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Graduate Student

• Affiliation(s)

  • Center for Japanese Studies

• Fields of Study

  • Culture & Knowledge
  • Power, History & Social Change

• About

  I’m currently completing a paper that investigates the relationship between social class and the physical body. The project develops Bourdieu’s program for a sociology of sport using aikido—a Japanese martial art—as a case study. The theory imagines sports as loosely bounded sets of bodily repertoires that correspond to the tastes and preferences of determinate social classes. I use ethnography, textual analysis, interviews, and “observant participation” at a local dojo to explicate the relative class positioning of aikido as a “somatic program.” The project is in accord with my broader scholarly interests in culture, the body, social class, qualitative methods, and theory. I also have a strong interest in teaching.  

  As for my time before Michigan: In 2008-09 I conducted research on Japanese university corporatization as a Fulbright Fellow at Hiroshima University. The following year I worked as the assistant director of international curriculum at a private school in rural Japan. Prior to my time abroad, I spent a summer as a research assistant at a diversity consulting firm, wrote a thesis on organizational distinctiveness amongst elite liberal arts colleges, and worked as a video game tester at Electronic Arts, Inc.  

• Education

  • M.A. University of Michigan
  • B.A. Colorado College

• Research Areas of Interest

  • Sociology of Culture, Body & Embodiment, Theory, Qualitative Methods, Japan