Office Location:	230 Friedl Building
Office Phone:	(919) 681-6257
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Typical Courses Taught:

• Culanth 94, Intro to cultural anthro Synopsis

• Ca 380s, Desire in the 21st century: (trans)national capital, fantasy, and

  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.

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: Sociality of the present: Japanese kids, family, and affect in the 21st century.

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. Her third book, Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (University of California Press, 2006), looks at the global fad of "J-cool": Japanese toys, character merchandise, and animation/comic books. Questioning the timing of this fad -early 1990s to the present--and the scale of its popularity on the global marketplace, the book considers how these trends are remaking Japan's place in today's world of millennial capitalism.

Curriculum Vitae

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. A. Allison. "Branding Affect and Affective Activism: Youth in/as Japan." Theory, Culture & Society. Edited by Michael Featherstone.  vol. fall (Accepted, Fall, 2009).
2. A. Allison. "The Cool Brand and Affective Activism of Japanese Youth." Theory, Culture & Society  vol. 26 no. 3 (Spring, 2009).
3. A. Allison. "American Geishas and Oriental/ist Fantasies." Media, Transnationalism, and Asian Erotics. Edited by Purnima Mankekar and Louisa Schein.  (Accepted, Spring, 2009).
4. A. Allison. ""La culture populaire japonaise et l'imaginaire global"." Critique Internationale  vol. 38 (Winter, 2008): 19-35.
5. A. Allison. ""The Attractions of the J-Wave for American Youth"." Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States. Edited by Watanabe Yasushi and David McConnell.  (December, 2008).

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