Professor, Chūō University

Kawaii, Cute

English, Japanese

Tokyo , Japan

Ph.D., English, University at Buffalo, New York, 2002

• Professor, Chūō University, 2022 to present
• Foreign Professor, Tokyo Gakugei University, 1995-2022

• Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World, Profile Books, October 2023.

• The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness, (Co-Editor), Routledge Press, January 2017.

• Cute Studies, themed issue of The East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, (Editor) Intellect Press, April 2016.

• “The Irresistible Rise of Cuteness,” Cute Cat-alogue: Published to accompany the CUTE exhibition at Somerset House. Graphic Thoughts Facility, January 2024: 9-19.

• “A Brief History of Kawaii.” The Obsessed: Otaku, Tribes and Subcultures of Japan. gestalten Press, 2022: 30-35.

• “Cross-Cultural Comparisons of the Cute and Related Concepts in Japan, the United States, and Israel.” Co-authored with Hiroshi Nittono and Shiri Lieber-Milo.SAGE Open, Jan. 2021

• "Cuteness is a Trojan Horse." Kunsthalle zu Kiel Rachel Maclean Solo Exhibition Catalogue, Hate Cantz Verlag, Berlin. Feb. 2020 

• “Cuteness Studies and Japan.” The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture, Eds. Coates, Jennifer, Fraser, Lucy, Pendleton, Mark. Routledge Press, January 2020: 320-330.

• “The Appeal of the Cute Object: Desire, Domestication, and Agency,” in The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness, Routledge Press, 2017: 35-55.

• “Cute Studies: An Emerging Field” introduction to the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture,Vol. 2 No. 1,April 2016: 5-13.

• The Everyday Aesthetics of American Cute and Japanese Kawaii: Historical Development and Contemporary Expressions, JP20K00145, 2020-2023

• American Literature Society of Japan