I have had the good fortune to work with a large number of doctoral students here at Yale, whose interests covered many topics and world regions. Among them, the following are those who have taken their Ph.D. with a primary specialization in the anthropology of Japan. I have included their current email information. Prospective applicants to our Ph.D. program are free to contact them for further information about their experiences in the program and their careers in Japan anthropology.
Yukari Kawahara (deceased, formerly, Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies, Waseda University)
Dissertation: “Politics, pedagogy, and sexuality: Sex education in Japanese secondary schools” (1996)
Lynne Nakano (currently Professor of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong) email
Dissertation: “Civic volunteers in a Japanese neighborhood: Negotiating status in a marginal place” (1998)
Laura Spielvogel (currently Senior Lecturer in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University) email
Dissertation: “Fitness and femininity: Discipline and display of the female body in contemporary Japan” (1998)
Ian Condry (currently Professor of Japanese Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology email and web site
Dissertation: “Japanese rap music: An ethnography of globalization in popular culture” (1999)
Linda Angst (currently independent scholar) email
Dissertation: “In a dark time: Community, memory, and the making of ethnic selves in Okinawan women’s narratives” (2001)
Karen Nakamura (currently Professor of Anthropology and Haas Professor of Disability Studies, University of California, Berkeley) email
Dissertation: “Signing deaf in Japan: Deaf identities, sign languages, and minority social movement politics in modern Japan” (2001)
Colin Smith(currently independent scholar) email
Dissertation: “After affluence: Freeters and the limits of New Middle Class Japan” (2006)
Gavin Whitelaw (currently Associate Director, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University) email
Dissertation: “Convenience Stores in Contemporary Japan: An Ethnography of Modern Service, Local Familiarity, and Global Transformation” (2007)
Allison Alexy(currently Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) email
Dissertation: “Intimate Separations: Divorce and its Reverberations in Contemporary Japan” (2008)
Nana Okura Gagné (currently Assistant Professor o)f Japanese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong email
Dissertation: “‘Salarymen’ in Crisis?: The Collapse of Dominant Ideologies and Shifting Identities of Salarymen in Metropolitan Japan” (2010)
Nathaniel Smith (currently Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona) email
Dissertation: “Right-wing Activism in Japan and the Politics of Futility” (2011)
Anne Stefanie Aronsson (currently, Market Research and Consulting Division, GfK, Zurich) email
Dissertation: “Career Women in Contemporary Japan: Pursuing Identities, Fashioning Lives” (2012)
Ellen Rubinstein (Currently Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of Family Medicine, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School) email
Dissertation: “Diagnosing Deviance: Schizophrenia and Social Withdrawal in Contemporary Japan” (2012)
Ryan Sayre (Currently independent scholar and freelance writer digital services consultant) email
Dissertation: “The Being of Readiness: An Anthropology of Earthquake Disaster Preparedness in Japan” (2013)
Isaac Gagné (Currently Senior Research Fellow, German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) email
Dissertation: “Private Religion and Public Morality: Understanding Cultural Secularism in Late Capitalist Japan” (2014)
Annie Claus (Currently Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, American University) email
Dissertation: “Drawing Near: Conservation By Proximity In Okinawa’s Coral Reefs” (2014)
Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer (Currently Visiting Lecturer, Anthropology and East Asian Studies, Yale University) email
Dissertation: “Transnational Worlds, Ethnic Lives: Nikkei Migrants In and Between Japan and Brazil” (2015)
Elizabeth Miles (Currently independent scholar) email
Dissertation: “Men of No Value: Contemporary Japanese Manhood and the Economies of Intimacy” (2017)
Current doctoral students in Japan anthropology at Yale
Heidi K. Lam (Ph.D candidate) email
Dissertation project: “Forward into Past: Animating Historically-Themed Experiences in Touristic Japan”
Alyssa Paredes, (Ph.D. candidate) email
Dissertation project: “Moral Infrastructures in the Making of Banana Supply Chains between the Philippines and Japan”
