Executive Committee

  • William Marotti, Director, Associate Professor, History, UC Los Angeles
  • Rosemary Candelario, Associate Professor, Performance as Public Practice, Department of Theater and Dance, University of Texas at Austin
  • Namiko Kunimoto, Associate Professor, Art History, Ohio State University
  • Gregory P. Levine, Associate Professor, Art History, UC Berkeley
  • Margherita Long, Associate Professor of East Asian Language and Literatures, UC Irvine
  • Anne McKnight, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, UC Riverside
  • 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. [PhD 2018]

UC Los Angeles

Graduate Students:

  • Dan Abbe, Art History [PhD 2023]
  • Alice Ashiwa, History
  • John Leisure, History [PhD 2021]
  • Kanako Mabuchi, Asian Languages and Cultures
  • Tatiana Sulovska, History
  • Sarah Walsh, History
  • Jack Wilson, 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.
  • Jamie Liu. Asian American literature, diaspora studies, Sinophone literature, transnational film and media studies.

UC Irvine

Graduate Students:

  • Ben Aaron, Visual Studies. [PhD 2020]
  • Vanessa Baker, Japanese and Korean literature
  • Zane Casimir
  • 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 [PhD 2015]
  • Asako Katsura
  • Christina Spiker, Visual Studies. [PhD 2015]

UC San Diego

University of Chicago

Graduate Students:

  • Zhiyan Yang, Art History [PhD 2021]

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
  • Timon Screech, Nichibunken
  • Yoshiko Shimada, Artist and Researcher
  • Toshio Watanabe, Director, Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN), University of the Arts London

JAG Alumni (select):

  • 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 Bushelle, UCLA History, 2016. Interests in Early Modern and Modern Japanese Intellectual and Cultural History, especially Kokugaku. Now Associate Professor, Department of History, Western Washington State.
  • 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 Associate Curator, Japanese Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
  • 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 Associate Professor, Modern Languages and Linguistics, Florida State University.
  • Gabriel Ritter, UCLA Art History, 2016. Director of the UCSB Art, Design & Architecture Museum and Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture.
  • Jordan A. Yamaji Smith, UCLA Comparative Literature, 2010. Research interests include contemporary Japanese literature in transnational context, poetry, translation, contemporary art, film / documentary. Authors of special interest include Oe Kenzaburo, Kirino Natsuo, Yoshimasu Gozo. Co-founder of KOTOBA Slam Japan, COEM, and Naro.tv, and editor of Tokyo Poetry Journal. After 17 years in academic roles, currently producing film, curating art, and writing.
  • Wakako Suzuki, UCLA Asian Languages and Cultures, 2018. Now Associate Professor of Japanese, Whitman 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 three News Emmys for work on Vice News; Pulitzer Prize for Breaking Reporting, LA Times; 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.