| Office | Hollander Hall 232 |
| January Office Hours | TBA |
| Office Tel. | 413-597-2513 |
| cbolton at williams.edu |
I teach comparative and Japanese literature at Williams College, where I have an appointment in the Comparative Literature Program. I also chair the programs in Comparative Literature and Arabic.
My courses include a range of Japanese literature courses in translation, as well as classes on comparative literature and literary theory. In 2011-2012 I am teaching a survey of Japanese film, a course on love in death in Japanese fiction, an introduction to comparative literature, and the senior seminar for Comp Lit majors, a survey of critical theory.
My research interests center on modern Japanese literature, particularly postwar and contemporary fiction and animation. Perhaps because my undergraduate training was in the sciences, I am intrigued by the intersection and interaction between science and literature. In more general terms, I am interested in the fuzzy boundaries of what we call literature, and the ways technology is forcing us to rethink those boundaries. This covers not only the line between literature and science, but the changing ways aesthetic theories have defined and delineated literature across times and cultures, the status of translations, adaptations, and reproductions vis-à-vis "original" works, and the relationship between writing and visual or media culture. Please follow the Book Projects link for a description of my books, or the CV link above for a more detailed list of my publications.
I am exploring digital texts for the ways they differ from earlier media and make us reconsider how we experience fiction. My work in this area includes a project to build a virtual art gallery--the Art Mecho Museum--inside the multi-user online world of Second Life, and a winter-term class on virtual realities taught partly in Second Life.
A popular part of this site is "Japanese for Your Mac," which has information on working with Japanese on a Macintosh.