Thank you for visiting. My name is Matthew Wayne Shores—please call me Matt.
I’m a scholar of early modern and modern Japanese literary arts. Much of my work to date has focused on modern comic storytelling (rakugo) and its early-modern precursors, literary and otherwise. I recently completed a book manuscript, tentatively titled Kamigata Rakugo: Comic Storytelling in Japan’s Cultural Heartland.
I began my career (three years) as a visiting assistant professor at Cambridge, where I was in charge of modern Japanese literature and translation courses, and examiner for premodern Japanese language and literature courses. I was also a Governing Body Fellow and Director of East Asian Studies at Peterhouse, the oldest of the Cambridge colleges. I’m currently based at the University of Colorado Boulder.
I’ve advised students of all levels, undergraduate to Ph.D., and taught courses on modern/contemporary Japanese literature, East Asian cinema, Japanese theater and cultural history, Edo-period literature and culture, classical Japanese, modern Japanese language, translation, and academic writing. My Ph.D. (Japanese literature, 2014) is from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa; my master’s degrees are from Tezukayama University and Portland State University.
I’m a native of Oregon and have spent over ten years in Japan for graduate school and research. In my free time I enjoy running, birdwatching, and caring for houseplants.
