Faculty Fellow/Adjunct Instructor, Japanese Literature Ph.D., 2009, Harvard office: 212 UO Annex phone: (541) 346-7019 email: glynne@uoregon.edu

Bio: In 2009-2010 I’ll be teaching courses on translation and Japanese literature, the image of the samurai in Japanese culture, and Japanese literature of the early modern period (1600-1868).

I’m interested in popular literature and how it negotiates the requirements of industry and genre, the demands of a mass audience, and the aspirational pull of “serious” literature. This interest first led me to examine the Akutagawa Prize in the 1980s, which was the subject of my master’s thesis. Recently I have pursued my interest in contemporary Japanese literature through translation: I have published translations of novels by Suzuki Kôji and Taguchi Randy.

Currently, my main research focus is popular fiction of early modern Japan. My dissertation examined an influential early 19th-century adventure novel, Nansô Satomi hakkenden (Eight Dogs of the Satomi Clan of Southern Kazusa) by Kyokutei Bakin. In it, I explored how Bakin balanced the didactic requirements of Tokugawa fiction with the need to tell a gripping story. In addition to my ongoing work on Hakkenden, I am currently pursuing projects related to Bakin’s travelogues, comic books, and erotic fiction.