This symposium examines classical Japanese poetry as a site of convergence for diverse genres, disciplines, media, and practices. Rather than tracing how poems are adapted into different contexts, we will explore how poetry itself can act as a unifying force—binding disparate elements to create new, richly layered cultural forms.

Please RSVP here.
 

Waka et al Symposium

May 2-3, 2025

Friday, May 2

9.10-9.50

Marjorie Burge

Searching for the ‘People of Kara’: On the Category of ‘Toraijin’ Literature in Man’yōshū and Beyond

9.50-10.30

Danica Truscott

A Legacy Lasting Ten Thousand Years: Man’yōshū and the Textual Afterlives of the Ōtomo

10.40-11.20

Torquil Duthie

Empathy for the Dead: Hitomaro’s Poem on a Dead Man among the Rocks

11.20-12.00

Phuong Ngo

When Waka is Not in Dialogue: Empathy for the Dead: Hitomaro’s Poem on a Dead Man among the

1.30-2.10

Mary Gilstad

Kokinshū Structuralisms, c1950s to the present

2.10-2.40

Małgorzata Citko-DuPlantis

Almost Chokusenshū—Collections Compiled but Unrecognized as Imperial Anthologies of Japanese Court Poetry

2.55-3.35

Estée Crenshaw

Theorizing Japanese Rhetoric: Waka and the Epideictic Tradition

3.35-4.05

Eric Esteban

Onna no uta as Constitutive Form

Saturday, May 3

9.10-9.50

Unno Keisuke

Mountain Asceticism and Waka Poetry

9.50-10.30

Ariel Stilerman

The First Shokunin utaawase and the Future of Medieval Poetry

10.40-11.20

Steven Carter

Waka and Haikai: The Case of Chōshōshi and Bashō

11.20-12.00

Kanechiku Nobuyuki

The Last of the Shokunin utaawase

1.30-2.10

Pier Carlo Tommasi

Life Between the Lines: Poetic Prefaces, Postfaces, and the Paratextual Self

2.10-2.40

Gustav Heldt

Waka’s Origin Stories in the Kokinshū Prefaces

2.55-3.35

Joseph Sorensen

Waka, The Untitled Book, and “Scattered and Lost Tales”

3.35-4.05

Tom Hare

Matsukaze, Early Receipts