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Faculty Profile
Alex Bates
Associate Professor of Japanese Language and Literature (2006)
Contact Information
Stern Center for Global Educ Room 105E
717.245.1127
Bio
Professor Bates is a specialist in modern Japanese literature and film. In addition to survey courses in these areas, he has taught courses in Japanese youth culture, war in fiction and film, ecocriticism, East Asian film, and cinematic adaptations of Japanese literature. Professor Bates's book on representations of the 1923 earthquake that destroyed Tokyo was published by the University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies Press in 2015. His research in this area has continued into other natural disasters in modern Japanese culture, including Japan's 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster. Other research interests include ecocriticism, urban modernism, and early post-war Japanese literature and film.
Education
- B.A., Brigham Young University, 1998
- M.A., University of Michigan, 2001
- Ph.D., 2006
2019-2020 Academic Year
Spring 2020
JPNS 102 Elementary Japanese
These courses establish the basic language skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing. These courses also provide students with a brief overview of Japanese culture.Prerequisite: 101 or permission of instructor
EASN 204 East Asian Cinema
Cross-listed with FMST 210-01.
This class is intended as an introduction to the cinematic traditions of East Asia, including: China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. No semester long course can do justice to the subject, so we will focus on certain historical moments and themes. We will begin in the postwar era, when China, Japan, and Korea were all emerging from the devastation of war. We then turn to how some Asian films situate themselves as alternatives to the classical Hollywood style. From there, we explore the role of film festivals in bringing Asian cinema to the world and the emergence of the Pan-Asian blockbuster.
FMST 210 East Asian Cinema
Cross-listed with EASN 204-01.
This class is intended as an introduction to the cinematic traditions of East Asia, including: China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. No semester long course can do justice to the subject, so we will focus on certain historical moments and themes. We will begin in the postwar era, when China, Japan, and Korea were all emerging from the devastation of war. We then turn to how some Asian films situate themselves as alternatives to the classical Hollywood style. From there, we explore the role of film festivals in bringing Asian cinema to the world and the emergence of the Pan-Asian blockbuster.
