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Anne Allison, Professor and Chair, Cultural Anthropology

Contact Info:

Office Location:	230 Friedl Building
Email Address:

Teaching (Spring 2026):

• CULANTH 707S.01, PRECARITY AND AFFECT Synopsis

  Friedl Bdg 204, Tu 01:25 PM-03:55 PM

  (also cross-listed as GSF 707S.01, LIT 707S.01, SOCIOL 771S.01)

Office Hours:

Tuesdays 2:00-4:00PM

Education:

Ph.D.	The University of Chicago	1986
MA	University of Chicago	1979
BA	University of Illinois, Chicago Circle	1975

Specialties:

Gender
Mass Culture
Neoliberalism
Asia
Sexuality
Popular Culture
Political Economy
Gender
Globalization of Culture
Marxism
Urban Anthropology
Transnationalism

Research Interests:

Current projects: globalization of Japanese kid's trends

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.

Keywords:

mass culture • globalization • Japan • sexuality • kid's culture

Curriculum Vitae

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

• Alyssa Miller  
• Patrick Galbraith  
• Katharine Frank  
• Daniel Hoffman  
• Lynssie Bowles  
• Tom Martineau  
• Macella Szablewicz  
• Lia Haro  
• Mara Kaufman  
• Heather Settle  
• Masamichi Inoue  
• Arianne Dorval  
• Brian Goldstone  
• Tami Navarro  
• June Hee Kwon  
• Netta Bar  
• Yu Wang  
• Bianca Williams  
• Gabriella Lukacs  
• Alvaro Jarrin  
• Giles Harrison-Conwill  

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. Allison, A, The Cool Brand and Affective Activism of Japanese Youth, Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 26 no. 3 (Spring, 2009), pp. 89-111 [repository], [doi]  [abs]
2. A. Allison, Pocket Capitalism and Virtual Intimacy: Pokemon as Symptom of Postindustrial Youth Culture, in Figuring the Future: Youth and Globalization, edited by Jennifer Cole and Deborah Durham (Summer, 2009), School of American Research [PDF]
3. Allison, A, Tamagotchi: The Prosthetics of Presence, in Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (Summer, 2006), pp. 163-191, University of California Press  [abs] [author's comments]
4. Allison, A, Japanese Mothers and Obentōs: The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus, in Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan (2000), pp. 81-104, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA
5. Allison, A, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (1994), University of Chicago Press