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Asian Languages & Literature
all@umn.edu
612-625-6534
all@umn.edu
612-625-6534
Japanese Literary and Cultural Studies
Curriculum
The curriculum covers a wide range of cultural phenomena of Japan, namely, prose and poetry, theater and music, and visual and media studies, as configured in the ALCM program. This curriculum encourages any research topic related to these, with the understanding that a topic does not exist a priori but is constructed by the thinker himself or herself. In addition to this, ALCM does not impose decisive boundaries between the three kinds of media mentioned above (prose and poetry, theater and music, and visual and media) for a research topic and allows a research topic that bridges them.
Approaches and Emphases
Courses are designed to advance research in literary and cultural phenomena of Japan through training in reading, historicizing/problematizing, and when necessary translating texts—primary and secondary—as well as in attaining relevant knowledge of social, cultural, and political contexts. ALCM encourages close reading of texts, with contemporary theoretical reflections on questions of cultural form, representation, history, power, language, gender, performance, and medium.
Disciplines and Objects
The Japan faculty are interested in a variety of topics in literary and cultural studies of Japan. Faculty members have researched areas as diverse as Japanese cultural history; modern Okinawan literature; the politics of foreign occupation and colonial rule; minority literature; popular music; newspapers (especially with respect to gesaku literature); gender and representation, especially by women writers; popular culture; intercultural contact zones, constructions of masculinity and femininity; gei esotericism; and theatrical traditions. This is merely a reflection of the kinds of research that has been undertaken in the department and is by no means an exhaustive inventory of what can be done within it.
Though the focus and center of gravity are expertise in the literary and cultural phenomena of Japan, it is possible for students in the program to attain professional training not only for Asian studies but also for programs in comparative literary, cultural, feminist, media, or theater studies as well. Conversely, it is possible for both undergraduate and graduate students in other departments at the university to minor in Asian Languages and Literatures if their studies involve focusing on any one of the languages or cultures offered.
ALCM Faculty
- Mark Anderson, Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese Literature and Film
- Maki Isaka, Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature and Theater
- Christine L. Marran, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Cultural Studies
- Hiromi Mizuno, Assistant Professor of History, Japan
- Michael Molasky, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature
- Paul Rouzer, Associate Professor of Chinese Literature
Non-Affiliated Faculty
- Jeffrey Broadbent, Associate Professor of Sociology, Japan (Sociology: ALCM)
- Polly Szatrowski, Professor of Japanese Language and Linguistics (ILES)
Resources and Activities
In conjunction with ALL and ALCM, there are a handful of established institutions at the University of Minnesota that foster research and activities that relate to China scholarship.
