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Modern and contemporary Japanese literature, visual media, history, and popular culture; Tokyo history and culture; television studies; Japanese youth culture; theories of gender, modernity, and urban space; the city in world literature and film; theory and practice of literary translation.
Alisa Freedman is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature and Film at the University of Oregon. Much of her interdisciplinary work investigates the ways the modern urban experience has shaped human subjectivity, cultural production, and gender roles. She strives to show how literature and visual media can provide a deeper understanding of society, politics, and economics. Alisa has published widely on Japanese modernism, urban studies, contemporary youth culture, media discourses about gender norms, humor as social critique, and the intersection of literature and new media. Her work in progress include a book about changing images of working women on Japanese television and articles about the “around forty” (ara-fo) demographic of Japanese women and popular culture depictions of the homeless. She is co-editing a volume on Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan, an international workshop for which will be held at the University of Oregon in 2010. Additionally, Alisa is engaged in a research and teaching project on the future of the book using Japanese literature as an example and is involved in several literary translation projects.
JPN 425/525: Trends in Japanese Literature, 1945-2010 (Fall 2009)
Other UO Courses:
JPN 407/507: Japanese Urban Cultures
Books Tokyo in Transit: Japanese Culture on the Rails and Road. Forthcoming from Stanford University Press, 2010. Using an approach that crosses the fields of history, literature, and cultural studies, this book explores the ways mass transportation changed Tokyo’s social fabric, giving rise to gender roles that have come to represent modern Japan. The world’s largest transport system, Tokyo trains and buses are social and cultural spaces different from other metropolitan commuter networks and provide a more distilled means of observing the effects of urbanization than other public places afford. Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan, Co-edited with Christine Yano and Laura Miller. This collection profiles women who worked in jobs related to notions of physical and social mobility. These women, often conspicuous in their uniforms, have influenced social roles, patterns of daily life, and Japan’s global image. They have been integral to the national workforce but have been overlooked by scholars. Alisa will contribute a chapter on “Riding Home: Bus Girls, Service Labor, and the Postwar Landscape” and the book introduction. In progress. Table of Contents provided upon request. Annotated translation of Yasunari Kawabata, The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (Asakusa kurenaidan), Illustrated by Ota Saburo, Foreword and Afterword by Donald Richie, University of California Press, 2005.
Edited Donald Richie's, Japanese Literature Reviewed, Tokyo: ICG Muse, Inc. 2003. Journal Editor -Japan Forum special issue on "Japanese Urban Nonsense" (March 2009). Selected Articles and Book Chapters - Train Man and the Gender Politics of Japanese 'Otaku' Culture: The Rise of New Media, Nerd Heroes, and Fan Communities," Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, April 2009. "Street Nonsense: Ryutanji Yu and the Fascination for Interwar Tokyo Absurdity," Japan Forum, Special issue on "Japanese Urban Nonsense" March 2009. "Buildings and Urine: Modernist Nansensu Literature and 1920s and 1930s Tokyo," Nonsense and Other Senses: Dysfunctional Communication and Regulated Absurdity in Literature. Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009. "The Significant Modernism of Kawabata Yasunari's Scarlet Gang of Asakusa," Sophia University International Review, April 2007. "Stories of Boys and Buildings: Ishida Ira's 4-Teen in 2002 Tokyo," Japan Forum, Special issue on Tokyo in Literature, November 2006. "Commuting Gazes: Female Students, Salarymen, and Electric Trains in 1907 Tokyo," Journal of Transport History, Volume 23, March 2002. Selected Literary Translations - Medoruma Shun, Fûon (The Wind Sound), Co-translation with Kyoko Selden, Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Special issue on literature, film, and war memory, Summer 2009. Ogawa Yoko, "Transit" (Toranjitto), Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Volume XV, December 2003. Reprinted in Volume XVI, December 2004. Saegusa Kazuko, "The Cherry Blossom Train" (Sakura densha), co-translated with Kyoko Selden, Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Volume XVI, December 2004. Chong Ui Shin, Winter Sunflower (Fuyu no himawari), four-act play, Performing Arts in Japan Initiative, Japan Foundation, 2004. Nagai Ai, Light and Darkness for Our Times (Shin meian), feminist interpretation of Natsume Soseki's Meian, Performing Arts in Japan Initiative, Japan Foundation, 2003.
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