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I am interested in investigating how gender, sexuality, corporeality, and power are represented and negotiated in pre-seventeenth-century Japanese narratives and illustrations. My first book, Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Narratives (University of Hawai`i Press, 2021) is on medieval chigo monogatari (Buddhist acolyte tales), which often depict romantic relationships between Buddhist priests and adolescent boys. These tales challenge a host of normative and moral standards we (academics, especially) internalize, including such ideas as "sexual orientation," "transgenerational sex," and "sexual agency."
My current project is on the literary representations of "milk kinships" in pre-seventeenth Japanese tales, in cluding the Tale of Ochikubo, the Tale of Genji, the Tales of the Heike.
I am also the director of the Springboard Japan Project, a multi-purpose open-access forum for Japan Studies: Springboard Japan – Dartmouth-UCSD Japan Studies Digital Project
Asian Societies, Cultures and Languages
Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Buddhist Narratives (Honolulu: The University of Hawai`i Press, 2021). https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/tales-of-idolized-boys-male-male-love-in-medieval-japanese-buddhist-narratives/
"Yoshitsune and the Gendered Transformations of Japan's Self-Image." The Journal of Japanese Studies 48, no. 1 (2022): 93–121. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/846898
"The Erotic Family: Structures and Narratives of Milk Kinship in Premodern Japanese Tales." The Journal of Asian Studies 80 no. 3 (2021): 663-681. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-asian-studies/article/erotic-family-structures-and-narratives-of-milk-kinship-in-premodern-japanese-tales/AA975FF6926858B4E78A3A2B9ABC5574.
"The Boy Who Lived: The Transfigurations of Chigo in the Medieval Japanese Short Story Ashibiki." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 75, no. 2 (2015): 299–329. The Boy Who Lived: The Transfigurations of "Chigo" in the Medieval Japanese Short Story "Ashibiki" on JSTOR
Honorable Mention, the Kenneth B. Pyle Prize for Best Article for “Yoshitsune and the Gendered Transformations of Japan’s Self-Image” (the prize honoring the founding editor of the Journal of Japanese Studies, given annually for a JJS research article published in the previous year), 2023. https://depts.washington.edu/jjs/kenneth-b-pyle-prize-for-best-article-i...
Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Washington, 2009 ($ 7,000; annual campus-wide teaching award given to two out of approximately 1,500 graduate teaching assistants).
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, University of Washington, 2003.