headshotI am an Associate Professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at University of Utah. I earned my Ph.D. from the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at University of Washington, focusing on modern Japanese and Korean literature, then joined the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University as a postdoctoral associate.

My research and teaching focus on transnational Japan. This means my approach is to think of Japan not as a singular field of study or unique producer of cultural products for consumption, but instead as a site of convergence of ideas and cultures flowing in multiple directions. I am most interested in the ongoing legacies of Japanese imperialism in Asia and the Pacific, particularly as they intersect with American and other western empires in the region.

My first book, Intersectional Incoherence: Zainichi Literature and the Ethics of Illegibility (UC Press, 2024), examines moments of incoherence, illegibility, and unintelligibility in writing by Koreans in Japan. These moments, I argue, point to problems with the assumptions underlying our methods for categorizing and interpreting literature, especially texts situated at intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, language, and overlapping empires. Moving beyond received paradigms of literary representation and grappling with the incoherent can allow for a more ethical approach to reading and other cross-cultural encounters.

I am currently working on a second book tentatively titled Translating White Supremacy, which will think through modern Japan’s reconfigurations, often via translation, of white supremacist ideology. Though the population of Japan is overwhelmingly non-white according to common understandings of race, this book will argue that white supremacy is nevertheless operative, if not dominant, in Japanese culture, media, and society. Japan is thus an essential case study in the ability of white supremacy to function and thrive in populations whose whiteness is ambiguous or provisional.

In the classroom, I present Japan and Korea as diverse global entities. Emphasizing the transnational aspects of Japanese and Korean cultures, I equip students with the critical tools to challenge narratives of Japan and Korea as exotic, homogenous, and mutually exclusive. My courses focus on modern Japanese literature, Japanese and Korean popular culture, race and gender, and translation.

Please see the Research and Teaching tabs for more information on my publications, translations, courses, and teaching materials. Feel free to reach out to me any time at cindi.textor@utah.edu or using the Contact page.