Executive Committee

  • William Marotti, Director, Associate Professor, History, UC Los Angeles
  • Noriko Aso, Associate Professor, History, UC Santa Cruz
  • Gregory P. Levine, Associate Professor, Art History, UC Berkeley
  • Margherita Long, Associate Professor of East Asian Language and Literatures, UC Irvine
  • Kate McDonald, Assistant Professor, History, UC Santa Barbara
  • Anne McKnight, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, UC Riverside
  • Jordan A. Yamaji Smith, Assistant Professor, Comparative World Literature and Culture, CSULB
  • Bert Winther-Tamaki, Associate Professor, Art History & Visual Studies, UC Irvine
  • Miriam Wattles, Founder, Professor Emeritus, History of Art and Architecture, UC Santa Barbara

Cal State University Long Beach

The Ohio State University

Graduate Students:

UC Davis

  • Kyu Kim, Associate Professor of History
  • Joseph Sorensen, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures

UC Berkeley

  • Junko Habu, Associate Professor of Anthropology (Archaeology)
  • Gregory P. Levine, Associate Professor of the History of Art
  • Daniel O’Neill, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures (Literature)
  • Miryam Sas, Professor of Comparative Literature/ Film Studies
  • Alan Tansman, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures (Literature)

Graduate Students:

UC Merced

  • ShiPu Wang, Assistant Professor of Soc. Sci, Humanities, and Arts (Art History)
  • Ken Yoshida, Assistant Professor in the Global Arts Studies Program

UC Santa Cruz

UC Santa Barbara

Graduate Students:

  • Julianne P. Gavino is a doctoral student in the Department of History of Art and Architecture. Her research interests include Post-WWII American Art, Public Art and Public Spaces, and Asian American visual culture.

UC Los Angeles

  • Michelle Liu Carriger, Assistant Professor, School of Theater, Film, and Television
  • Torquil Duthie, Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures (Literature)
  • Chris Hanscom, Asian Languages and Civilizations
  • Katsuya Hirano, Professor of History
  • Seiji Lippit, Professor of ALC (Literature)
  • William Marotti, Associate Professor of History; Chair, East Asian Studies MA IDP
  • Michael Marra [In Memorium], Professor of Japanese Literature and Hermeneutics, ALC
  • Donald McCallum, Professor of Art History [In Memorium]
  • Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, Professor of Theatre (Emeritus)

Graduate Students:

  • Dan Abbe, Art History
  • Alice Ashiwa, History
  • John Leisure, History
  • Tatiana Sulovska, History
  • Sarah Walsh, History

UC Riverside

  • John Kim, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature (German and Japanese)
  • Kelly Jeong , Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Korean
  • Setsu Shigematsu, Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies
  • Annmaria Shimabuku, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature (Japanese)
  • James Tobias, Associate Professor of English.
  • Ayano Ginoza, Lecturer in Japanese film and literature (2011-2012).

Graduate Students:

  • Paul Cheng is a Ph.D candidate in English. His areas of study include Asian American literature and film and his dissertation will explore the phenomenon of a “Transpacific Action Cinema,” tracing the movements of capital, populations, ideas and culture across the Pacific Rim and its complex relationship with visual culture.
  • Anne Chang, MA candidate. Interests: in Chinese Literature and Japanese popular culture.
  • Birgit Geipel, Ph. D. Candidate in Comparative Literature. Interests: in German and Korean Literatures of participation and division, theories of migration, biopolitics, cosmopolitanism, East Asian Movement.
  • Jae Hyung Ahn, Ph.D. Candidate, English Department. Interests: American literature, Japanese literature.
  • Regina Yung Lee (ryung001@ucr.edu) works in English, French, Mandarin,
    Science Studies, and Feminist Theory.

UC Irvine

  • William Bridges, Assistant Professor, in East Asian Language and Literatures
  • Susan B. Klein, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture, East Asian Language and Literature
  • Margherita Long, Associate Professor of East Asian Language and Literatures, UC Irvine
  • Julie Rousseau, Program in Nursing Science
  • Serk Bae Suh, Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages & Literature School of Humanities
  • Anne Walthall, Professor of History
  • Bert Winther-Tamaki, Associate Professor of Art History & Visual Studies

Graduate Students:

  • Ben Aaron, Visual Studies, researching the painter Kazuki Yazuo (1911-1974)
  • Vanessa Baker, Japanese and Korean literature
  • Michelle Cho
  • Hyonhui Choe is writing a dissertation on Korean literary criticism during the colonial period.
  • Matthew Chudnow, classical Japanese theater, especially noh
  • Kim Icreverci is is a graduate student in the Department of Comparative Literature. Her research focuses on Japanese body genre cinema with particular interests in erotics (after Audre Lorde), affect, and the politics and experience of spectatorship.
  • Christina Spiker, Visual Studies. Christina Spiker’s current work focuses on Meiji-period photography.

UC San Diego

Graduate Students:

  • Matt Davidson, History
  • Gabrielle Chang
  • Stephen Mandiberg
  • Paul W. Ricketts

University of Chicago

Graduate Students:

  • Zhiyan Yang, Art History

University of Southern California

Graduate Students:

  • Carolyn Lee, East Asian Studies
  • Kathryn Page-Lippsmeyer, East Asian Languages and Cultures
  • Annie Manion, Critical Studies

University of Washington, Seattle

Board of Advisors

  • John Clark, Australian Research Council, Director, Austalian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology
  • Sharon Daniel, Professor, Film and Digital Media Department and Digital Arts and New Media MFA program, UCSC
  • Adrian Favell, Chair in Sociology and Social Theory, University of Leeds; Professorial Academic Associate, UEA. Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures
  • Christine Guth, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
  • Kajiya Kenji, University of Tokyo
  • Shigemi Inaga, International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto
  • J Thomas Rimer, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh
  • Yoshiko Shimada, Artist and Researcher.
  • Toshio Watanabe, Director, Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN), University of the Arts London

JAG Alumni:

  • Nobuko Anan, UCLA Department of Theater and Performance Studies, 2009. She is working on contemporary Japanese women’s performance from the perspectives of gender/sexuality studies and pop culture studies. Now on the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies Department of Foreign Language Studies, Kansai University, Japan.
  • Emi Foulk BushelleUCLA History, 2016. Interests in Early Modern and Modern Japanese Intellectual and Cultural History, especially Kokugaku. Now Assistant Professor, Western Washington State,  of History.
  • Jane Correia, UCR Comparative Literature, 2011. Her research interests include the socio-political situations in France and Japan in the second half of the 19th century as well as post WWII.
  • Rosemary CandelarioUCLA World Arts and Cultures, 2008 with interests in the globalization of butoh and the choreography of Eiko and Koma. Now Assistant Professor at Texas Woman’s University, Dept. of Dance.
  • Timothy Unverzagt Goddard, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, 2013, focuses on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean literature, thought, and Buddhism. Currently Lecturer, East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University.
  • Rika Hiro, USC Art History, 2016. Now Visiting Lecturer in Asian Art History, Occidental College and Scripps College.
  • William Huber, UCSD 2013. Now Head of Centre of Excellence, Division of Games and Arts, School of Design and Informatics, Abertay University, Scotland.
  • Yuka Kanno UCI received her Ph.D. from the Visual Studies Department in 2010. Her research interests include queer film criticism, feminist theory, discourses on the actress, and Japanese queer visual culture.  Associate Professor of Queer Studies and Visual Culture, Graduate School of Global Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan.
  • Namiko Kunimoto, UCB, received her Ph. D in modern and contemporary Japanese art history 2010. Her dissertation focuses on Tanaka Atsuko and Shiraga Kazuo, both members of the Gutai Art Association. Now Associate Professor, The Ohio State University, Art History Department.
  • Kelly Midori McCormick, UCLA History, 2019, now Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of British Columbia.
  • Noritaka Minami, UCI Studio Art, MFA 2011. Noritaka Minami is photographing and researching the current state of Metabolist monuments of the 1970s. He is currently working as an artist in Los Angeles applying the medium of photography as a means of investigating history and memory associated with sites. Now Assistant Professor of Photography at Loyola University, Chicago.
  • Shelby Oxenford, UCB, Japanese, Ph.D. 2018, now lecturer at the University of Texas, Austin, Department of Asian Studies.
  • Franz Prichard, UCLA Asian Languages and Cultures, 2011, working on practices of critical urbanism and cultural politics. Dissertation: “Ruined Maps: The Urban Revolution in Japanese Fiction, Documentary, and Photography of the 1960s and 1970s,” 2011. Prichard is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University.
  • Gabriel Ritter, UCLA Art History, 2016. Now Curator and Head of Contemporary Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art.
  • Jordan A. Yamaji Smith, UCLA Comparative Literature, 2010. Research interests include contemporary Japanese literature in transnational context, cross-exoticism, translation/interpretation, Japanese comedy/humor, kimono, hip hop studies. Authors of special interest include Oe Kenzaburo, Kirino Natsuo, Suzuki Takayuki, and Takahashi Genichiro. Now Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Cal State Long Beach.
  • Wakako Suzuki, UCLA Asian Languages and Cultures, 2018. Now Assistant Professor of Japanese, Bard College.
  • Mariko Takano, UCLA Asian Languages and Cultures, 2020. Now Visiting Assistant Professor, Oberlin College.
  • Dexter Thomas, Cornell University, Asian Literature, Religion, and Culture, 2020. Dissertation analyzed how hip-hop became compatible with Japanese nationalism. Awards include News Emmy for work on Vice News; Pulitzer Prize for Breaking Reporting, LA Times. Now an ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton University.
  • Ken Yoshida, UCI, Visual Studies, completed his dissertation, “Between Matter and Ecology: Art in Postwar Japan and the Question of Totality (1954–1975)” in 2011. Now Associate Professor, Global Arts Studies Program, UC Merced.