Research Expertise and Interest
20th century avant-gardes, Japanese literature, film, theater and dance, East Asia, media theory, contemporary art, critical theory, gender theory, memory studies, memory studies
Research Description
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
Feeling Media: Potentiality, and the Afterlife of Art in Japan, Duke University Press, forthcoming November 2022.
Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011).
Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Japanese Surrealism (Stanford University Press, 1999 (released 2001).
In progress: Finding Zbaraż [narrative nonfiction]
In progress: Gender, Realism, and Media.
ARTICLES and BOOK CHAPTERS:
“Through the Poet’s Glasses : Thought, Language, Perception,” in an volume on modernist Japanese woman poet Sagawa Chika, ed. Sawako Nakayasu, Brown University Press Digital Publications, forthcoming.
“Dwelling Together: Takeyoshi Nishiuchi and the Aesthetic Imagination of The Everyday”/ 「共に「住まうこと」――西内健善と日常の美的想像力」 in Forms of the Everyday—Art, Architecture, Literature, Cuisine『日常のかたちー美学・建築・文学・食』ed. Michiko Tsushima, Etsuko Taketani, Eriko Yamaguchi and Etsuko Aoyagi, Tsukuba University Press, forthcoming.
“Hanka” (excerpt from Finding Zbaraż) in Critical Memory Studies: New Approaches, ed. Brett Ashley Kaplan, forthcoming Bloomsbury Press.
“Conceptualizing Japanese Postwar Photography: Snap, Movement, Refusal,” in La Mirada de las Cosas = The Gaze of Things, Fotografia japonesa en torno a Provoke / Japanese Photography in the Context of Provoke (Valencia: Fondacio per Amor a l’Art, 2019): 195–206.
“Culture Industries and Media Theory,” in Media Theory in Japan, ed. Alex Zahlten and Marc Steinberg (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2017): 151–172.
“Second Skin,” on the Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako, catalogue essay in Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows, Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2015.
“Pink Feminism? The Program Pictures of Hamano Sachi,” in The Pink Book, edited by Abé Markus Nornes (KineJapan Publications, 2014).
“From Postwar to Contemporary Art in Japan,” catalogue essay in Roppongi Crossings: For a Landscape to Come, Heibonsha Publishers and Mori Museum of Art, Tokyo, fall 2013.
“By Other Hands: Environment and Apparatus in 1960s Intermedia,” chapter in Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema, ed. Daisuke Miyao, Oxford University Press, fall 2013.
“Intermedia 1955-1970,” catalogue essay in Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde, Museum of Modern Art, New York, fall 2012.
“Violence and Cinematic Revolution (Ōshima Nagisa’s Ninja Bugeichō, 1967)” article on experimental animation of the 1960s, Mechademia 7: Lines of Flight, University of Minnesota Press, fall 2012.
“Theories of Encounter: Breaking the Everyday,” in Terayama Shūji kenkyū (Terayama Shūji Studies), Vol. 2 (2009): 259-288.
"Subject, City, Machine," on Japanese futurism and Inagaki Taruho, in Histories of the Future, edited by Susan Harding and Dan Rosenberg (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2005): 201–230.
“Hands, Lines, Acts: Butoh and Surrealism,” Qui Parle, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2003): 19-51.
“Palimpseste et contrepoint: l’Asie, du Japon à Java,” on Peter Sellars and Asian theatre, in Peter Sellars, ed. Frédéric Maurin, in the series Les voies de la création théâtrale (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2003).
“De chair et de pensée: le butô et le surréalisme,” in Butô(s), ed. Odette Aslan, in the series Arts du spectacle (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2002): 37–50.
“Chambered Nautilus: The Fiction of Ishikawa Jun,” Journal of Japanese Studies 24:1 (Winter 1998): 35-58.
"Imagining Futures: the Casual Theater of Betsuyaku Minoru," Review of Asian and Pacific Studies No. 17 (1998): 35-52.
Online:
“Interview: Wakae Nakane and Miryam Sas (1990s Experimental Film in Japan: Women’s Anarchic Visions of the Everyday,” Rep Cinema International, November 22, 2021: https://repcinemas.substack.com/p/interview-wakae-nakane-and-miryam
Contribution to “post: Notes on Modern and Contemporary Art around the Globe” (Museum of Modern Art”: “Intermedia Japan (1955-1970)” at
http://post.at.moma.org/content_items/85-intermedia-japan-1955-1970
(posted April 2013, 56 minutes).
“Interview with Miryam Sas by Carla Nappi,” on New Books in Asian Studies at http://newbooksineastasianstudies.com/2012/08/23/miryam-sas-experimental-arts-in-postwar-japan-moments-of-encounter-engagement-and-imagined-return-harvard-university-asia-center-2011
(August 23, 2012, 1 hour 3 minutes).
“Contester au japon dans les années 1960, arts et politique” (Protest in Japan in the 1960s, arts and politics), on France Culture, in the show “La Fabrique de l’Histoire” with Emmanuel Laurentin and Anais Kien, February 26, 2018. The show is available at (https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-fabrique-de-lhistoire/japon-14-contester-au-japon-dans-les-annees-1960-arts-et-politique).
KPFA’s “Frame to Frame,” discussing Ogawa Productions “Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan—Summer in Sanrizuka” with Reyna Cowan, November 28, 2019. (The recording is available here.)
Invited colloquium: “Feeling Media: Potentiality and the Afterlife of Art,” Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Pennsylvania, March 31, 2021. Recording here.