Professional Affiliation

Associate Professor, Penn State University

Expert Bio

I am the author of Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan (University of California Press, 2012) and the co-translator of Karatani Kōjin’s Nation and Aesthetics: On Kant and Freud (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Azuma Hiroki’s Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals (University of Minnesota Press, 2008). I also edited a special issue of Japan Forum entitled “Beyond Fukushima: The Ethics of Cultural Production in a Post-disaster Japan” (2015). With Michele Kennerly and Samuel Frederick, I edited Information Keywords a volume on humanistic approaches to the study of information (Columbia University Press, 2021). With Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, I recently edited a special issue of Verge: Studies in Global Asias on “Digital Asias” (University of Minnesota Press, Fall 2021). My book The New Real: Media and Mimesis in Japan from Stereographs to Emoji is forthcoming in 2023 from University of Minnesota Press.

Expertise

• Democracy
• Disaster Management
• Gender
• Global Health
• Society and Culture

Wilson Center Project

Subtitling the World: Fake News, Fictional Truth, and Social Media

Project Summary

Subtitling the World: Fake News, Fictional Truth, and Social Media explains how literature is changing the world today.  Amidst the rise of social media platforms both as primary news sources and as super-spreaders of viral conspiracy theories, fiction posted on micro-blogs reflects the way platforms encourage creative participatory endeavors that can remake worldviews and ideologies without regard to fact.  Because fictional truth resides at the intersection of lies and facts, micro-literature (flash fiction and poetry) can reveal much about how social media not only represents the world but also transforms it. This project delves into the rich archive of Japanese-language micro-blog literature over the last decade, tracking the impact of the literary during social anxiety and crisis to understand the function of fiction in shaping political opinion and public conceptions of truth.

Major Publications

• “Japanese Twitterature: Global Media, Formal Innovation, Cultural Différance,” Handbook to Modern Japanese Literature (New York: Routledge, 2016.
• “Big Data,” Futures of Comparative Literature, ed. Ursula K. Heise (New York: Routledge, 2017) 267-270.
• “Unfolding Digital Asias,” with Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, Special Issue on Digital Asias, Verge: Studies in Global Asias 7:2 Fall 2021, vi-xxii (17 pages).