I am a comparativist who works primarily in Japanese and English with additional interests in Spanish and Portuguese. I approach the study of Asian American literature (and literatures of Asia and the Americas) with special attention to the generative frictions within and among multiple languages.
My research focuses on the literature of Japanese diasporas in the Americas as well as queer and critical theoretical approaches to the study of literary genre, gendered embodiment, and generational time. I am the translator of Lament in the Night (Kaya Press 2012), a collection of two novels by Shōson Nagahara, an author who wrote for a Japanese reading public in Los Angeles during the 1920s. I am also completing a manuscript entitled A Queer, Queer Race: Orientations for the Lost Generation of Japanese/American Literature. This book examines Japanese and English language texts written by Shōson, Sadakichi Hartmann, Arishima Takeo, and Yoné Noguchi—authors who resided in the United States between the opening of mass Japanese emigration in 1885 and the ban on Japanese immigration imposed by the Immigration Act of 1924.
Since 2021, I have served as one of two scholar-editors for the Issei Poetry Project at the Japanese Community and Cultural Center (JACCC - Los Angeles). I have also been working on translations of early Japanese American drama -- most recently in the form of a (2022) staged reading of Nagahara Hideaki's 1928 play Sariyukumono (The Ones Who Leave).
Prior to joining the faculty of UC Berkeley in 2018, I was an assistant professor of English and Asian Languages and Cultures at Northwestern University (2012-2018). I received my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (English, Japanese, Spanish) from UC Berkeley in 2012, and completed my B.A. in Comparative Literature (English, Spanish, Mathematics) at Dartmouth College in 2003.
I have taught courses on 19th and 20th century Japanese literature, American literature, Asian American literature, modernist literature in Asia, international law and literature, manga and graphic novels, and Westerns and Japanese period drama.
Third-person pronouns: he/him.
