Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University
Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University
I went to countless archives, museums, and libraries, and talked to many poets and scholars — none of this would have been possible without going to Japan for an extended amount of time.
Professor Campana went to Keio University in Japan for a year with the aid of the Japan Foundation fellowship, from 2015 to 2016. He made many significant connections in Japanese academia and got a chance to perform his poetry alongside Japan’s most well-known living poet.
I went to Japan to research how new media technologies — film, tape recording, television, and the internet — impacted the development of Japanese poetry over the course of the 20th century. In order to do so, I went to countless archives, museums, and libraries, and talked to many poets and scholars — none of this would have been possible without going to Japan for an extended amount of time.
The impact of the fellowship was enormous—it enabled me to spend a whole year not just collecting materials, but to make connections in Japanese academia and in the poetry world. Because of this, I was able to complete my Ph.D. dissertation shortly afterwards, and to eventually land a tenure-track professor position in Japanese Literature at Cornell, where I am today.
[In Japan,] I was invited to read at an event called “Shundoku 2016,” performing my own poetry written in Japanese alongside many of the other most exciting poets in Japan today — including Shuntaro Tanikawa, Japan’s most well-known living poet!I’m currently finishing up my book based on my research conducted during my fellowship, tentatively called Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry Across Media.
