May 14, 2015/ 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

A discussion with Josai International University Professor Fukuko Kobayashi and Associate Professors Koichi Haga and Jordan Smith, both UCLA Alums.

Heisei Translationscapes: New Japanese Literatures
Associate Professor Jordan Smith

Transnational Women Writers Inside/Outside Japan
Professor Fukuko Kobayashi

3.11: Reading Agencies of Planet Earth in Literature
Associate Professor Koichi Haga

BIOS

Koichi Haga (PhD UCLA) is currently Associate Professor of International Humanities at Josai International University where he teaches Japanese culture and literature. His recent publications include “Football as Possibilities: Intervention in Conventional Criticisms on Ōe’s Silent Cry” (2011), “Globalization and desire for the ingenuous – representation of foods in Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen” (2013), and “Nature as modern desire: how Ōe retold Contemporary Game in MT” (2014). He is currently conducting research on post-2011 Japanese literature from an ecological perspective.

Fukuko Kobayashi taught American literature at Waseda University for many years, and now teaches Gender Studies and Minority Women’s literature at Josai International University. Her books include Enchi Fumiko – jendā de yomu sakka no sei to sakuhin [The Role of Gender in the Life and Work of Enchi Fumiko] (2005), and Jendā to esunishitī de yomu amerika josei sakka [Gender and Ethnicity in American Women Writers] (2006). She also translated Trinh Minh-ha’s two books of criticism, When the Moon Waxes Red (1996) and Elsewhere, Within Here (2014) as well as Monique Truong’s novel The Book of Salt (2014).

Jordan A. Yamaji Smith (Ph.D. UCLA, Comparative Literature) is currently Associate Professor of International Humanities at Josai International University. His research focuses on the relationship between translation and world literature. He is currently completing a book Global Comedy and Humor Theory and editing a series of anthologies of modern Japanese poetry in translation.

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