Directory

She first taught at Colby in 1993 and 1994, then returned in 2006 after teaching at Vanderbilt University and Western Michigan University. Her areas of expertise include the study of language and culture, language and gender, language and sexuality, and queer studies. She just completed Queer Japanese, her second book, which analyzes how gender and sexual identities of sexual minorities in Japan are negotiated through linguistic practices. Her first book discusses how Japanese working women negotiate their power by shifting between gendered speech (feminine and masculine). Both books are based on her long fieldwork in Japan. Her most recent research examines the speech of benshi (the screen-side narrator for Japanese silent films). She is exploring how class, gender, age and other social factors inflect the narration of the benshi as they narrate the stories and imitate the voices of different characters.

Books:
Queer Japanese: Gender and Sexual Identities through Linguistic Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)

Speaking of Power: Professional Japanese Women and Their Speeches (Lincom Europa, 2000)

Selected book chapters and articles:
English
“A Community of Manners: Advice Columns in Lesbian and Gay Magazines in Japan.” In Manners and Mischief: Gender and Power in Japanese Conduct Literature, edited by Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley (University of California Press, 2010).

“Lesbian Bar Talk in Shinjuku, Japan,” Reprint in The Language and Sexuality Reader, edited by Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick (Routledge, 2006).

“Lesbian Bar Talk in Shinjuku, Japan,” In Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology, edited by Shigeko Okamoto and Janet Shibamoto Smith (Oxford University Press, 2004).

“Power Negotiation between Japanese Females and Males,” International Journal of Intercultural Communication Studies (1999): 53-70.

“From Stereotype to Context: The Study of Japanese Women’s Speech,” Feminist Studies Vol. 21, Number 3 (Fall 1995): 647-671.

Japanese
“Showa no danshô no kotoba [Speech of Showa male prostitutes].” In Japanese Women and Language, edited by Orie Endô (San’ichi Shobô, 2010).

“Rezubian ni okeru onna rashisa to wa [Femininity in speech of lesbians],” In Onna to kotoba [Women and Language], edited by Orie Endô (Akashi Shoten, 2002).