Prof. Vyjayanthi Selinger

 In this episode, the JSAP team talks with Prof. Vyjayanthi Selinger, whose research focuses on medieval Japanese literature and culture. Vyjayanthi Ratnam Selinger is the Stanley F. Druckenmiller Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Bowdoin College. Born and raised in India, she moved to the United States to pursue doctoral work in Japanese literature and culture. Her research examines literary representations of conflict in medieval Japan, using conflict as the key node to examine war memory, legal and ritual constraints on war, Buddhist mythmaking, and women in war. She is the author of the book Authorizing the Shogunate: Ritual and Material Culture in the Literary Construction of Warrior Order.  Prof. Selinger is joined in conversation with JSAP contributors Harrison Watson, Sophie Hasuo, and Prof. Reginald Jackson. Topics of discussion include: South Asian American identities; caste privilege; international faculty at US institutions; applying to graduate school; racist microaggressions; English; colonial and postcolonial understandings of the other; race in Japanese Studies; reparative orientations; forgetting first languages; second language learning; Wuthering Heights; antiracist work; Japanese American students; finding one's voice in writing.

To learn more about Professor Selinger’s research, please watch her JSAP webinar, "Challenges and Opportunities in Anti-racist Pedagogy in Premodern Japanese Literature." She is on twitter @jayselinge.

This podcast is created with generous support from the University of Michigan’s Center for Japanese Studies.  Recording, editing, and transcription support came from Reginald Jackson, Justin Schell, Sophie Hasuo, Rachel Willis, Harrison Watson, Robin Griffin, and Allison Alexy. Please see the Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy homepage for more information.