Edward Kamens is Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Literature

Japanese literature

Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...

 at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, where he has taught since 1986. http://www.yale.edu/eall/faculty/kamens.html His dissertation focused on the Buddhist setsuwa

Setsuwa

is a Japanese literary genre. It consists of myths, legends, folktales, and anecdotes.Setsuwa are based foremost on oral tradition. The stories are told to each other and later committed to text...

 collection Sanbōe, and more recently he has written on allusive or intertextual language in premodern literature, particularly utamakura

Utamakura

is a rhetorical concept in Japanese poetry.-Definition:Utamakura is a category of poetic words, often involving place names, that allow for greater allusions and intertextuality across Japanese poems....

 in waka

Waka (poetry)

Waka or Yamato uta is a genre of classical Japanese verse and one of the major genres of Japanese literature...

. He was Master of Saybrook College

Saybrook College

Saybrook College is one of the 12 residential colleges at Yale University. It was founded in 1933 by partitioning the Memorial Quadrangle into two parts: Saybrook and Branford....

 and is now a fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center. Professor Kamens and his wife, art history professor and former Saybrook College

Saybrook College

Saybrook College is one of the 12 residential colleges at Yale University. It was founded in 1933 by partitioning the Memorial Quadrangle into two parts: Saybrook and Branford....

 Master and current Yale College

Yale College

Yale College was the official name of Yale University from 1718 to 1887. The name now refers to the undergraduate part of the university. Each undergraduate student is assigned to one of 12 residential colleges.-Residential colleges:...

 Dean Mary Miller

Mary Miller

Mary Ellen Miller is an American art historian and Dean of Yale College. In 1998, she was appointed as the Vincent Scully, Jr. Professor of the History of Art. In 2008, she was appointed as Sterling Professor at Yale...

, are rumored to appear as extras in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, part of which was filmed at Yale. http://www.observer.com/2007/indiana-jones-and-temple-learning-aging-action-franchise-invades-ivy-league

Education

BA, Yale University, 1974

MA, Yale University, 1979

M. Phil, Yale University, 1980

PhD, Yale University, 1982

Major publications

• Utamakura
  Utamakura
  is a rhetorical concept in Japanese poetry.-Definition:Utamakura is a category of poetic words, often involving place names, that allow for greater allusions and intertextuality across Japanese poems....
  
  , Allusion and Intertextuality in Traditional Japanese Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
• "Dragon-Girl, Maidenflower, Buddha: The Transformation of a Waka
  Waka
  Waka may refer to:* Waka , canoes of the Māori of New Zealand**Waka taua, a Maori war canoe* Waka , a genre of Japanese poetry* Waka , a proposed replacement for HTTP* Waka music, a musical genre from Yorubaland of Nigeria...
  
   Topos, 'The Five Obstructions'", in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies vol. 53 no. 2 (Dec., 1993), pp. 389–442.
• Approaches to Teaching Murasaki Shikibu
  Murasaki Shikibu
  Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012...
  
  's The Tale of Genji. (Kamens, ed.) New York: Modern Language Association, 1993.
• The Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo
  Kamo Shrine
  is a general term for an important Shinto sanctuary complex on both banks of the Kamo River in northeast Kyoto. It is centered on two shrines. The two shrines, an upper and a lower, lie in a corner of the old capital which was known as the due to traditional geomancy beliefs that the north-east...
  
   Priestess: Daisaiin Senshi and Hosshin Wakashu. Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, no.5 Center for Japanese Studies, University of *Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1998.
• "The Past in the Present: Fujiwara Teika and the Traditions of Japanese Poetry" and "Translation of Teika's Poems on Flowers and Birds of the Twelve Months", in Word in Flower: The Visualization of Classical Literature in Seveneteenth-Century Japan, Carolyn Wheelwright, editor, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.
• The Three Jewels: A Study and Translation of Minamoto Tamenori's Sanboe. Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, no.2 Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
• "Waking the Dead: Fujiwara Teika's Sotoba kuyo Poems," in Journal of Japanese Studies vol. 28 no. 2 (Summer, 2002)

Honors and Grants

• 1998, Hitomi Arisawa Award "for outstanding merit in the field of Japanese studies . . .", given by the American Association of University Presses for Utamakura, Allusion and Intertextuality in Traditional Japanese Poetry.
• 1991-Mellon Fellowship in the Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University.
• 1990 summer, A. Whitney Griswold Fund grant for research travel to Japan.
• 1989-90 Morse Junior Faculty Fellowship, Yale University.
• 1987 summer, Concurrent grants from the Association for Asian Studies , Northeast Asia Council; Enders Fund, Yale Graduate School; and Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University for research in Japan for Buddhist Poetry.
• 1984 Association for Asian Studies, Northeast Asian Council Research Grant.
• 1980 Japan Foundation Dissertation Grant (research at Waseda University, Tokyo).
• 1977-82 Sumitomo and NDFL (Title VI) Fellowships,Yale University.
• 1975 Williams Prize, East Asian Studies, Yale University.