Biography
My research takes into consideration encounters between authors of Japan’s Meiji era (1868-1912) and European racial ideology. Many of the era’s most famous literary figures went to Europe, and I investigate their experiences of racial melancholy during their studies there. Examining an author’s work across languages, genres, and disciplines, I intend to demonstrate that racial ideology was a prominent consideration in the works of many Meiji writers, both in respect to their racialization of other Asian peoples in Japan's future empire, and their own feelings of racial alienation in Euro-American space.
I utilize my background in German studies to further investigate Japanese intellectuals who studied abroad in German-speaking countries. My M.A. thesis focused on the Japanese doctor and author Mori Ōgai, who wrote medical studies in German and literary fiction in Japanese. By reading these works together, I argued that Ōgai was conscious of European racial ideology and actively confronting it in his writings. Looking forward, I am also interested in the aesthetic effects of race and racialization in Japanese art and literary works across the long nineteenth century.
My other research interests include resonances between East Asian and Asian-American literatures, racialization and East Asian popular media, Meiji era authors as polymaths and polyglots, and the translingual and interdisciplinary possibilities of area studies.