admin

Naoko Sourial

Naoko Sourial

Lecturer in Japanese

Office: 514 Kent Hall
Office Hours: MW 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Email: nns2111@columbia.edu

Educational Background

MA: Japanese Pedagogy, Columbia University
BA: British and American Studies, Nanzan Universtiy

Classes Taught

JPNS UN1101 First Year Japanese I
JPNS UN1102 First Year Japanese II
JPNS UN1001 Introductory Japanese A & B
JPNS UN2201 Second Year Japanese II

Research Interests

Language Pedagogy

Content-Based Instruction

Project-Based Learning

Naoko Sourial majored in British and American Studies and American Philosophy at Nanzan University (Nagoya, Japan). She received her MA in Japanese Pedagogy at Columbia University. Ms. Sourial has many years of experience teaching Japanese. She has taught at Columbia University, The New School, NYU, and Baruch College (CUNY). She has developed and designed curriculum for advanced-level content courses such as Japanese Pop Culture at The New School.

Recent Publications

“Language Learning through Fashion – NYC as a Language Classroom” (The Third Annual NYU Conference on Second Language Pedagogy, Teaching Literacy and the Multiliteracies Framework, April 2021)

“Learning “Japanese Pop Culture” with Self-Taught Learners – Teacher’s Roles in Curriculum Design of Japanese Advanced-level Courses” (American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ), March 2020, presented as the pedagogy panel with a panel title, “What Is Happening in Japanese Classes Now with Increasing Numbers of Self-Taught Learners?)

 “Content-Based Instruction Efforts to Develop Japanese Learners’ Critical Awareness toward Social Justice” (2019 Foreign Language Education Symposium (FLEDS), Monterey, CA,  2019)

“Connecting and Reflecting through Fashion: Advanced Japanese Curriculum Design using Anthropological and Sociological Approach” (The 25th Princeton Pedagogy Forum Proceedings, 2019)

Filed Under: Emeritus

Henry Smith

Henry Smith

PROFESSOR EMERITUS

Email: hds2@columbia.edu

Educational History

AB: Yale University (’62)
AM: Harvard University (’64)
PhD: Harvard University (’70)

Research Interests

History of Early Modern Japan, Japanese Woodblock Prints, Urban History of Edo/Tokyo, Chūshingura

Professor Smith wrote his dissertation on the prewar Japanese student movement, published as Japan’s First Student Radicals (Harvard, 1972) and Shinjinkai no kenkyû: Nihon gakusei undô no genryû (Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1972). His recent work deals with aspects of the history of Chūshingura, in an effort to integrate the historical Akô Incident with its many later stage and literary versions as a unified history of storytelling in Japan.

Professor Smith continues his research on various dimensions of the “Chūshingura” story, looking at the various ways in which the Ako Incident of the “47 Ronin” of 1701–1703 has become Japan’s “national legend” through retelling, embellishment, and reenactment in multiple media over three centuries. More recently, he has turned to research on the modern history of the city of Kyoto and the ways in which Kyoto has become the focus of a continuing reinterpretation of the meaning of “tradition” in modern Japan.

He has written extensively on woodblock prints, including Hiroshige, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, Hokusai, One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji, and Kiyochika: Artist of Meiji Japan (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1988). For his recent writings and translations, see his webpage.

Selected Publications

“The Trouble with Terasaka: The Forty-Seventh Rōnin and the Chūshingura Imagination,” Nichibunken Japan Review (2004)

Hokusai, One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji (George Braziller Inc., 1988)

Hiroshige, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (George Braziller, Inc., 1986)

Learning from SHŌGUN: Japanese History and Western Fantasy (editor and co-author, Santa Barbara, 1980)

Japan’s First Student Radicals (Harvard, 1972)

by

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 2025-2026 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)