Faculty & Staff
Faculty
Michael K. Bourdaghs , Ph.D.
Associate Professor in Modern Japanese Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Research interests:
modern Japanese literature, culture, and intellectual history; popular music; literary and critical theory
My current research projects include a rethinking of the literary theories of Natsume Sōseki, in particular his Bungakuron (Theory of literature, 1907), in which he challenges orthodox Western literary criticism by proposing a scientific model for understanding the experience of literature. In a related project, I am trying to historicize Sōseki’s writings within the institutions and ideologies of modern property ownership, including family law, copyright, and the extension of modern land ownership systems into Japan’s colonies. Another ongoing book project explores the geopolitics of Japanese popular music from 1945 through the early 1990s, looking at such figures as Misora Hibari, Sakamoto Kyū, and Yellow Magic Orchestra.
Selected publications:
The Dawn That Never Comes: Shimazaki Tōson and Japanese Nationalism. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
Kamei Hideo, Transformations of Sensibility: The Phenomenology of Meiji Literature (original Japanese title: Kansei no henkaku, 1983), translation edited and with an introduction by Michael Bourdaghs. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies Publications, 2002).
“The Calm Beauty of Japan at Almost the Speed of Sound: Sakamoto Kyū and the Translations of Rockabilly,” in Francoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, ed’s., Minor Transnationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 237-258
“Eigoken ni okeru Bungakuron: Riron, kagaku, shoyū” (Bungakuron in the English-Speaking World: Theory, Science, Possession). Kokubungaku 51:3 (March 2006), 137-147.
“Property and Sociological Knowledge: Natsume Sōseki and the Gift of Narrative,” forthcoming in Japan Forum (2007).
