| Office | SAB 112 |
| Fall Office Hours | Wed 2:30-3:30; Thurs 11:15-12:15 |
| Office Tel. | 413-597-2513 |
| cbolton at williams.edu |
I teach Japanese literature and comparative literature at Williams College. Before coming to Williams in 2003, I taught for five years at the University of California, Riverside.
My research interests center on the modern period, particularly postwar and contemporary Japanese fiction and Japanese animation. Because my undergraduate training was in the sciences, I am particularly interested in the intersection and interaction between science and literature. In more general terms, I am interested in the fuzzy boundaries of what we call literature, and the ways technology is forcing us to rethink those boundaries. This covers not only the line between literature and science, but the changing ways aesthetic theories have defined and delineated literature across times and cultures, the status of translations and reproductions vis-à-vis "original" works, and the relationship between writing and visual or media culture. I have been working on anime as a medium that brings together many of these issues.
I teach a range of Japanese literature courses in translation, and comparative literature classes on world literature and literary theory. The courses link contains descriptions of courses I am teaching this year, as well as some of my past classes.
I am developing online and digital teaching materials for my most of my classes. I recently completed a project to build a virtual art gallery--the Art Mecho Museum--inside the multi-user online world of Second Life.
I am also interested in web development. The most popular part of this site is "Japanese for Your Mac," which has information on working with Japanese on a Macintosh.