Japan

Dominique Townsend

Dominique Townsend

Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Department of Religion

Office: 480 Claremont Ave Ste, Suite 103, MC 9610, New York NY
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 11:00am – 1:00pm and by appointment
Phone: 212-853-5640
Email: dt80@columbia.edu

Background
Dominique Townsend is a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism whose research combines historical and literary methods. Her interests include Tibetan Buddhist cultural production, poetry, aesthetics, dreams, gender, and translation. Her research is rooted primarily in Classical Tibetan texts, with an emphasis on the seventeenth-twentieth centuries. She teaches courses on Tibetan Buddhism and history, Asian humanities, poetics, new media, dreaming, and Buddhist approaches to death and dying. Before joining the faculty at Columbia in July 2024, she was Associate Professor of Religion at Bard College, and prior to that she served as Head of Interpretation at the Rubin Museum of Art.
Research Interests

Currently Townsend’s research is focused on a book about dreams and dreaming in Tibetan Buddhism, All this is Dreamlike, forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Her previous books include A Buddhist Sensibility (Columbia University Press, 2021), and the co-edited, Longing to Awaken, (University of Virginia Press, 2024). She has also published a book of poems and a children’s book.

Chikako Takahashi

Chikako Takahashi

Lecturer in Japanese

Office: 520 Kent Hall
Office Hours: Monday 11:00 – 12:00 & Wednesday 4:00 – 5:00

Phone: (212) 854-5502
Email: ct2423@columbia.edu

Educational Background
PhD: Linguistics, Stony Brook University
M.A: TESOL, Teachers College, Columbia University
Classes Taught
JPNS 1002 Introductory Japanese B
JPNS 1101 First Year Japanese I
JPNS1102 First Year Japanese II
JPNS2201 Second Year Japanese I
JPNS2202 Second Year Japanese II
Research Interests

Second Language Phonetics Learning
Pronunciation in Second Language Instruction
Japanese Information Structure

Chikako Takahashi holds a PhD in Linguistics from Stony Brook University. Her research focuses on how speakers’ pronunciation and perception of their first and second (or third) languages are influenced by their language learning experience. Prior to coming to Columbia, she has taught Japanese courses at Japan Society and Linguistic courses such as Phonetics and Phonology, Sociolinguistics, and Second Language Acquisition at the undergraduate and graduate levels at various institutions.

Publications

Journal Publications (Peer-reviewed) 

Takahashi, C. (2024). L1 Japanese Perceptual Drift in Late Learners of L2 English. Languages 9: 0.

Takahashi, C. (2023). L1 vowel perceptual boundary shift as a result of L2 vowel learning. Journal of Phonetics, 100.

Hwang, J., Takahashi, C., Baek, H. Baek, Yeung, A. HL., and E. Broselow (2022). Do L1 tone language speakers enjoy a perceptual advantage in processing English contrastive prosody?   Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

Takahashi, C. (2019). No transposition in Harmonic Serialism, Phonology, 36, 4.

Takahashi, C. (2012). Impact of Dictionary Use Skills Instructions on Second Language Writing, Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, Teachers College, Columbia University, 12 (2).

Proceedings Papers

Yeung, A., Baek, H., Takahashi, C., Buttner, S., Hwang, J., and E. Broselow (2020). Too little, too late: A longitudinal study of English corrective focus by Mandarin speakers. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 5(1). 270-281.

Yeung, A., Baek, H., Takahashi, C., Duncan, J., Benedett, S., Hwang, J., and E. Broselow, (2019). Pitch range, intensity, and vocal fry in non-native and native English focus intonation. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, 36, Acoustic Society of Americ

Takahashi, C. (2018). No Metathesis in Harmonic Serialism. In Gallagher, G., Gouskova, M., and S. Yin, (eds.), Supplemental proceedings of the 2017 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/amp.v5i0.4232.

Takahashi, C., Kao, S., Baek, H., Yeung, A. HL., Hwang, J., and E. Broselow, (2018). Native and non- native speaker processing and production of contrastive focus prosody. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America (Vol. 3)

Takahashi, C. (2017). Information Structure of Japanese Ditransitives. In Funakoshi, K., S. Kawahara, and C. Tancredi, (eds.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics, 24, Stanford; CSLI Publications

Kao, S., Hwang, J., Baek, H., Takahashi, C., and E. Broselow, (2016). International teaching assistants’ production of focus intonation. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, 26, Acoustic Society of America

Recent Presentations

Kyoko Matsui Loetscher, Naoko Sourial, and Chikako Takahashi, Curriculum Reform to
Foster Multiliteracies, International Conference on Japanese Language Education – North
America, August 1-3, 2024, Wisconsin, Madison.

Kyoko Matsui Loetscher, Naoko Sourial, and Chikako Takahashi, Report on Blended-learning Model in Elementary Japanese Courses – toward fostering learning agency, AATJ Spring Conference, March 16, 2023, Boston.

Chikako Takahashi, Effect of second language learning factors on first language phonetic change. American Association for Applied Linguistics 2022 Conference, March 19-22, 2022 (Poster Presentation)

Chikako Takahashi, L1 vowel perceptual drift as a result of L2 vowel learning: L1 Japanese -L2 English bilinguals’ perception of high front vowels. The 96th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Jan. 6-9, 2022, Washington, DC.

 

Tomi Suzuki

Tomi Suzuki

Professor of Japanese Literature, Director of Graduate Studies

Office: 410 Kent Hall
Office Hours: T 4:30-5:30 PM (by appointment) or by appointment
Phone: (212) 854-5034
Email: ts202@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: University of Tokyo (’74)
MA: University of Tokyo (’77)
PhD: Yale University (’88)

Classes Taught

AHUM U3830 Colloquium on Modern East Asian Texts
JPNS GU4008 Readings in Classical Japanese
JPNS GR9020 Graduate Seminar in Modern Japanese Literature

Research Interests

Modern Japanese Literature and Criticism in Comparative Context, Literary and Cultural Theory, Narrative, Genre, and Gender Theory, Modernism and Modernity, Intellectual History of Modern Japan, History of Reading

Professor Suzuki joined the department at Columbia University in 1996. She has published extensively in both the English and Japanese languages.  Currently, Professor Suzuki is completing a book entitled Gender, Literary Culture, and Nation in Japan: 1880s-1950s, which investigates the formation of the literary field from the late nineteenth century to the postwar period in relationship to gender construction, language reform, and education. It explores the modernist construction and questioning of Japanese linguistic and cultural traditions in a transnational context. Most recently, she co-edited The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature.

Selected Publications

The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature (co-editor, Cambridge, 2016).

“Translations and Modern Japanese Literature: Re-reading Mori Ogai’s Maihime at Columbia University,” Bungaku (2014, in Japanese)

“Transformations and Continuities: Censorship and Occupation-Period Criticism,” in Occupation-period Literary Journals: 1946–1947, vol. 2 (Iwanami Shoten, 2010, in Japanese)

Censorship, Media, and Literary Culture in Japan (author and co-editor, Shin’yōsha, 2012)

Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature (author and co-editor, Stanford University, 2001)

Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity (Stanford, 1996)