Professor Susan Napier, Tufts University,
I’m here as a Visiting Academic at the kind invitation of Professor Linda Flores. My primary research is in Japanese literature and popular culture. Here at Oxford I’m working with Professor Flores on the upcoming Tanaka symposium, where I hope to address some of my major scholarly interests—Japanese animation (anime), fantasy, and trauma studies. I’m also completing my sixth book, in which I add a comparative approach to my recent research on Studio Ghibli. The book is entitled, “Miyazaki and the Mouse: Disney, Ghibli and the Pursuit of Enchantment,” (forthcoming, Yale, 2027).
I was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts and received all my degrees from Harvard University and I now teach at Tufts University near Boston. But I’ve been in academics for over 40 years and have lived, taught and conducted research all over the world, from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, to Keio University in Tokyo, to Sydney University in Australia. I must say, however, that I am particularly enjoying my time at Pembroke and at the Nissan Institute, my other affiliation. I’ve never had such an opportunity to meet such a variety of fascinating and friendly people and I am profoundly grateful.
Japan and East Asia have been important parts of my life since my mother first took me to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where I fell in love with their splendid East Asian collection when I was 12. I convinced my high school to let me study Japanese and went on my own to Japan at the age of 17 and supported myself teaching English, living in a small six-mat apartment and enjoying every minute. Subsequently, I travelled around the world for the summer before ending up at Harvard for my freshman year where I majored in East Asian Studies. Obviously, I love not just to travel but to live in foreign countries. I have lived in Japan off and on for eight years in all and try to visit every year if possible. Besides doing language study and research while working in Japan, I also appeared in Japanese television in film, most memorably opposite the great actor Ken Takakura in a brief scene from the blockbuster movie Nankyoku Monogatari (Antartica Story). While my home base is Cambridge, Massachusetts, I spent my childhood summers on a family farm and continue to enjoy rural life now, spending summers on the coast of Maine.
BOOKS
Miyazakiworld. Yale University Press, 2018. Paperback edition, 2019.
From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Western Imagination.New York: Palgrave, December, 2007.
Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Japanese Animation, New York: St. Martins Press, 2001. (revised edition, Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle 2005).
The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity, London: Routledge, 1996.
Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Works of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo, Cambridge: Harvard University East Asia Series, 1991.
Recent Articles and Book Chapters
Forthcoming:
“The Culture of Glass and the Culture of Loss.” In Dolores Martinez, ed., Representations of Japanese Nature: Mediating the Ineffable. JAWS, 2026.
“Revolutionary World Builder: Takahata and the Aesthetics of Defamiliarization.” In Todd Berliner ed. Cinema Aesthetics, University of Texas Press, 2026.
Published:
“ Takahata’s Final Fantasy: From Reality to Fantasy in the Cinema of Isao Takahata.” In David Desser, ed.The Many Worlds of Isao Takahata. Routledge, 2025.
“The World According to Ghibli: How a Small Japanese Animation Studio Changed the World.” in Freedman and Slade, eds. Introducing Japanese Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, April, 2023.
“Introduction” in Napier, ed. New Formulations of the Otaku. Mechadamia. 2022.
“’I’ve Seen this place before’: Memory, Exile and Resistance in Takahata’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya.”Japanese Society for Animation Studies Journal of Animation Studies. Winter, 2021.
“An Anorexic in Miyazaki’s Land of Cockaigne: Excess and Abnegation in Spirited Away.” In Consuming Japan, ed. Nancy Stalker. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2018.
“Animating Japan: The Fantasy Films of Studio Ghibli,” in “Fantasy/ Animation: Connections Between Media, Modes and Genre, eds. Holliday and Sargent, London: Routledge, 2018.
Mishima and Miyazaki: The Sea of Fertility Meets the Sea of Corruption.” (in Japanese) Proceedings from the Tokyo University Symposium on Yukio Mishima, Summer, 2016.
“Not Always Happily Ever After: Japanese Fairy Tales in Cinema and Animation.” In Fairy Tale Films Beyond Disney, ed. Jack Zipes, London: Routledge, 2015.
Professor Susan Napier, Tufts University,
I’m here as a Visiting Academic at the kind invitation of Professor Linda Flores. My primary research is in Japanese literature and popular culture. Here at Oxford I’m working with Professor Flores on the upcoming Tanaka symposium, where I hope to address some of my major scholarly interests—Japanese animation (anime), fantasy, and trauma studies. I’m also completing my sixth book, in which I add a comparative approach to my recent research on Studio Ghibli. The book is entitled, “Miyazaki and the Mouse: Disney, Ghibli and the Pursuit of Enchantment,” (forthcoming, Yale, 2027).
I was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts and received all my degrees from Harvard University and I now teach at Tufts University near Boston. But I’ve been in academics for over 40 years and have lived, taught and conducted research all over the world, from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, to Keio University in Tokyo, to Sydney University in Australia. I must say, however, that I am particularly enjoying my time at Pembroke and at the Nissan Institute, my other affiliation. I’ve never had such an opportunity to meet such a variety of fascinating and friendly people and I am profoundly grateful.
Japan and East Asia have been important parts of my life since my mother first took me to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where I fell in love with their splendid East Asian collection when I was 12. I convinced my high school to let me study Japanese and went on my own to Japan at the age of 17 and supported myself teaching English, living in a small six-mat apartment and enjoying every minute. Subsequently, I travelled around the world for the summer before ending up at Harvard for my freshman year where I majored in East Asian Studies. Obviously, I love not just to travel but to live in foreign countries. I have lived in Japan off and on for eight years in all and try to visit every year if possible. Besides doing language study and research while working in Japan, I also appeared in Japanese television in film, most memorably opposite the great actor Ken Takakura in a brief scene from the blockbuster movie Nankyoku Monogatari (Antartica Story). While my home base is Cambridge, Massachusetts, I spent my childhood summers on a family farm and continue to enjoy rural life now, spending summers on the coast of Maine.
BOOKS
Miyazakiworld. Yale University Press, 2018. Paperback edition, 2019.
From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Western Imagination.New York: Palgrave, December, 2007.
Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Japanese Animation, New York: St. Martins Press, 2001. (revised edition, Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle 2005).
The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity, London: Routledge, 1996.
Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Works of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo, Cambridge: Harvard University East Asia Series, 1991.
Recent Articles and Book Chapters
Forthcoming:
“The Culture of Glass and the Culture of Loss.” In Dolores Martinez, ed., Representations of Japanese Nature: Mediating the Ineffable. JAWS, 2026.
“Revolutionary World Builder: Takahata and the Aesthetics of Defamiliarization.” In Todd Berliner ed. Cinema Aesthetics, University of Texas Press, 2026.
Published:
“ Takahata’s Final Fantasy: From Reality to Fantasy in the Cinema of Isao Takahata.” In David Desser, ed.The Many Worlds of Isao Takahata. Routledge, 2025.
“The World According to Ghibli: How a Small Japanese Animation Studio Changed the World.” in Freedman and Slade, eds. Introducing Japanese Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, April, 2023.
“Introduction” in Napier, ed. New Formulations of the Otaku. Mechadamia. 2022.
“’I’ve Seen this place before’: Memory, Exile and Resistance in Takahata’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya.”Japanese Society for Animation Studies Journal of Animation Studies. Winter, 2021.
“An Anorexic in Miyazaki’s Land of Cockaigne: Excess and Abnegation in Spirited Away.” In Consuming Japan, ed. Nancy Stalker. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2018.
“Animating Japan: The Fantasy Films of Studio Ghibli,” in “Fantasy/ Animation: Connections Between Media, Modes and Genre, eds. Holliday and Sargent, London: Routledge, 2018.
Mishima and Miyazaki: The Sea of Fertility Meets the Sea of Corruption.” (in Japanese) Proceedings from the Tokyo University Symposium on Yukio Mishima, Summer, 2016.
“Not Always Happily Ever After: Japanese Fairy Tales in Cinema and Animation.” In Fairy Tale Films Beyond Disney, ed. Jack Zipes, London: Routledge, 2015.