Janet A. Walker Professor of Comparative Literature Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey Scott Hall 330 New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901 Phone: (732) 932-7606 Fax: (732) 932-7926 Email: jwalk@rci.rutgers.edu

Education

Ph.D. Harvard University, Comparative Literature, 1974

• Dissertation Title: "The East-West Context of Shimazaki Tōson's Shinsei (The New Life): A Study in the Modern Confessional Novel"

M.A. Harvard University, Comparative Literature, 1968
B.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison, German, 1965

Employment

• Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature, January 21 - February 4, 2001
• Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, Professor of Comparative Literature, 1999-
• Columbia University, Visiting Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Fall 1993
• Princeton University, Visiting Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, Fall 1984
• Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, 1977-1999
• Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, 1971-77

Administrative Positions

• Graduate Program in Comparative Literature (Rutgers): Director, 2002-
• Undergraduate Program in Comparative Literature (Rutgers): Director, 2001-2002, 1996-2000, 1980-1982
• Acting Director, Spring 1991
• Japanese Language Program (Rutgers): Founder, 1978; Director, 1978-1983

Fellowships

• Social Science Research Council, 2000-2001
• Japan Foundation, 1983
• Social Science Research Council, 1982-1983

Publications

Books:

• The Woman's Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women's Writing. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996 (co-editor)
  
  
  
• The Japanese Novel of the Meiji Period and the Ideal of Individualism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979 (author)

Chapters in Books:

• "The Cinematic Art of Higuchi Ichiyō's 'Takekurabe' (Comparing Heights, 1895-96)." In Word and Image in Japanese Cinema. Ed. Dennis Washburn and Carole Cavanaugh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001: 36-58.
  
  
• "Visiting Flower Meisho (Famous Places) and the Negotiation of Cultural Identity in Texts by Futabatei Shimei and Nagai Kafū." In Canon and Identity-Japanese Modernization Reconsidered: Trans-Cultural Perspectives. Ed. Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit. Toyoko: Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien, 2000: 77-105.
  
  
• "Futabatei Shimei's Ukigumo as a Vehicle of Cognitive and Emotional Reorientation in a Period of Cultural Change." In Literary Intercrossings: East Asia and the West. Ed. Mabel Lee and A. D. Syrokomla-Stefanowska. University of Sydney World Literature Series, Number 2. Sydney: Wild Peony, 1998: 153-55.
  
  
• "The Tenor of Part I of A Dark Night's Passing: A Naturalist Quest for the Sexual Self." In Shiga Naoya's "A Dark Night's Passing." Ed. Kenya Tsuruta. Singapore: Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore, 1996: 157-96 (also published in Japanese).
  
  
• "The Russian Role in the Creation of the First Japanese Novel: Futabatei Shimei's Ukigumo (The Floating Cloud), 1886-89." In A Hidden Fire: Russian and Japanese Cultural Encounters 1868-1926. Ed. J. Thomas Rimer. Stanford: Stanford University Press and Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press 1995: 22-37 (also published in Japanese).
  
  
• "Reading Genres Across Cultures: The Example of Autobiography." In Reading World Literature: Theory, History, Practice. Ed. Sarah H. Lawall. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994: 203-35.

Journal Articles:

• "The Epiphanic Ending of Shiga Naoya's An'ya kōro (A Dark Night's Passing, 1921-37) in a Modernist Context." Forthcoming in Japanese Languages and Literature (2003)
  
  
• "Bibliographical Spectrum on Japanese Literature." Review of National Literatures. Japan: A Literary Overview. Ed. John K. Gillespie. New York: Griffon House Publications (for the Council of National Literatures), 1993: 165-97.
  
  
• "On the Applicability of the Term 'Novel' to Modern Non-Western Long Fiction." Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 17 (1988): 17-68.
  
  
• "The Izumi Shikibu Nikki as a Work of Courtly Literature." The Literary Review 22 (1980): 463-75.
  
  
• "Conventions of Love Poetry in Japan and the West." Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 14 (1979): 31-65.
  
  
• "Poetic Ideal and Fictional Reality in the Izumi Shikibu nikki." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 37 (1977): 135-82.

Professional Activities:

• Co-organizer, "The Rutgers Conference on Japanese Women's Writing," 1993
• Consultant in Japanese literature in connection with W. W. Norton's preparation of the Expanded Edition of the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, 1991-1994
• Consultant to the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Washington, D.C., in the initial planning stages of the conference "Cultural Contact and Interaction, Russia and Japan, 1868-1926" (held in Sapporo, Japan in 1991)
• Member of Editorial Board, Comparative Literature Studies, 1987-
• Member of Advisory Board, American Comparative Literature Association, 1987-1993
• Member of Executive Committee, Division of Asian Literatures, Modern Language Association, 1987-1991
• Member of Northeast Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies, 1987-1990
• Member of Board of Directors, Association for Asian Studies, 1987-1989

Work in Progress:

• Book: Landscape, Modernity, and Identity in Japanese Fiction, 1886-1937
  
  
• Article: "Toward a Japanese Theory of the Novel"

Research Interests:

• Modernity and modernism in Europe and Asia
• Hybrid modernist poetics in Europe, America, and Japan
• The novel: origins and development (sixteenth century to the present)
• Theories and poetics of the novel
• Dissemination of the novel in the non-Western world
• Modern Western literature
• Visual arts
• Material culture in their relations with the non-Western world

Courses Recently Taught:

Undergraduate:

• Hybrid Modernity in Literature and the Arts
• The Novel East and West
• The European Novel
• Genre in Cultural Context
• Introduction to World Literature

Graduate:

• Modernism and Modernity in Asian and European Literatures
• The Asian Novel
• Comparative East-West Poetics: Japanese and Western Modernities in Literature and the Visual Arts of the Fin-de-Siècle