Edward (Ted) Mack (Asian Languages and Literature)
Office: Gowen 248, Box 353521
Phone: 206-543-4356
Email: tmack@uw.edu

Website: http://faculty.washington.edu/tmack/wordpress/

My research interests: Modern Japanese-language prose; art and capitalism; the flow of literary works throughout the larger Japanese linguistic community; the function of power in the literary field; and theories of diaspora and heterogeneity, particularly as they challenge culturalist concepts of national identity.

My first book, Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value (Duke University Press, 2010), examines the relationship between the concept of a national literature and the publishing industry. It looks at the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, Kaizō-sha’s Gendai Nihon bungaku zenshÅ«, the establishment of the Akutagawa Prize for literature, and contemporary debates about literary value.

My second book, Acquired Alterity: Migration, Identity, and Literary Nationalism (University of California Press, 2022) explores the literary activities of Japanese migrants to Brazil prior to the Second World War and complicates the received paradigm of national literatures. It is available in paperback and as a free PDF to download from the UC Press site.

In addition, I have been working on Asian American cultural history, with a focus on Japanese-language discourse and literary production. I edited the 28-volume Shiatoru-ban Nihongo tokuhon (reproduction of the textbook series produced in Seattle from 1920-38), and the 16-volume Kashū-ban Nihongo tokuhon (reproduction of the textbook series produced in California from 1924-39). Both were published by Bunsei Shoin (Tokyo), the first in 2012 and the second in 2014.