Overview

We have MA and Ph.D. programs in Japanese Language Pedagogy and an MA program in Japanese Literature. Students wishing to pursue a Ph.D. with a focus on Japanese Literature may apply to the Comparative Literature program, and, if accepted, will work with literature faculty in Japanese as well as other languages. 

Financial support

Currently, all graduate students in the department majoring in Japanese are supported by departmental assistantships. The number of teaching assistantships varies from year to year. They include full tuition remission and an annual salary of approximately $22,000 (2023 figure). The standard teaching load is 3 courses a year (1 in Fall, 2 in Spring, or 2 in Fall, 1 in Spring).

Our graduates

All Ph.D. graduates that the Japanese faculty-mentored have full-time jobs so far, many of them tenured and tenure-track.

• Tatsushi Fukunaga, Associate Professor, Shizuoka University of Art and Culture
  
• Mayu Miyamoto, Assistant Professor, Nagoya University of Foreign Studies
  
• Katsuhiro Ito, Assistant Professor, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
• Yumi Takamiya, Assistant Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham
• Shih Lieh-Ting, Associate Professor, Kainan University
  
• Kazuaki Nakazawa, Associate Professor, Yuan Ze University
• Kazumi Matsumoto Cantrell, Associate Professor, Ball State University
  
• Shogo Sakurai, Associate Professor, Nagoya University of Foreign Studies
  
• Maki Hirotani, Professor, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
  
• Kaori Schau, Assistant Professor, Calvin College
  
• Yasufumi Iwasaki, Associate Teaching Professor of Japanese, Carnegie-Mellon University
  
• Masumi Tajima, Professor, Chuo Gakuin University
  
• Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase, Associate Professor, Vassar College
  
• Noriko Asato, Associate Professor, University of Hawaii at Manoa
  

Graduate Faculty

Kazumi Hatasa

Kazumi Hatasa received his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989. He started teaching at Purdue University in 1988. He is currently a professor in the School of Languages and Cultures. He was the Director of the School of Japanese at Middlebury College from 2004 to 2018. His primary area of specialization is the computer application of technologies in Japanese language teaching. He has published articles and book chapters in this area both in English and in Japanese, and regularly makes presentations at conferences of professional organizations including AATJ, ACTFL, and CALICO. His current interests are applications of augmented reality and immersive virtual reality in language instruction. Prof. Hatasa is a co-author of “IT Literacy for Japanese Language Instructors” (2015, Kurosio Publisher, Tokyo) and a co-author of the Japanese language textbook series “Nakama 1” and “Nakama 2.” (Cengage Learning) He has also been working with professional rakugo performers to introduce students to this traditional performing art. He is authoring an advanced-level textbook in Japanese focusing on Japanese culinary culture. It is expected to be published by Kurosio Publisher (Tokyo) in 2020.

Prof. Hatasa regularly teaches JPNS 361 (Elementary Survey of Japanese Linguistics), JPNS 485 (culinary culture of Japan), and JPNS 596 (IT Applications in Japanese language instruction).

Atsushi Fukada

Atsushi Fukada received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1987. After teaching at Nagoya University for 7 years, he joined the Purdue faculty in 1994. He has directed the Center for Technology-Enhanced Language Learning since 1997. His research interests include Japanese linguistics, pragmatics, corpus and computational linguistics, language pedagogy, and learning systems development. An example of his corpus & computational work is Meidai Conversation Corpus and Chakoshi corpus search system (linked here). In the learning systems development area, he developed an online oral practice/assessment platform Speak Everywhere (linked here). His current major project is the development of an online textbook series titled Learn Japanese Online, of which he and Dr. Mariko Wei (see below) are Managing Authors. In the graduate program, he teaches JPNS 560 (Survey of Japanese Linguistics) regularly.

Mariko Wei

Mariko Wei received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University in 1998, the same year she joined the Purdue faculty. While Mariko’s research interests include second language acquisition and language pedagogy, her current research focuses on bilingualism and heritage language maintenance for children with autism spectrum disorder and the development of online Japanese textbooks.

She has previously taught at Columbia University, Georgetown University, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Princeton in the Ishikawa Program.  She is a faculty coordinator of the Japanese Language Program and has developed and taught a variety of courses on the Japanese language, Japanese language instruction, Japanese studies, and applied linguistics at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Her passion for teaching and mentoring has previously been recognized with the Kenneth T. Kofmehl Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2012, the Charles B. Murphy Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching in 2013, and the College of Liberal Arts Award of Outstanding Graduate Teacher in 2016.

Pedro Bassoe

Pedro Bassoe received his Ph.D. in Japanese from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018 and joined the faculty at Purdue University in 2019. His primary research focuses on illustration, visual culture, and the relationship between text and image in the development of the modern novel in Japan. He is currently editing a book manuscript titled Eyes of the Heart: Illustration and the Visual Imagination in Modern Japanese Literature based on his dissertation. He has also begun research projects on the literature of the fantastic in Japan and literary connections between Japan and Brazil in the work of both canonical Japanese authors and various diasporic writers. He has published one article on Natsume Sōseki, art nouveau, and book design in The Review of Japanese Culture and Society, which was recently translated into Japanese for inclusion in a volume on Sōseki. He has also had one article accepted by the Journal of Japanese Studies on Ozaki Kōyō and the photographic imagination in Japanese literature.

Dr. Bassoe teaches classes on Japanese literature from the classical to contemporary eras, in both the original Japanese versions and English translations, as well as classes on Japanese film, visual culture, literary pedagogy, popular culture, and literature of the fantastic in the School of Languages and Cultures. He has recently become affiliated with the program in Comparative Literature at the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, for which he plans to offer classes in the near future.

Useful Links

School of Languages and Cultures Graduate Program Page:
https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/slc/graduate/

Graduate Application Instructions:
https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/slc/graduate/documents/ApplicationInstructions_UPDATED_October2018.pdf

Graduate School English Proficiency Requirements:
https://www.purdue.edu/gradschool/admissions/how-to-apply/apply-toefl.html

Inquiries

All inquiries about the Japanese graduate programs should be directed to Prof. Atsushi Fukada.

MA in Japanese Pedagogy

Students must be rated at ACTFL advanced high or higher in Japanese proficiency.

Required courses: (12 credit hours)

JPNS 521 Teaching Japanese
JPNS 594 Teaching Japanese Literature
JPNS 560 Japanese Linguistics
JPNS 679 Second Language Acquisition

Elective courses: (15 credit hours with thesis/18 credit hours without thesis)

Japanese Literature & Culture

JPNS 543 Modern Japanese Popular Literature & Culture
JPNS 596 Postwar Japanese Cinema

Research Design and Measurement

LC/ENG 618 Research Design in Language and Linguistics
STAT 501 Experimental Statistics I

Second Language Acquisition

ENGL 618 Qualitative Research
ENGL 629 Second Language Acquisition
ENGL 630 Seminar in Second Language Writing
LC/JPNS 679 Bilingualism & Lang Acquisition
LC/JPNS 679 Research Design Study L2 Reading
LC/JPNS 679 Vocabulary and Reading in SLA
LC/JPNS 679 Classroom SLA
LC/JPNS 679 Corpus Linguistics SLA
LC/JPNS 679 Pragmatics

Language Testing

ENGL 674 Seminar in Language Testing

Language Curriculum

ENGL 516 Teaching ESL: Theoretical Foundations
ENGL 518 Teaching ESL: Principles and Practices

Computer-Assisted Language Learning/Information Technology

LC 596 Technological Literacy for FL teachers
LC 596 Introduction to Multi-Media Programming for FL Teaching

Linguistics

LC 596/LING 598 Introduction to Pragmatics
LC 596 Politeness in Language
LC/ENGL 565 Sociolinguistics
PSYC 526 Psycholinguistics
LING 511 Phonology I: Descriptive Analysis
LING 521 Syntax I: Syntactic Analysis
COM 612 Language & Gender
COM 682 Discourse Analysis

Thesis Course (3 credit hours)

JPNS 698 Thesis in Japanese

MA in Japanese Literature

Students must be rated at ACTFL advanced high or higher in Japanese proficiency.

Required courses: (12 credit hours)

JPNS 521 Teaching Japanese
JPNS 679 Second Language Acquisition

JPNS 594 Teaching Japanese Literature
JPNS 542 Pre-Modern and Early Modern Japanese Literature
JPNS 543 Modern Japanese Popular Literature and Culture
JPNS 594 Special Topics in Japanese Literature
JPNS 659 Seminar in Japanese Literature

CMPL 650 Ekphrasis and Visual Theory