Position Type
Faculty
Service
- Present
Specialization
Japanese and Taiwanese literatures, Women and Gender Studies
Pronouns
She / Her / Hers
Biography

Anne Sokolsky received her Ph.D. in Modern Japanese Literature with a sub-specialty in Gender Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. Her book From New Woman Writer to Socialist: The Life and Selected Writings of Tamura Toshiko from 1936–1938 (Brill, 2015) is about one of Japan’s early modern feminist writers who spent two decades living in North America in the 1920s and 1930s. Sokolsky’s research on Tamura has appeared in scholarly journals published in the United States and Japan. Other research projects include the translation of Shigemitsu Mamoru’s Sugamo prison diary, the depiction of the 1945 International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE) in literature and film, and the literary production and reception of women’s writing in Taiwan during Japan’s rule of the country from 1895-1945. Sokolsky is also working on a biography of her grandfather, who was a journalist in Shanghai in the early part of the twentieth century.

Sokolsky’s teaching experience has included the University of Southern California, U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Santa Barbara, and Ohio Wesleyan University. She was also a Fulbright scholar in Japan from 2001 to 2002. In addition to living in Japan for eight years, she spent two years in Morocco, where she was a Peace Corps volunteer. While in Morocco, she learned Moroccan Arabic and then continued studying Arabic at Harvard University, where she received a M.Ed. in International Education and Development.

At Ohio Wesleyan, Sokolsky was professor and chair of the Comparative Literature Department, and faculty member of the East Asian Studies Program and the Women and Gender Studies Program. In 2021, she received Ohio Wesleyan University’s Welch Award for Scholarly Achievement. She is also the literary editor for the Journal of Japanese Language and Literature.

In 2022, she held the Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University.

In July 2023, she was a Visiting Scholar at the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan (ERCCT) at Tübingen University, Germany.

Degree(s)
B.A. (Psychology), University of Michigan; M.Ed. (International Education), Harvard University; Ph.D. (Japanese), U.C. Berkeley

Learning & Teaching

Courses
  • EAST 235 Introduction to Modern Chinese and Japanese Literature
  • EAST 264 Taiwan Women’s World
  • EAST 264 Money Talks: Women, Economics, and East Asian Literature
  • EAST 264 Bad Girls of Japan

Works

Publications

Selected Peer Reviewed Articles:

  • “Retranslating the Tokyo Trial: Shigemitsu Mamoru’s Prison Diary,” The Twelfth International Convention of Asia Scholars ICAS 12, volume 1 (June 2022): 674-682.
  • “Reading the Bodies and Voices of Naichi Women in Japanese Ruled Taiwan.” U.S. - Japan Women’s Journal, no. 46 (September 2014): 51-78.
  • “Yang Qianhe and Huang Fengzi: Two Voices of Colonial Taiwan.” Japanese Studies Association Journal, vol. 8 (December 2010): 239 – 266.
  • “Dorei: A Play By Tamura Toshiko.” Co-written with Timothy Yamamura. Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 27, no. 2 (Fall 2010): pp. 203 – 245.
  • “Writing between the Spaces of Nation and Culture: Tamura Toshiko’s 1930s Fiction about Japanese Immigrants.” U.S.- Japan Women’s Journal, no. 28 (2005): 76 – 108.
  • “No Place to Call Home: Negotiating the ‘Third Space’ for Returned Japanese Americans in Tamura Toshiko’s ‘Bubetsu’(Scorn).” The Japan Review, vol. 17 (March 2005): 121 - 148.
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