2019 News and Events
UW Professor to Present to JAPN 450 Students on Nov. 22, 2019: "Everyday Life in the Militarized Spaces of Okinawa"
Davinder L. Bhowmik is associate professor of modern Japanese literature at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her primary research interests are prose fiction from Okinawa, atomic bomb literature, and contemporary film. Research publications include "Temporal Discontinuity in the Atomic Bomb Fiction of Hayashi Kyôko" (University of Hawai'i Press,1999), Writing Okinawa: Narrative Acts of Identity and Resistance (Routledge, 2008), and Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa (University of Hawaii Press, 2016). Currently, Professor Bhowmik is completing a book manuscript on military basetown literature in Japan.
Visiting Fulbright Scholar to Give Faculty Research Presentation
East Asian Studies, The Japanese Program and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages hosted experts in Japanese literature, spring 2019
All talks were on May 1st, 2019
Professor Ikuko Sagiyama (University of Florence) will deliver two lectures, including a talk on late nineteenth century Japanese author Higuchi Ichiyō’s renowned story “Takekurabe” (Child’s Play, 1896).
Professor Hiromi Hyōdō (Gakushūin University) will also deliver two lectures on the same day, including a talk on one of Japanese novelist and playwright Izumi Kyōka‘s stories—“Shunchū” (One day in Spring, 1906).
Professor Sagiyama is an expert in classical Japanese literature and has written books on such famous anthologies as Kokin Waka Shū (Collections of Japanese Poems of Ancient and Modern Times) and Wakan rōei shū (Collection of Japanese and Chinese Poems for Singing). She has also published on a wide range of topics in Japanese literature, from Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji) to modern narrative and poetics.
Prof. Hyōdō, who specializes in Japanese medieval literature, is a renowned expert of the Heike monogatari (The Tale of the Heike), and has published several books on Japan’s traditional performing arts.
25th Annual East Asian Studies Student Colloquium, June 6, 2019
"Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra"
Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Louisiana State University, Paula Arai, gave a talk about the work of Japanese biologist and visionary artist, Iwasaki Tsuneo (1917-2002) entitled "Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra," on March 4, 2019
