Rachel DiNitto is an Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. She is also currently the Co-director for Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) and the Associate Departmental Chair for the Modern Languages & Literatures Department.
She got her Ph.D. in Modern Japanese Literature from the University of Washington in Seattle and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. She studied in Japan at International Christian University and the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies (Stanford Center), and was a visiting researcher at Keio University. Professor DiNitto teaches classes on Japanese literature, film, nationalism and contemporary culture, as well as courses on language and translation. She works on the literary and cultural studies of Japan’s prewar (1910s-1930s), and postbubble eras (1990-2000s). In addition to her monograph, Uchida Hyakken: A Critique of Modernity and Militarism in Prewar Japan, publications include articles on depictions of the Asia-Pacific War in the work of manga artist Maruo Suehiro; Kanehara Hitomi, the young, female writer whose controversial novel Snakes and Earrings won Japan’s most prestigious literary award in 2004; and cult director Suzuki Seijun’s return to the cinema in the 1980s. Professor DiNitto manages a website on postbubble culture, and is currently working on a new book project, “The Politics of Postbubble Culture: Cultural Production and Political Discourse in Nationalist Japan (1990s-2000s).