Japan

David Lurie

lurieDavid Lurie

Wm. Theodore and Fanny Brett de Bary and Class of 1941 Collegiate Professor of Asian Humanities and Associate Professor of Japanese History and Literature

Office: 622 Kent Hall

Phone: (212) 854-5316

Educational Background

BA: Harvard University (’93)
MA: Columbia University (’96)
PhD: Columbia University (’01)

Classes Taught

JPNS GU4519 Introduction to Kanbun
EAAS UN2342 Mythology of East Asia
CPLS 3900 Introduction to Comparative Literature and Society
JPNS GR8040 Graduate Seminar in Premodern Japanese Literature

Research Interests

Japanese History and Literature, Technology of Language in Premodern Japan

In addition to the history of writing systems and literacy, David Lurie’s research interests include: the literary and cultural history of premodern Japan; the Japanese reception of Chinese literary, historical, and technical writings; the development of Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias; the history of linguistic thought; Japanese mythology; and world philology. Professor Lurie’s first book investigated the development of writing systems in Japan through the Heian period. Entitled Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing, it received the Lionel Trilling Award in 2012. Along with Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki, he was co-editor of the Cambridge History of Japanese Literature (2015), to which he contributed chapters on myths, histories, gazetteers, and early literature in general. He is completing a new scholarly monograph, tentatively entitled The Emperor’s Dreams: Reading Japanese Mythology.

Please see his website for a complete list of publications and contributions.

Selected Publications

“Japanese Lexicography from ca. 1800 to the Present,” in The Cambridge World History of Lexicography, ed. John Considine, Cambridge University Press, 2019

“Parables of Inscription: Some Notes on Narratives of the Origin of Writing,” History and Theory 56, December 2018

Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011)

“The Development of Japanese Writing,” in The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change (SAR Press, 2012)

Shigeru Eguchi

Shigeru Eguchi

Senior Lecturer in Japanese

Office: 518 Kent Hall
Office Hours: TR 1:00-2:00
Phone: (212) 854-8345
Email: se53@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Teaching of English, Ibaraki University
MA: Japanese Pedagogy, University of Iowa

Classes Taught

JPNS UN1001 Introductory Japanese A
JPNS UN2201 Second Year Japanese I
JPNS UN2202 Second Year Japanese II
JPNS GU4017 Fourth Year Japanese I
JPNS GU4018 Fourth Year Japanese II

Research Interests

Japanese Pedagogy
Japanese Grammar

Shigeru Eguchi has taught all levels of Japanese at Columbia University. He is also the Administrative Director of the Summer MA Program in Japanese Pedagogy since 2006. He has over a dozen years of experience teaching Japanese at Columbia, and also taught at Middlebury College’s Summer Program in Japanese, and at the Hokkaido International Foundation. He has developed teaching lessons based on unusual and creative materials, including haiku and video projects. He is currently developing new textbooks for intermediate level (Routledge, 2011) with Dr. Fumiko Nazikian, and other colleagues.

Publications

Hiyaku: An Intermediate Japanese Course (Routledge, 2011; co-authors: Miharu Nittono, Fumiko Nazikian, Keiko Okamoto, Jisuk Park)
Schaum’s Outlines-Japanese Vocabulary(McGraw-Hill Company, 2000; co-author)
“Exploration through “Hiyaku”: Considering Authenticity of Context”, 17th Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum (2011)

Michael Como

Michael Como

Tōshū Fukami Associate Professor of Shinto Studies

Office: 307 80 Claremont
Office Hours: F 9:00-10:00am and by appointment
Phone: (212) 854-4144
Email: mc2575@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Harvard University (’85)
PhD: Stanford University (’00)

Classes Taught

AHUM UN1400 Colloquium on Major Texts: East Asia
RELI UN2308 East Asian Buddhism
EARL 9335 Graduate Seminar in Japanese Religion

Research Interests

Transmission and diffusion of rituals and deities to Japan, local religious traditions, urbanization and theological innovation

Michael Como’s recent research has focused on the religious history of the Japanese islands from the Asuka through the early Heian periods, with a particular focus upon the Chinese and Korean deities, rites and technological systems that were transmitted to the Japanese islands during this time. He is the author of several articles on the ritual and political consequences of the introduction of literacy, sericulture and horse-culture from the Asian sub-continent into ancient Japan. He is currently working on a new monograph that focuses upon urbanization and the materiality of performance and interpretation in Japanese religion in the eighth and ninth centuries.

Selected Publications

Medieval Shintō (co-editor with Bernard Faure and Iyanaga Nobumi, 2010)

Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan (University of Hawaii, 2009)

Shōtoku: Ethnicity, Ritual and Violence in the Formation of Japanese Buddhism (Oxford University, 2008)