Alisa Freedman
Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages and Literatures
Phone: (541) 346-4003
Email: alisaf@uoregon.edu
Alisa Freedman is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature and Film at the University of Oregon. Much of her interdisciplinary work investigates the ways the modern urban experience has shaped human subjectivity, cultural production, and gender roles. Alisa is preparing two book manuscripts. The first, which will be reviewed by academic presses in May 2009, explores fictional and artistic depictions of the ways increased use of mass transportation changed Tokyo’s social fabric. The second analyzes changing images of workingwomen on Japanese television. She is editing a volume of scholarly essays on Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan and plans to hold a workshop on the topic at the University of Oregon in 2010. Alisa has published articles on youth culture, humor as social critique, and the intersection of literature and new media, including “Street Nonsense: Ryûtanji Yû and the Fascination with Interwar Tokyo Absurdity” (Japan Forum 21(1)), “Stories of Boys and Buildings: Ishida Ira’s 4-Teen in 2002 Tokyo” (Japan Forum 18(3)), and “Train Man and the Gender Politics of Japanese ‘Otaku’ Culture: The Rise of New Media, Nerd Heroes, and Fan Communities” (Intersections (April 2009)). Alisa published an annotated translation of Kawabata Yasunari’s The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (University of California Press, 2005) and translations of five Japanese short stories and plays in literary anthologies and journals. Additionally, she is engaged in a research and teaching project on the future of the book using Japanese literature as an example.
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