Medieval

Haruo Shirane

Haruo Shirane

Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature, Vice Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Faculty Director of the Donald Keene Center

Office: 420 Kent Hall
Office Hours: On leave for the 2026-2027 academic year
Phone: (212) 854-5031
Email: hs14@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Columbia College (’74)
MA: University of Michigan (’77)
PhD: Columbia University (’83)

Classes Taught

JPNS GU4007 Introduction to Classical Japanese
JPNS GR8040 Graduate Seminar in Premodern Japanese Literature

Research Interests

Japanese Literature, Print Culture, Performance and Media

Haruo Shirane, Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture and chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, teaches and writes on premodern and early modern Japanese literature and culture, with particular interest in prose fiction, poetry, performative genres (such as storytelling and theater), and visual culture. He is finishing a book called Media, Performance, and Play: Japanese Culture from Outside In, which focuses on the role of manuscript culture, media, vocality, and performance, viewing cultural processes from the social periphery. Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons (Columbia University Press, 2012) explored the cultural constructions of nature across a wide spectrum of literature, media, and visual arts from the ancient period to the modern. Most recently, he has coedited Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds: A Collection of Short Medieval Tales (Columbia University Press, 2018); Reading The Tale of Genji: The First Millennium(Columbia University Press, 2015); and Cambridge History of Japanese Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Haruo Shirane has been engaged in bringing new approaches to the study of Japanese literary culture. This has resulted in Japanese Literature and Literary Theory (Nihon bungaku kara no hihyo riron, Kasama shoin, 2009, edited with Fujii Sadakazu and Matsui Kenji) and New Horizons in Japanese Literary Studies (Bensei Publishing, 2009), both of which explore new issues and methodologies in the study of print and literary culture. He also edited Food in Japanese Literature (Shibundo, 2008), Overseas Studies on The Tale of Genji (Ofu, 2008) and Envisioning The Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production (Columbia University Press, 2008). The latter two books analyze the impact of The Tale of Genji on Japanese cultural history in multiple genres and historical periods.

Haruo Shirane translated and edited a number of volumes on Japanese literature. These include Classical Japanese Literature, An Anthology: Beginnings to 1600 (Columbia University Press, 2006), Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900 (Columbia University Press, 2002; abridged edition, 2008), The Tales of the Heike (Columbia University Press, 2006, paperback 2008), and The Demon at Agi Bridge and Other Japanese Tales (Columbia University Press, 2010), a collection of setsuwa (anecdotal literature).

He is also deeply involved with the history of Japanese language and pedagogical needs and have written Classical Japanese Reader and Essential Dictionary (2007) and Classical Japanese: A Grammar (Columbia University Press, 2005).

Haruo Shirane is the recipient of Fulbright, Japan Foundation, SSRC, NEH, and Hakuhodo grants, and has been awarded the Kadokawa Genyoshi Prize, Ishida Hakyo Prize, and most recently the Ueno Satsuki Memorial prize (2010) for outstanding research on Japanese culture. He is presently the Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Professor’s Shirane’s personal website

Selected Publications

Cambridge History of Japanese Literature (chief editor, Cambridge, 2015)

Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons (Columbia, 2012)

Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature (co-editor with Tomi Suzuki, 2001).

Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashô (Stanford, 1998)

The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of the Tale of Genji (Stanford, 1987)

David Max Moerman

moermanD. Max Moerman

Professor, Chair of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College

Office: 303 Milbank
Office Hours: T 4:30-5:30, W 1:00-2:00 and by appointment.
Phone: (212) 854-5540
Email: dm438@columbia.edu

Educational Background

AB: Columbia College (’86)
PhD: Stanford University (’99)

Classes Taught

AHUM UN1400 Colloquium on Major Texts: East Asia
RELI GU4611 The Lotus Sutra

Research Interests

East Asian Buddhism, Visual and Material Culture of Japanese Religions

D. Max Moerman is Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures. He is Co-Chair of the Columbia University Seminar in Buddhist Studies and an Associate Director of the Columbia Center for Buddhism and Asian Religions. He holds an A.B. from Columbia College and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. His research interests are in the visual and material culture of Japanese religions. His current book project, Geographies of the Imagination: Buddhism and the Japanese World Map, is under contract with the Harvard University Asia Center.

Selected Publications

“The Buddha and the Bathwater: Defilement and Enlightenment in the Arima Engi,”
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (2015)

“Demonology and Eroticism: Islands of Women in the Japanese Buddhist Imagination,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (2009)

Localizing Paradise: Kumano Pilgrimage and the Religious Landscape of Premodern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2005)

Matthew McKelway

mckelwayMatthew McKelway

TAKEO AND ITSUKO ATSUMI PROFESSOR OF JAPANESE ART HISTORY

Office: 919 Schermerhorn Hall
Phone: (212) 854-3182
Email: mpm8@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Columbia University (’99)

Classes Taught

HUMA OC1121 Masterpieces of Western Art
AHIS GR8609 Calligraphy in East Asia
AHIS GR8128 Edo Period Painting

Research Interests

Japanese Art History, Urban Representation, Materiality of Painting

Matthew McKelway specializes in the history of Japanese painting. His research has focused on urban representation in rakuchū rakugai zu (screen paintings of Kyoto), the development of genre painting in early modern Japan, Kano school painting, and individualist painters in 18th century Kyoto. Interests in the materiality and techniques of Japanese painting and the early Kano workshop have led to recent articles and a current book project on fan paintings as media for social intercourse and pictorial experimentation. In addition to his research on fan paintings, he is conducting an ongoing study of the painter Nagasawa Rosetsu.

The courses McKelway offers include surveys of Japanese art and more specialized undergraduate courses on painting and Buddhist art. Topics of graduate seminars and lectures have ranged from narrative handscrolls and Muromachi ink painting to the Kano school, Rimpa, and Edo-period painting. To graduate students in Japanese art history and other disciplines he also offers instruction in reading early Japanese scripts (hentaigana/kuzushiji). Current doctoral students have received research fellowships from the Fulbright commission, the Japan Foundation, the Japanese Ministry of Education, and the Shinchō Foundation.

Professor McKelway has been the Ishibashi Gastprofessur at the University of Heidelberg, and has also held visiting professorships at the Free University of Berlin and Waseda University. His Department of Art History & Archaeology page can be found here.

Selected Publications

Silver Wind: The Arts of Sakai Hōitsu (1761-1828) (Japan Society/Yale University Press, 2012)

Capitalscapes: Folding Screens and Political Imagination in Late Medieval Kyoto (University of Hawaii, 2006)

Traditions Unbound: Groundbreaking Painters from Eighteenth-Century Kyoto (San Francisco Asian Art Museum, 2005)