Expertise

Japan, Tokyo, Literature, Film, Performing Arts, Gender Studies

Biography

Barbara, who holds a B.A. from Smith College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, is professor of Japanese studies in the newly created Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Formerly chair of the Dept. of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Studies and director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program, she continues to serve on the GSWS steering committee. Barbara is the author of four books, including Mapping Tokyo in Fiction and Film (2020) and America’s Japan and Japan’s Performing Arts: Cultural Mobility and Exchange in New York, 1952-2011 (2013). She also co-edited and contributed to Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City (2018).

Recent book chapters and journal articles include “Gender, Aging and Family in Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Kiki Kirin Films,” “Haruki Murakami’s Tokyo: Spatial Transformation and Sociocultural Displacement, Disconnection, and Disorientation” and “The Thirty-Something ‘Tokyo Daughters’ of Kawakami Hiromi’s Strange Weather in Tokyo, Shibasaki Tomoka’s Spring Garden, and Murata Sayaka’s Convenience Store Woman.”

Selected Publications

• Gender, Aging, and Family in Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Kiki Kirin Films” (in Literature in Heisei Japan, 1989-2019, 2024) 
• "Haruki Murakami's Tokyo: Spatial Transformation and Sociocultural Displacement, Disconnection, and Disorientation" (in Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage, 2021)
• “The Thirty-Something ‘Tokyo Daughters’ of Kawakami Hiromi’s Strange Weather in Tokyo, Shibasaki Tomoka’s Spring Garden, and Murata Sayaka’s Convenience Store Woman” (U.S.-Japan  Women’s Journal, 2020)
• Mapping Tokyo in Fiction and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
• Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City (Lexington Books, 2018) --co-editor and contributor "Cultural References in the Novels of Fuminori Nakamura: A Case Study in Current Japanese-to-English Literary Translation Practices and Challenges" (Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 2017)
• “Tokyo, Gender, and Mobility: Tracking Fictional Characters on Real Monorails, Trains, Subways, and Trams” (Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 2014)
• America’s Japan and Japan’s Performing Arts: Cultural Mobility and Exchange in New York, 1952-2011 (University of Michigan Press, 2013)

Courses Taught

• Challenging Social Conventions in Japanese Literature
• Japanese Literature: From Classical to Contemporary
• Mystery and Crime Fiction in Japan
• Stories of Parents and Children in Japanese Literature and Film
• Tokyo in Literature and Film