*Not in charge of directed research due to sabbatical leave from April 2024 to March 2025.
*Application for September 2024 entry is closed.
- Title：Professor
- Degree：Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Research (Cultural Studies)(The Australian National University)
- Directed Research：Cultural Studies (Postcolonial Pacific and Asia Studies, Minority Histories, Art Studies)
- Research Field：Postcolonial Pacific Islands Studies, Gender Studies, Militarism Studies, Contemporary Art
Biography
My research deals with cultural politics and minority histories, particularly the historical challenges faced by Pacific Islanders between regimes of Japanese and American power in Oceania, as well as climate change and nuclear issues. Through critical perspectives of popular culture from the past and present, art and other forms of expression, I focus on problems such as decolonization, demilitarization, climate change, and gender/sexuality. I mentor enthusiastic and strongly self-motivated students whose projects engage with these themes while conducting seminars in cultural studies, ethnographic approaches, queer studies, and Asia Pacific history. I also teach these subjects in the undergraduate School of International Liberal Studies, and I work as an independent curator/advisor for contemporary art from the region. Among my major publications, most recently I published a book titled Coral and Concrete: Remembering Kwajalein Atoll between Japan, America, and the Marshall Islands (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2018; paperback released in 2020).
Major Works / Publications Awards
https://w-rdb.waseda.jp/html/100001085_en.html
Directed Research
Culture, power, and meaning are intimately entangled in ways that demand nuanced and rigorous exploration. As a cultural historian, my work and supervision focus mainly on contemporary intersections of power and representation between Japan and the United States, especially as it pertains to the vast and heavily colonized Pacific Islands region. I supervise students not only in this specific area of Japan/Pacific Studies but also in historiographical and semiotic approaches to art, minority issues, gender, and identity.
Taking cues from Indigenous studies, contemporary art/photography studies, queer studies, postcolonial historiography, and feminist anthropology, this graduate track encourages an approach to Cultural Studies that is transdisciplinary, multi-sited, self-reflexive, and creative. Each student in the seminar pursues unique research themes that fit within a critical examination of topics related to identity, nation, and the body. Especially welcome are self-motivated students whose projects take a nuanced approach to the power dynamics and representation of gender and race in the context of historical and contemporary Pacific or Japanese popular culture. Students typically explore topics with personal relevance and take auto-ethnographic approaches as a way of shining light on marginalized people/histories and deliberating the implications of inequality as expressed through culture. Students work actively with each other in cohorts around shared approaches, coordinating a series of presentations and lectures on their topics and theory/methodologies that apply to all members’ projects.
