Ted Mack

Research interests: Modern Japanese-language prose; art and capitalism; the flow of literary works throughout the larger Japanese linguistic community; the function of power in the literary field; and theories of diaspora and heterogeneity, particularly as they challenge culturalist concepts of national identity.

My recent book, Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value (Duke University Press, 2010), examines the relationship between the concept of a national literature and the publishing industry. My current project is the role of literature in the Japanese diaspora, focusing on the production and consumption of literary texts from both Tokyo and São Paulo.

In addition, I have been working on Asian American cultural history, with a focus on Japanese-language discourse and literary production. I edited the 28-volume Shiatoru-ban Nihongo tokuhon (reproduction of the textbook series produced in Seattle from 1920-38), and the 16-volume Kashū-ban Nihongo tokuhon (reproduction of the textbook series produced in California from 1924-39). Both were published by Bunsei Shoin (Tokyo), the first in 2012 and the second in 2014.

Selected Publications

"Implied Promises Betrayed: ‘Intraracial’ Alterity during Japan’s Imperial Period" in The Affect of Difference, eds. Dennis Washburn and Chris Hanscom, forthcoming from the University of Hawaii Press.
"Nihon bungaku no ba to shite no senzen Burajiru" forthcoming in Ôtsuma Women's University’s Manuscripts and Texts Research Institute’s Kenkyūjo Nenpō.
"Introduction" (in English and in Japanese translation by Professor Morimoto Toyotomi), Kashū-ban Nihongo tokuhon: bessatsu kaidai (Bunsei Shoin, 2014).
"Introduction" (in English and in Japanese translation by Nobuko Yamasaki), Shiatoru-ban Nihongo tokuhon: bessatsu kaidai (Tokyo: Bunsei Shoin, 2012), pp. 1-21.
"Paracolonial Literature: Japanese-language Literature in Brazil," (in both English and Korean) in Ilbon yŏn'gu 16 (2011), 57-128. [Available for download here.]
"Pŏm singminji munhak: Bŭrajil esŏ ŭi Ilbonŏ munhak," in Cheguk Ilbon ŭi idong kwa Tong Asia singminji munhak 2 (Sŏul Tŭkp'yŏl-si: Mun, 2011), 421-61.
"Kokumin kokka to bungaku: Hokubei/Nanbai to Kaizōsha no Gendai Nihon bungaku zenshū," Kokusai Nihon Bungaku Kenkyū shūkai kaigiroku 34 (2011), 209-17.
Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value (Duke University Press, 2010)
“Ōtake Wasaburō's Dictionaries and the Japanese 'Colonization' of Brazil,” Dictionaries: The Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 31 (2010): 46-68.
“The Extranational Flow of Japanese Language Texts, 1905-1945," Sai: Kan (Seoul: Kukche Han'guk Munhwa Hakhoe) 6 (May 2009): 147-76.
“Nihon bungaku no 'hate': San Pauro no Endō Shoten,” Ritsumeikan gengo bunka kenkyū 20:1 (September 2008), pp. 179-85.
“Pure Art as Mass Culture: Industrialized Publishing and ‘Modern Japanese Literature.’” Wilt L. Idema, ed. Books in Numbers (Cambridge: Harvard-Yenching Library, 2007), pp. 311-55. [via Google Books]
“Tekusuto no aidentitii, arui wa, tekusuto no sōkansei ni kansuru disukuuru” and “Textual Identity: Discourses of Textual Interrelation,” Morii Masumi, ed., The Materiality of Literature (Tokyo: Nihon Daigaku Bunri Gakubu, 2007), pp. 100-11.
“Seattle’s Little Tokyo: Bundan Fiction and the Japanese Diaspora,” Dennis Washburn and James Dorsey, eds., Reading Material: The Production of Narratives, Genres, and Literary Identities (West Lafayette, IN: Association for Japanese Literary Studies, 2007), pp. 7-16.
“Diasporic Markets: Japanese Print and Migration in São Paulo, 1908-1935,” Script & Print: Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand 29 (2006) pp. 163-77.
“Accounting for Taste: The Creation of the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes for Literature,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 64:2 (December 2004), pp. 291-340. [via JSTOR]
“Marketing Japan’s Literature in its 1930s Colonies,” Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand 28:1/2 (2004), pp. 134-41.

Current Courses:

Autumn 2015

JAPAN 431: Advanced Reading Comprehension

Tsumura Kikuko, Sawanishi Yûten, Oyamada Hiroko
MWF 12:30-1:50
SAV 155

HONORS 210B: Arts and Humanities

Japanese-Language Literature in the Americas
MWF 2:00-3:30
SAV 137