ASO, Takashi
- Posted
- 2020年2月21日(金)
*Not in charge of directed research due to sabbatical leave from September 2026 to September 2027.
*Application for September 2026 entry is closed.
- Title：Professor
- Degree：Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (State University of New York at Buffalo)
- Directed Research：Culture and Translation
- Research Field：Postmodernism and American Culture
Biography
I received my M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
I began my academic career at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Kyorin University, Tokyo, before joining Waseda University in 2001. With the support of my colleagues, I established the Graduate School of Culture and Communication Studies in 2013 and served as its founding dean for about six years.
For more than two decades, my research has focused on postmodernist culture and literature, with a primary emphasis on Thomas Pynchon. I have also written extensively on Herman Melville, Vladimir Nabokov, and Henry James. My first monograph on postmodernism was published in 2011, followed by an introductory volume on Thomas Pynchon in 2014, which featured contributions from leading Japanese Pynchon scholars such as Takayuki Tatsumi and Yoshihiko Kihara.
In recent years, my research interests have shifted toward Asian American studies, particularly Vietnamese American culture and literature. I have examined the exodus of Vietnamese people from Saigon to Orange County and other communities in the United States. Although their hardships are beyond words, I believe that the hybrid culture Vietnamese refugees have created in the U.S. exemplifies the dynamics of globalization and offers significant potential for the future of transnational cultural studies.
In 2020, I published two books: The World of “Miss Saigon” and “Little Saigon.” The former provides a close analysis of the West End musical Miss Saigon—a tragic love story between an American GI and a Vietnamese woman set against the backdrop of war—while the latter explores the emerging art and culture of 1.5- and second-generation Vietnamese American refugees. For those interested in the latest developments in American cultural and ethnic studies, I invite you to explore my work on Dinh Q. Lê, one of the leading Vietnamese American media artists.
Most recently, I published Narratives of Postmodernism: Reading American Literature in the 1960s (2024), a study of postmodernist fiction with a focus on close readings of works by John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon, and Ursula K. Le Guin. The book examines not only the narrative structures of early postmodernism but also the ways in which postmodernism redefined itself in the aftermath of what Barth called the “exhaustion of [modernist] literature.”
Major Works / Publications Awards
https://w-rdb.waseda.jp/html/100000483_en.html
Directed Research
Since the end of World War II, American culture has played a central role in shaping what is often called “global culture.” This, I argue, is because the United States has exerted immense influence through its military and economic power, thereby extending its soft power across the world. Naturally, some critics claim that global culture is essentially American culture, and that globalization is a process of Americanization. Yet, it is not only non-American cultures but also American culture itself that undergoes profound transformation through globalization. However dominant it may appear, American culture inevitably changes when it encounters and negotiates with other cultural traditions.
In this course, we will examine these processes of cultural collision and negotiation, analyzing how cultures evolve through such interactions. Particular attention will be paid to the dynamics of cultural hybridization and cultural translation—moments in which two or more cultures intersect, interact, and create something new.