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Lisa Nakamura is an American professor of media and cinema studies, Asian American studies, and gender and women’s studies.
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...
. Asian American Studies.
She teaches at the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, where she is also the Coordinator of Digital Studies and the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Cultures.


Education

Nakamura earned a B.A. from
Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor- Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...
and a Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center at City University of New York.


Career

From 2007 to 2012, Nakamura held positions at the
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...
as a professor in the Institute of Communication Research, a professor of Media and Cinema Studies, a professor of Asian American Studies, and the Director of the Asian American Studies Program. Her main areas of contribution are in interrogating the racial/ethnic assumptions embedded in the representations of race in digital media, particularly within gaming cultures. She is the author of ''Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet'' (2008), ''Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet'' (2013) and is co-editor of ''Race in Cyberspace'' (2013). She has also published articles in ''Critical Studies in Media Communication'', ''
Cinema Journal The ''Journal of Cinema and Media Studies'' (formerly ''Cinema Journal'' and ''The Journal of the Society of Cinematologists'') is the official academic journal of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (formerly the Society for Cinema Studies). ...
'', ''The Women’s Review of Books'', ''Camera Obscura'', and the ''Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies.'' Nakamura is working on a new monograph on Massively Multiplayer Online Role playing games, the transnational racialized labor, and avatarial capital in a “postracial” world.Lisa Nakamura Home Site http://lisanakamura.net/ She teaches courses on Asian Americans and media as well as advanced courses on new media criticism, history, and theory. She is a professor of media and cinema studies, Asian American studies, and gender and women’s studies. She is a member of the editorial board of the '' Journal of Asian American Studies'', ''Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies'', ''
Games and Culture ''Games and Culture'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers the field of culture and media studies, specializing on the socio-cultural, political, and economic dimensions of gaming. The editor-in-chief is Tanya Krzywinska (Falmouth Unive ...
'' and ''New Media and Society.'' She serves on the international advisory board of '' Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society''. The main areas of contribution of Lisa Nakamura are in interrogating the racial/ethnic assumptions embedded in the representations of race in digital media, particularly within gaming cultures. Her main work is ''Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet'' (2008), ''Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet'' (2013) and she is co-editor of ''Race in Cyberspace'' (2013). She has also published articles in ''Critical Studies in Media Communication'', ''Cinema Journal'', ''The Women’s Review of Books'', ''Camera Obscura'', and the ''Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies.'' Nakamura's research includes
feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
theory, race and gender in new media, film and television studies, Asian American studies, digital media theory, and digital game studies.


Books

Nakamura is the author of ''Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet'' (200

''Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet'' (2013) and is co-editor of ''Race in Cyberspace'' (2013). She has also published articles in ''Critical Studies in Media Communication'', ''
Cinema Journal The ''Journal of Cinema and Media Studies'' (formerly ''Cinema Journal'' and ''The Journal of the Society of Cinematologists'') is the official academic journal of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (formerly the Society for Cinema Studies). ...
'', ''The Women’s Review of Books'', ''Camera Obscura'', and the ''Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies.'' Nakamura is working on a new monograph on Massively Multiplayer Online Role playing games, the transnational racialized labor, and avatarial capital in a “postracial” world. Nakamura's first book, ''Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet,'' discusses the visual cultures of the Internet and the type of information we seek online. She is interested in the emergence and immense popularity of racially themed websites that are created by for and about people of color. She is interested in what she terms the “racio-visual logic of the internet.” Jessie Daniels of
Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admin ...
, City University of New York argues that the book's central insight is that the Internet is a “visual technology, a protocol for seeing that is interfaced and networked in ways that produce a particular set of racial formations.” From
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
to
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most vis ...
to avatars to video games, visual representations online incorporate the embodied, gendered, and racialized self online. Doris Witt of the
University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 coll ...
reviews the book, ''Race in Cyberspace'' edited by Beth E. Kolko, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman. In an effort to open up a “space where a larger, more extended, and more inclusive conversation about race and cyberspace can take place,” Witt discusses how the book discusses the processes through which race is performed online by privileged consumers of cyberspace rather than the way in which cyberspace has been produced by and has helped reproduce a racialized global division of labor.


"Where Do You Want to Go Today?"

As reviewed by Samantha Blackmon from
Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mon ...
, Nakamura's third book, ''Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet,'' aims to interrogate how the internet shapes and reshapes our perceptions of race, ethnicity, and identity. Blackmon states that Nakamura names the images of racial identity online that shape the specific perceptions of cybertypes, and how these cybertypes are often determined and defined by the racial and ethnic stereotypes that are already established in our current society.


''Race in Cyberspace:'' Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet

This book was first published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company, which aims to interrogate how the internet shapes and reshapes our perceptions of race, ethnicity, and identity. Blackmon states that Nakamura names the images of racial identity online that shape the specific perceptions of cybertypes, and how these cybertypes are often determined and defined by the racial and ethnic stereotypes that are already established in our current society.


Short Pieces

As for short pieces like book reviews and journal articles, Lisa Nakamura has written dozens of pieces so far, including “Race in/for Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet.”, “Prospects for a Materialist Informatics: An Interview with Donna Haraway.", “I See You? Gender and Disability in Avatar.”, “Queer Female of Color: The Highest Difficulty Setting There Is? Gaming Rhetoric as Gender Capital,”, etc. The main research area of these articles is to question the racial / ethnic hypothesis in the racial representation of digital media (especially game culture).


Queer Female of Color: The Highest Difficulty Setting There Is? Gaming Rhetoric as Gender Capital

Lisa Nakamura's article was written in 2012. Her article was written in response to
John Scalzi John Michael Scalzi II (born May 10, 1969) is an American science fiction author and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his ''Old Man's War'' series, three novels of which have been nom ...
's article "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" which was posted to Scalzi's blog ''Whatever'' on May 15th, 2012.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nakamura, Lisa Living people University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty American academics of Japanese descent Reed College alumni University of Michigan faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Graduate Center, CUNY alumni