Anne Allison, Robert O. Keohane Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Chair
| Office Location: | 213 Science Building |
| Office Phone: | +1 919 681 6257 |
| Email Address: |
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| Web Page: |
Typical Courses Taught:
- Culanth 94, Intro to cultural anthro
Synopsis
- Ca 380s, Desire in the 21st century: (trans)national capital, fantasy, and
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- In an era of intense border-crossings of various kinds, how can we study, define, and theorize the role played by desire? In these times of digitality, structural adjustment, and constant war, what happens to communities, bodies, and homes? Has diasporic migration and global media indeed intensified the affect/effect of the "imagination" as argued by Appadurai? And when capitalism relies more on immaterial and affective labor, how does sociality, subjectivity, and fantasy shift as well? This course will examine the conditions of (trans)nationalism in the 21st century in terms of fantasy, desire, capitalism, migration, new technologies, citizenship, human rights, and sexuality. Texts include writings by Zizek, Butler, Deleuze and Guattari, LiPuma and Lee, (Jodi) Dean, Davila, Appadurai, and Chambers.
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W 1:00-3:00PM
Education:
- Ph.D. University of Chicago 1986
- M.A. University of Chicago 1979
- B.A. University of Illinois, Chicago Circle 1975
- Specialties:
- Globalization of Culture
- Mass Culture
- Asia
- Sexuality
- Popular Culture
- Political Economy
- Gender
- Culture Theory
- Marxism
Research Interests:
Current projects: globalization of Japanese kid's trends, theoretics of fantasy in the 21st century, futurelessness of Japanese youth
Anne Allison (Ph.D. University of Chicago 1986) researches the ways in which desire seeps into, reconfirms, or reimagines socio-economic relations in various contexts in postwar Japan. Her first book, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (University of Chicago Press 1994) is a study of the Japanese corporate practice of entertaining white collar, male workers in the sexualized atmosphere of hostess clubs. Her second book, Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan (Westview-HarperCollins 1996, re-released by University of California Press 2000) examines the intersection of motherhood, productivity, and mass-produced fantasies in contemporary Japan through essays on lunch-boxes, comics, censorship, and stories of mother-son incest. Her current research is on the recent popularization of Japanese children’s goods on the global marketplace and how its trends in cuteness, character merchandise, and high-tech play pals are remaking Japan’s place in today’s world of millennial capitalism.
- Recent Publications
(More Publications)
- A. Allison. "American Geishas and Oriental/ist Fantasies." Media, Transnationalism, and Asian Erotics. Edited by Purnima Mankekar and Louisa Schein. (Accepted, Spring, 2008).
- A. Allison. "Mobile Dreamworlds and Virtual Intimacy: Pokemon as Symptom of Postindustrial Youth Culture." Mechademia Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga vol. 1 no. 1 (Accepted, November, 2006): 11-22.
- A. Allison. "New-Age Fetishes, Monsters, and Friends: Pokemon in an Age of Millennial Capitalism." Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. Edited by Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian. (Fall, 2006).
- A. Allison. "The Japan Fad in Global Youth Culture and Millennial Capitalism." Mechademia. Edited by Frenchy Lunning. Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga vol. 1 no. 1 ( 2006): 11-22.
- A. Allison. "Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World by Theodore Bestor." Monumenta Nipponica vol. 60 no. 2 ( Summer, 2005.): 288-290.
