Susan Jolliffe Napier (born October 11, 1955) is a Professor of the Japanese Program at
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
. She was formerly the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...
. She also worked as a visiting professor in the Department of
East Asian Languages and Civilizations at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
,
and in cinema and media studies at
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
. Napier is an
anime
is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...
and
manga critic.
Biography
Napier is the daughter of historian
Reginald Phelps, a historian and educational administrator, and
Julia Sears Phelps, both
Harvard academics. She was raised in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...
. Her neighbors included
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006), also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official, and intellectual. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through t ...
,
Julia Child, and
Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a spe ...
She obtained her A.B., A.M., and PhD degrees from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
.
[
In 1991 Napier published ''Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo''. Her second book, ''The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity'', followed in 1996.][Tufts]
/ref>
Napier first became interested in anime and manga when a student showed her a copy of ''Akira''. Napier then saw the film, which led to the creation of her third book, '' Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation'', which was revised in 2005. Napier's '' From Impressionism To Anime: Japan As Fantasy And Fan Cult In The Western Imagination'' was published in 2007, which discusses anime fandom
Anime and manga fandom (otherwise known as fan community) is a worldwide community of fans of anime and manga. Anime includes animated series, films and videos, while manga includes manga, graphic novels, drawings and related artworks. The anime an ...
in greater depth.Participations
/ref>
Works
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References
External links
*Tufts Faculty guid
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Napier's review of Princess Mononoke
at Nausicaa.net
Palgrave Macmillan author profile
Living people
Anime and manga critics
University of Texas at Austin faculty
Harvard University faculty
Tufts University faculty
1955 births
Harvard University alumni
American women academics
American Japanologists
Japanese literature academics
21st-century American women
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