge).
Review of Plucking Chrysanthemums: Narushima Ryūhoku and Sinitic Literary Traditions in Modern Japan, by Matthew Fraleigh, forthcoming in
The Journal of Japanese Studies.
Review of
Teika: The Life and Works of a Medieval Japanese Poet, by Paul S. Atkins,
Japanese Language and Literature, Spring 2018.
“Hierarchy, Hubris, and Parody in Ihara Saikaku’s
Kōshoku ichidai otoko,”
The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2, Summer 2017, pp. 355–87:
http://muse.jhu.edu/article/665292
“Samurai Lovers, ‘Samurai Beasts’: Warriors and Commoners in Ihara Saikaku’s
Way of the Warrior Tales,”
Japanese Studies, Vol. 35, Issue 2, 2015, pp. 151–68:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10371397.2015.1067135
“Stage and Page in Early-Modern Japan” (Review Essay on Keller Kimbrough and Satoko Shimazaki’s edited volume
Publishing the Stage: Print and Performance in Early Modern Japan,
and of Kimbrough’s
Wondrous Brutal Fictions: Eight Buddhist Tales from the Early Japanese Puppet Theater),
The Journal of Asian Studies, May 2015, pp. 437–41:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-asian-studies/article/stage-and-page-in-earlymodern-japan/19993146CD2AD1E88D519F0D84C21381
“The Ishii Brothers’ Vendetta in Genroku Japan,” A review of
The Violent Virtue: First Narratives of the Ishii Brothers’ Late Genroku Katakiuchi, by Drake Langford,
Dissertation Reviews,
April 1, 2013:
http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/2715
TRANSLATIONS:
“Shintokumaru,” a story by Orikuchi Shinobu; “The Birth of Momotarō,” a translation of Yanagita Kunio’s essay “Momotarō no tanjō,” presented a Distinguished Translation Award, Shizuoka International Translation Competition, 2001, and subsequently published by the competition organizers.
Projects
BOOK IN PROGRESS:
Genroku Literature: Old and New, Metropole and Periphery, focusing on works by Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693), Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724), and Miyako no Nishiki (1675–?).
TRANSLATIONS IN PROGRESS:
Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior, an annotated translation of Ihara Saikaku’s Budō denraiki, with a translator’s introduction.
Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan, an annotated translation of Ihara Saikaku’s Honchō nijū fukō, with a translator’s introduction.
