Matthew (Matt) Wayne Shores is a scholar of early modern and modern Japanese literary arts. Much of his work to date has focused on modern comic storytelling (rakugo) and its Edo-period precursors, literary and otherwise. He recently completed a book manuscript, tentatively titled Kamigata Rakugo: Comic Storytelling in Japan’s Cultural Heartland. He is currently based at the University of Colorado Boulder.
A native of Oregon, Shores has spent more than ten years in Japan, where he pursued a graduate degree and conducted research. He began his career (three years) as a visiting assistant professor at Cambridge, where he was in charge of Japanese literature and translation courses. He was also a Governing Body Fellow and Director of East Asian Studies at Peterhouse, the oldest of the Cambridge colleges. He has advised students of all levels, undergraduate to Ph.D., and has taught courses on modern/contemporary Japanese literature, East Asian cinema, Japanese theater and cultural history, Edo-period literature and culture, classical Japanese, modern Japanese, translation, and academic writing. He has a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (2014) and master’s degrees from Tezukayama University and Portland State University.
