Sawa Kurotani

Academic Interests and Areas of Expertise

• Japan and US
• Globalization
• Gender
• Popular Music Studies
• Transnationalism
• Political Economy
• Nationalism
• Cultural Identity
• Japanese Popular Culture
• Women's Domestic Labor 

Professional Background

Sawa received a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1999 at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and joined the faculty of the University of Redlands in 2000. In her first book, Home Away from Home, she combined her interests in globalization, gender and Japanese culture. More recently she has been developing her interest in the study of popular culture and popular music. She also writes a monthly column for Daily Yomiuri, one of the leading English-language dailies published in Japan.

Courses Offered at Redlands

• SOAN 102 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• SOAN 256 Japanese Society and Culture
• SOAN 303 World Ethnographies
• SOAN 342 Gender and Sexuality
• SOAN 392 Anthropological Theories
• SOAN 465 Theorizing Popular Music

Degrees Held

• Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1999
• M.A., Anthropology, University of Illinois, Chicago, 1990
• B.A., English, Linfield College, Oregon, 1988

Awards, Honors and Grants

• National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant (1996-97)
• National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Workshop Grant (2005-06)

Publications, Presentations and Panels

Forthcoming. Death of a Salary Man: Heisei Fukyo and Erosion of the Middle Class in Contemporary Japan. In Death and Dying in Japan. Hikaru Suzuki, Ed. London: Routledge.

2007. Middle-Class Japanese Housewives and the Experience of Transnational Mobility. In Going First Class?: New Approaches Towards Priviledged Movement and Travel. Vered Amit, ed. London: Berghahn.

2005. Home Away from Home: Japanese Corporate Wives in the United States. Durham: Duke University Press.

2005. “Omiyage, or What Japanese Tourists Take Back Home from the United States.” In East-West Connections: Journal of Asian Studies Development Program.

2005. The South Meets the East: Global Aspirations and Regional Imaginations in North Carolina Research Triangle. In The American South in a Global World James Peacock, Harry Watson, and Carrie Matthews, eds. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

2004 Working against the “Field”: Multi-Sited Transnational Ethnography and the Shifting Construction of Fieldwork. In Anthropologists in the Field. Lynne Hume and Jane Mulcock, eds. New York: Columbia University Press.

Professional Affiliations

American Anthropological Association