04/13/12–Dr. Ted Mack:
1908 marked the beginning of mass migration from Japan to Brazil. Within a decade, Japanese-language literature—some produced in Japan and some produced locally—had become a part of daily life; such texts continue to be produced to this day in Brazil, home of the largest population of persons of Japanese descent outside Japan. While recent scholarship has explored Japanese-language literary activity in the former colonies of the Japanese Empire, less attention has been paid to that of the 'Japanese diaspora.' This talk by Dr. Ted Mack, Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington, will focus on the production and consumption of Japanese-language literature in pre-World War II Brazil. In so doing, it will present an empirical examination of that literature's materiality, a literary examination of three texts' stylistics, and an analytical examination of the methodological and theoretical ramifications of these texts to the study of national literatures.
