Japan

Takuya Tsunoda

Takuya Tsunoda

Associate Professor of Japanese Film and Media

Office: 416 Kent Hall
Office Hours: Wednesday 11:00AM-12:00PM or by appointment
Phone: (212) 854-5040
Email: tt2101@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Waseda University (’02), Columbia University (’05)
MA: Columbia University (’08)
PhD: Yale University (’15)

Classes Taught

EAAS UN3322 East Asian Cinema
EAAS UN3343 Japanese Contemporary Cinema and Media Culture
EAAS GU4122 Japanese New Wave and Cinematic Modernism
EAAS GU4123 Japanese Documentary Films
EAAS GR6400 Critical Approaches to East Asian Studies: Literary and Cultural Theory
EAAS GR8070 Graduate Seminar in Japanese Cinema and Visual Culture

Research Interests

Japanese cinema and media, educational and science film, industrial cinema, history and theory of audio-visual pedagogy, media archaeology, cinematic modernism, new cinemas of the 1960s, television

Takuya Tsunoda’s primary research centers on the interplay between institutions and media, technologies and socio-cultural practices, science and material culture, and representation and knowledge formations. He is currently at work on a book project about Iwanami Productions, which evolved from a major provider of sponsored educational, science and public relations films into a key player in the new cinemas of the 1960s in Japan. Grounding his research in archival materials, he highlights the historical and theoretical intersection between media-based governmental and civic activities, cross-medial articulation of postwar academicism in Japan, and a postwar struggle over the legacy and meaning of cinematic modernism. Looking beyond the activist logic of political radicalism, his book argues that the crucial root of new cinemas in Japan resided in institutionalized audio-visual pedagogy and image-making practice. This project works towards new transnational parameters that relate the cinematic New Wave to a range of epistemic transformations and changing mediascapes occurring in the period. His recent research interests extend to such topics as various modes of reflexivity, children and media, the emergence of alpine photography and insect ecology, television documentaries as well as the relationship between diegesis and contemporary media cultures.

Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, he taught at Colgate University and the University of Chicago.

Selected Publications

Processual Technics: Industrial Documentary, Audio-Visual Education, And New Cinemas in Postwar Japan (Columbia University Press, forthcoming). 

“Taxonomy of Techniques: Visions of Industrial Cinema in Postwar Japan,” in Films That Work Harder: The Circulations of Industrial Cinema (Amsterdam, 2024), pp. 249-273.

“Hani Susumu, Nouvelle Vague in Japan and Processive Cinema,” in A Companion to Japanese Cinema (Blackwell, 2022), pp. 612-638.

“The Living Sea: Okinawa, 1958 and the postwar media Dispositif.” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 13:2 (Nov. 2021), pp. 99-117.

“Iwanami Photo Library and Natori Yōnosuke on Photography,” in Mediology in the Transformative Period: Reconfiguration of Art and Media in 1950s Japan (Shinwasha, 2019, in Japanese), pp. 84-104.

“Index and Deixis: Jinba Isao and Polluted Water Karte,” in Images of Postwar Japan: Pollution, Youth Rebellion, and the Osaka Exhibition (Univ. of Tokyo, 2018, in Japanese), pp. 47-68.

Dominique Townsend

Dominique Townsend

Associate Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Department of Religion

Office: 480 Claremont Ave Ste, Suite 103, MC 9610, New York NY
AY 2026–27: On Leave
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: Wednesdays and Thursdays from 4:00 – 5:00 PM

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

Educational Background

PhD: Linguistics, Stony Brook University
MA: 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
Use of Discord for Language Classrooms
Language Learning Strategies and Motivation

Chikako Takahashi holds a PhD in Linguistics from Stony Brook University. Her dissertation research focused on how speakers’ pronunciation and perception of their first and second (or third) languages are influenced by their language learning experiences. Currently, her research focuses on how the use of online community platforms such as Discord can help create a learner community for language classes. She is also interested in how instructors can inform learners and provide opportunities to foster language learning strategies and elicit lasting motivation. Prior to coming to Columbia, she taught Japanese courses at the Japan Society as well as linguistic courses—such as Phonetics and Phonology, Sociolinguistics, and Second Language Acquisition—at both 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

Takahashi, C. and Yagi, M. (2025). Fostering a learner community with collaboration apps and AI tools outside of the classroom: the case with Discord. Proceedings of The 31st Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum, 100-112, Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.

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

Chikako Takahashi and Mihoko Yagi, Fostering a learner community with collaboration apps and AI tools outside of the classroom: the case with Discord, 31st Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum, 2025, Princeton NJ. 

Chikako Takahashi and Mihoko Yagi, Building Inclusive and Engaging Learning Communities through Technology: The Case of Discord in Beginner Japanese Courses, Northeast Association for Language Learning Technology, 2025, Zoom Conference.

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.