Area of Interest:

History and Memory; Everyday Life; Ethnography; Critical Theory; Storytelling, Ritual and Performance; Japan and Okinawa

Education:

Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2002.

Research & Activities:

Research Background: The central theme of my dissertation research is the transformational possibilities of everyday life in contemporary Japan. From 1996 until 1998, I did fieldwork in Okinawa City, Okinawa. Through ethnographic and archival research, I explored traditional forms of social organization and genres of ritual and performance in the complicated context of modern Okinawan history. I studied the work of ethnographic comedians, whose performances weave Okinawan folk humor, Japanese traditional monologues (rakugo) and improvisational storytelling into sophisticated critiques of everyday life. I also worked with the Okinawa City youth groups or seinenkai from which these performers emerged. In particular, I examined their eisaa (or dance for the dead), and its mediation of social relationships. My dissertation provides close readings of these performances, focusing on modalities of mourning, memoration and creative action.

Current Research: I am currently revising my dissertation for publication as a book tentatively titled, Fanning the Spark of Hope: Culture, Practice and Everyday Life in Postwar Okinawa. At the same time, I am working on a critical study of early Okinawan ethnographers such as Iha Fuyû, Sakima Kôei and Higaonna Kanjun. I am interested in their negotiation of the vortex of local knowledge, Japanese nativist ethnology, western anthropology and discourses of the state.

Courses Taught:

Anthropology 42 Local Cultures, Global Forces
Anthropology 149 Marxism and Anthropology
Anthropology 328 Anthropology of History and Memory

Selected Publications:

"Nuchi nu Suji: Comedy and Everyday Life in Postwar Okinawa." Japan and Okinawa: Structure and Subjectivity, edited by Glenn D. Hook and Richard Siddle. London: Routledge, In Press.

"The Moai: Capitalism, Culture and Okinawan Rotating Credit Associations." Journal of Pacific Asia. Autumn 2001.

"Huziki Hayato, the Storyteller: Comedy, Culture and Practice in Postwar Okinawa." Postcolonial Studies, April 2001.

Annotated Translation with Kyoko Selden of "Oan Monogatari (The Tale of an Old Nun)." Review of Japanese Culture and Society, December 1998.