premodern Japanese literature, comparative poetics, ecocriticism

The focus of my research has been premodern literature of the late Heian to early medieval periods, with a second area of interest in Nara period texts and culture. To date, much of my research has focused on The Tale of the Heike, where I have preferred a multifaceted analysis that takes into account Heike’s connections to ritual, Buddhist doctrine, music, trade, geography, and other factors. In my recent book, Eccentric Spaces, Hidden Histories: Narrative, Ritual, and Royal Authority from The Chronicles of Japan to The Tale of the Heike (Stanford UP, 2007), I propose a counter-canon that looks back from Heike to the Nara period, illuminating the yin-yang and Daoist practices that are later echoed in medieval Japan’s apocryphal histories. Other interests include classical Japanese poetry, and the interactions between East Asian poetic practices and various twentieth century modernisms—imagism,symbolic theater, objectivism, etc. At present, I am working on several projects: a study of musical ideas in Japanese literature and ritual; and a collection of essays in ecocriticism that applies interdisciplinary perspectives to the study of literature, ritual, and the environment. In my teaching, I like to bring Japanese literature into dialog with world literature, and vice-versa. Recent teaching includes courses in Japanese fiction and film and ecocritical approaches to East Asian literature and culture.