Karen Ann Smyers (born October 31, 1954) is an American academic with a special interest in Japan. She has also developed a second career as a

Jungian analyst Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...

.Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture
Lecturer information
, September 2010.

Early life

Smyers earned her undergraduate degree at Smith College and she earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. Her doctoral thesis was entitled "The fox and the jewel: a study of shared and private meanings in Japanese Inari worship." She is known as an expert on Inari Ōkami and Inari-related literature.

Career

Smyers taught in the Religion Department at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

Jungian analyst

In 2001, Smyers enrolled in the Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland. In 2007, she was awarded a diploma from the International School of Analytical Psychology (ISAP). She established a practice as a Jungian analyst in Hadley, Massachusetts. Smyers became the President of the Western Massachusetts Association of Jungian Psychology.

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Karen Ann Smyers, OCLC/

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

encompasses roughly 3 works in 10+ publications in 1 language and 300+ library holdings. WorldCat Identities

Smyers, Karen Ann 1954–
/ref> * ''The Fox and the Jewel: a Study of Shared and Private Meanings in Japanese Inari Worship'' (1993) ;Articles * "'My Own Inari' - Personalization of the Deity in the Inari Worship," ''Japanese Journal of Religious Studies,'' Vol. 23, No. 1-2 (1996), pp. 85–116.

Notes

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smyers, Karen Ann Historians of Japan American Japanologists Wesleyan University faculty Living people 1954 births