Professor, East Asian Studies
School of Humanities

Japanese literature, environmental humanities, feminist theory, eco-documentary

2019-2020. University of California President's Faculty Research Fellowship in the Humanities.
2000-2001. Post-Doctoral Fellow, Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University.
1994-1995. Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Grant, Tokyo University. Supervised by Komori Yoichi and Ueno Chizuko.

2003-2015. Assistant and Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, UC Riverside.
1997-2003. Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, SUNY Buffalo.

_This Perversion Called Love: Reading Tanizaki, Feminist Theory and Freud_ (Stanford, 2009) argues that Tanizaki is drawing many of the same conclusions about subjectivity as his contemporary Freud, but drawing them much more critically. I use Irigaray’s critique of Freud to sketch Tanizaki’s parallel critique of the way the “perversions” we call masochism and fetishism point the impossibility of female subjectivity in modern capitalist life.
_Care, Kin, Crackup: Fukushima and the Intrusion of Gaia_ (UC Press, 2026) is about novels and activist narratives that engage Gaia's enormity by tracing "crackup" into "crack." Chapters include:
Introduction // A Flow Connecting Everything: Tsushima’s Brown Bear
Chapter 1 // Chapter One: Maternal String Figures: Kimura Yusuke and Kobayashi Erika Reweave Hayashi Kyoko
Chapter 2 // Oe and the Semiotics of Neurodiversity: This Margin Which is Not One
Chapter 3 // On Being Worthy of the Event: Activist Narratives, Fukushima Stoics
Chapter 4 // Undercommons: Kin, Care and Pedagogy in Fukushima Documentary
Coda // Kawakami and the Problem of Maternal Care

2026. Care, Kin, Crackup: Fukushima and the Intrusion of Gaia. Under contract, UC Press.
2009. This Perversion Called Love: Reading Tanizaki, Feminist Theory and Freud. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

2025. “What is Environmental Care Work? From Marx to Minamata.” UCI Humanities Core Handbook 2025-2029.
2024. “Neurodiversity in the Margins: A Semiotics of Care in Oe’s Death By Water." Translated by Harumi Osaki. _JunCture: Borderless Japanese Cultural Studies_. Special Issue: Care. 74-93. https://doi.org/10.18999/juncture.15.74
2023. “Humanism and the Hikari-Event.” In _Literature After Fukushima: From Marginalized Voices to Nuclear Futurity_. Edited by Linda Flores and Barbara Geilhorn. New York: Routledge. 163-179.
2021. “Covid Cough and Fukushima Novels: On the Not-Bareness of Life in Environmental Humanities.” _Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature_, Vol. 18 No. 1 (March), 271-284.
2021. “Make Kin Not Children! Riding the Maternal Line with Kimura Yusuke and Kobayashi Erika.” Translated by Toru Oda. _Toward a Global Perspective: Post 3/11 Literary Criticism_. Edited by Kimura Saeko and Anne Bayard-Sakai. Kyoto: Akashi Shoten, 385-424.
2020. “Humanism and the Hikari-Event: Reading Oe with Stengers in Catastrophic Times.” _positions asia critique_ 20 no. 2 (May): 421-445.
2019. “On Being Worthy of the Event: Four Fukushima Stoics.” _Postmodern Culture_ 30 no. 1 (September): https://muse.jhu.edu/article/753926
2018. “Japan’s 3.11 Nuclear Disaster and the State of Exception: Notes on Kamanaka’s Interview and Two Recent Films.” _Asia Pacific Journal Japan Focus_ 16:16 no. 3 (7 August). www://apjjf.org/2018/16/Long.html
2018. Kamakana Hitomi. “Fukushima, Media, Democracy: The Promise of Documentary Film.” Interview by Hirano Katsuya. _Asia Pacific Journal Japan Focus_ 16:16 no. 3 (August 16): www. apjjf.org/2018/16/Kamanaka.html
2017. “Eco-politics and Affect Theory in Oe’s Post-Fukushima Activism: On Shame, Contempt, and Care.” _Ecocriticism in Japan_, ed. Hisaaki Wake, Keijiro Suga and Masami Yuki. Rowman & Littlefield. 121-138.
2016. “What Kind of Science? Reading Irigaray with Stengers.” _Philosophy After Irigaray_. Ed. Mary Rawlinson and Sara McNamara. Albany: SUNY Press. 173-194.
2014. “Hagio Moto’s Nuclear Manga and the Promise of Eco-Feminist Desire.” _Mechademia 9: Origins_. Edited by Christopher Bolton and Frenchy Lunning. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 3-23.
2009. “Two Ways to Play Fort-Da: With Tanizaki and Freud in Yoshino.” _Perversion in Modern Japan: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Culture_. Edited by Nina Cornyetz and J. Keith Vincent. New York and London: Routledge. 147-161.
2007. “Malice@Doll: Konaka, Specularization, and the Virtual Feminine.” _Mechademia 2: Networks of Desire_. Ed. Frenchy Lunning. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 157-174.
2006. “Nakagami and the Denial of Lineage: On Maternity, Abjection, and the Japanese Outcast Class.” _differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies_ 17 no. 2 (Summer): 1-32.
2005. Kang Sangjung. “In Range of the Critique of Orientalism.” _Deconstructing Nationality_. Edited by Brett de Bary, Iyotani Toshio, and Naoki Sakai. Ithaca: Cornell East Asian Monograph Series. 113-129.
2004. “Nakagami to ‘kindai bungaku no owari’ [Nakagami and the ‘end of modern literature’]”. Essay plus zadankai [published round-table] with Aoyama Shinji, Asada Akira, Karatani Kojin, Takazawa Shuji, Tsushima Yuko and Watanabe Naomi. _Waseda Bungaku_ 29.5 (November 2004): 22-53.
2002. “Feminist Film Theory: Osaka, Circa 1866.” _differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies_ 13 no. 3 (Fall): 24-63.
2002. “Tanizaki and the Enjoyment of Japanese Culturalism.” _positions east asia cultures critique_ 10 no. 2 (Fall): 431-469.

2018-2021. Japan Foundation Institutional Project Support (IPS) Grant for “Sustainable Japan” at UC Irvine, $323K.

Association for Asian Studies (AAS)

American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)

Association of Japanese Literary Studies (AJLS)

Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSA)

Gender and Criticism Workshop

Center for Japanese Studies

Center for Environmental Humanities

Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=6157

Last updated
09/20/2025