Kurtis Towers Hanlon
カーティス・ハンロン
Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Palacký University in Olomouc
Poetry, Waka, Game, Ludic Studies, Uta-awase, Gamification, Andragogy, Pedagogy, Anime, Manga
English, Japanese, French
Olomouc , Czech Republic
I am an assistant professor of Japanese literature at Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. I have been fortunate enough to serve as a lecturer at Yale and the University of British Columbia, teaching a wide variety of courses, ranging from premodern literature surveys, classical Japanese language courses, and even critical approaches to manga and anime.
I design all of my courses around student agency, providing various methods and opportunities for students to engage with the course in a way that is best for them. I believe accessibility is vital for courses to be successful in engendering the skill-based learning outcomes of my syllabi, and I am proud to have led a team of my fellow graduate students in creating the department's online transition handbook during the summer of 2020 where we focused on strengthening accessibility during a time when the pandemic widened inequities already present in the education system.
My research in on premodern games, especially those that had a link to poetry. In my dissertation, I examine several "strange" uta-awase 歌合 of the Heian period through the lens of game and game design, answering the question "why was it played this way?" In the future I want to research other premodern games like kyokusui no en 曲水の宴 and early modern didactic games, such as this one odd board game centered around kanji characters, but oddly named 歌合 from the late Edo period.
I believe scholarship is better when it's collaborative, so please feel free to reach out for any collaborative projects, panels, papers, etc. that you think I would be a good fit for!
PhD, Japanese Literature, UBC, Vancouver, BC, 2024
IUC 10-month program, Japanese Language, IUC, Yokohama, Japan, 2017
MA, Japanese Humanities, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan, 2015
BA, Japanese, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 2009
- Assistant Professor, Palacký University of Olomouc, 2026-
- Lecturer, Yale, 2024-2025
- Sessional Lecturer, UBC, 2022-2024
Ise monogatari: Contexts and Receptions—A Reader—. Edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Yamamoto Tokurō, and Kurtis Hanlon. Leiden: Brill, 2021.
Fujihara, Mika. “The Historical Reality of Ki no Aritsune and the Ise monogatari.” Translated by Yenheniy Vakhnenko and Kurtis Hanlon. In Ise monogatari: Contexts and Receptions—A Reader—. Edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Yamamoto Tokurō, and Kurtis Hanlon, 42–63. Leiden: Brill, 2021.
Ōtani, Setsuko. “The Structure of the Noh Play Kakitsubata: Zenchiku’s Method.” Translated by Kurtis Hanlon. In Ise monogatari: Contexts and Receptions—A Reader—. Edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Yamamoto Tokurō, and Kurtis Hanlon, 149–68. Leiden: Brill, 2021.
- Japanese Poetry, Palacký, Yale, 2025-2026
- Classical Japanese 1-2, Yale, UBC, 2023-2025
- The Tale of Genji, Yale, 2024
- Writing About Japan, UBC, 2022-2024
- Critical Approaches to Anime and Manga, Palacký, Yale, UBC, 2022-2026
- PMJS Moderation Team
- Association of Asian Studies
- European Association of Japanese Studies
- Association of Japanese Literary Studies
5/29/2026