Michigan Talks Japan
13 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 3 years ago -Michigan Talks Japan is a new podcast from the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan. In it, Prof. Allison Alexy talks with leading scholars doing research on Japan about their work, their backgrounds, and their recommendations in the field. Crossing academic disciplines and time periods, the podcast highlights new and exciting scholarship in Japanese Studies.
More at: https://ii.umich.edu/cjs/podcast/
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Episodes
Claire Maree
July 23, 2021 02:50 - 1 hour - 73 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Claire Maree, an Associate Professor and Reader at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. Dr. Maree is a linguist examining the reproduction, negotiation, and contestation of identities in language, particularly in media, as well as the interconnection of gender and sexuality in everyday language practices. Our conversation today centers on her newest book, Queerqueen: Linguistic Excess in Japanese Media, which examines popular celebritie...
Vyjayanthi Selinger
June 18, 2021 01:06 - 1 hour - 63.9 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Vyjayanthi Selinger, a scholar of Japanese literature and culture. Her research examines literary representations of conflict in medieval Japan, using conflict as the key node to examine war memory, legal and ritual constraints on war, Buddhist mythmaking, and women in war. Our conversation centers on two articles she has published recently. First we discuss “War Without Blood? The Literary Uses of a Taboo Fluid in the Heike monogatari,” publis...
Gabriella Lukács
June 02, 2021 15:38 - 57 minutes - 52.2 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Gabriella Lukács, whose research focuses on analog and digital media, which she theorizes as a continuum. The conversation centers on her new book Invisibility by Design: Women and Labor in Japan's Digital Economy. Topics of discussion include: digital labor, online entrepreneurship, labor in the academy, net idols, bloggers, influencers, careers on YouTube, "expert" advice online, Japan's gendered labor market, what is recognized as labor, ext...
Jolyon Baraka Thomas
April 02, 2021 00:15 - 1 hour - 60.8 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Jolyon Baraka Thomas, whose research focuses on religion as it intersects with media, freedom, education, and capitalism. The conversation centers on his book Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan. Topics of discussion include: State Shintō, religious freedom, the Meiji Constitution, the Allied Occupation of Japan, tools of American empire, rhetoric and practices of freedom, development studies, anti-Black racism in Jap...
Suma Ikeuchi
January 05, 2021 21:09 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Suma Ikeuchi, whose research focuses on migration, ethnic studies, religion, and science & technology studies. Our conversation centers on her book, Jesus Loves Japan: Return Migration and Global Pentecostalism in a Brazilian Diaspora, published in 2019 by Stanford University Press. After we recorded this, the book was awarded the 2020 Francis L. K. Hsu Book Prize by the Society for East Asian Anthropology. Dr. Suma Ikeuchi is an Assistant Pro...
Charlotte Eubanks
September 24, 2020 19:23 - 57 minutes - 52.7 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Charlotte Eubanks, whose research focuses on material culture, performance studies, and ethics, with a focus on Japanese and Buddhist literature from the medieval period to the present. The conversation centers on their new book The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan. Topics of discussion include: settler families in Hokkaido, art, sketching, life histories, art and books for children, war guilt and r...
Season 2 Trailer
August 14, 2020 16:01 - 3 minutes - 2.88 MBThis short episode is the trailer for our second season. Rather than talking with a scholar, Allison Alexy briefly explains changes the production team has made in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and newly public conversations about racism, inequity, and exclusion in Japanese Studies (as a discipline), in the academy more generally, in the US, and in Japan. We are grateful to all of our listeners, welcome your reactions, and look forward to sharing upcoming episodes.
Morgan Pitelka
July 29, 2020 22:29 - 50 minutes - 45.9 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Morgan Pitelka, whose research examines late medieval and early modern Japan, with a focus on the samurai, tea culture, ceramics, cities, and material culture. The conversation centers on a new book he is writing centered on Ichijōdani, the headquarters of the Asakura warlord family. Topics of discussion include: the Sengoku or Warring States period; the destruction of Ichijōdani; material culture and political history; kawarake, simple pinched...
Meghen Jones
July 17, 2020 19:57 - 40 minutes - 37.4 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Meghen Jones, whose research focuses on the history of ceramics, modern art, and craft theory in Japan and in international perspective. The conversation centers on her new book Ceramics and Modernity in Japan co-edited with Louise Allison Cort and an exhibition she is co-curating about the tea bowl in Japan and beyond. Topics of discussion include: genres and styles of Japanese ceramics such as raku, shino, and oribe; wabi aesthetics; tea bowl...
Michael Strausz
July 02, 2020 18:59 - 46 minutes - 42.9 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Michael Strausz, whose research focuses on Japanese politics, particularly Japan’s immigration policy, as well as the role of norms in international politics. The conversation centers on his new book Help (Not) Wanted: Immigration Politics in Japan exploring why Japan’s immigration policy has remained so restrictive, especially in light of economic, demographic, and international political forces that are pushing Japan to admit more immigrants....
Marié Abe
June 18, 2020 20:15 - 1 hour - 55.4 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Marié Abe, whose research focuses on space and sound, and popular performing arts, in Japan as well as many other topics. The conversation centers on her new book Resonances of Chindon-ya: Sounding Space and Sociality in Contemporary Japan, exploring a popular type of musical street performance and advertising. Topics of discussion include: popular music, protests and activism, labor, social class, doing ethnographic fieldwork, the work of writ...
Levi McLaughlin
June 10, 2020 18:21 - 59 minutes - 54.3 MBIn this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Levi McLaughlin, whose research focuses on religion in contemporary Japan. The conversation centers on his new book Soka Gakkai's Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan, exploring Buddhist practices and beliefs among within the Soka Gakkai religious sect. Topics of discussion include: the history of Soka Gakkai, attitudes toward religion in Japan, social class and classism, stigma and prejudice, and doing ethnographic fi...
Test Episode
May 28, 2020 17:36 - 40 seconds - 627 KBThis is where we will put the episode notes when we make a real episode.