Academic Positions

My dissertation focused on the detective fiction of Matsumoto Seicho (1909-1992), analyzing Seicho’s works for their social agenda that revolutionized Japanese detective fiction by lionizing the middle-class detective in his struggle to defend the working-class victim of crimes perpetrated by the bureaucratic and industrial elite, especially in the postwar period.

My specialty is 20^th century Japanese literature. I am particularly interested in: popular literature including mystery fiction and historical/period fiction; Murakami Haruki (b. 1949); and, Takahashi Gen’ichiro (b. 1951).

I am currently translating a representative sampling of Seicho’s short stories and essays for publication by Kurodahan Press. I am also editing a volume of Japanese mystery fiction in translation.

To date I have guided senior research projects on the following topics: a comparison of the literature of Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Tanizaki Jun’ichiro; the burakumin (outcaste) in Japanese literature and society; performance of karaoke in Japan; the literature of Koda Aya; the relationship between the literature of Mishima Yukio and contemporary queer culture in Japan.