Janice received her undergraduate degree in Dance as a Performing Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She
received both her M.A. degree (Asian Studies, emphasis: Japan) and Ph.D. degree (Japanese Literature and Culture) from the University
of California, Berkeley, where her research on late medieval and early modern Japan focused on the popularization of literary
classics and literacy, publishing, and the commercialization of theater. She completed her dissertation, titled "Extraordinary
Exemplars in the Period Pieces of Chikamatsu Monzaemon," in 2008.
Research interests broadly encompass literature and theater in Japan's early modern period, centering on the generic boundaries of
historical narratives and period plays, representations of exemplarity and counter-exemplarity on page and stage, and the
intersection of print and performance as a site of literary and cultural transmission, parody and social satire, and representation
of gender, exaggerated and reversed. Her present project will expand her previous research on publishing and Kinpira jōruri (a genre
of period plays for the puppet theater).
Courses:
ASIAN 1103: FWS: Japan Performs! Myth, Storytelling, and Dorama (fall)
