Overview
Andrew Campana is a scholar of modern and contemporary Japanese literature and media. His first book, , available in open access, was published by the University of California Press in 2024. In it, he engages with expanded poetic practice from the 1920s to the present as a site where poets in Japan grappled with new media technologies like film, tape recording, television, the internet, and augmented reality. It was the winner of the Modern Language Association's 2024 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for East Asian Studies.
His work highlight shifts in expressive culture at moments of transition in the media environment over the last hundred years in Japan, combining approaches from literary studies, media studies, and disability studies to consider the impacts of the new media of each era¡ªranging from cinema in the early 20th century, for example, all the way to early-21st-century augmented reality and text generation. Within these approaches, he has three overlapping foci: poetry, digital media (particularly game studies), and the cultures of Japan¡¯s Deaf and disabled communities. Linking these together is an interest in non-normative embodiment and sensation. Informed by disability studies¡¯ insights, he centers how literature and a variety of media¡ªespecially experimental, short-form, and/or ¡°amateur¡± works¡ªare able to evoke a diversity of bodies and ways of experiencing the world, and how that diversity in turn shapes how literature and media are created.
He is currently working on his second book¡ªtentatively titled Glitch Texts: Digital Poetics in Japan¡ªwhich explores how poetry became a key site of digital experimentation, including with the internet, mobile phones, video games, assistive technologies, and generative text. Bringing together literary studies, media studies, game studies, and disability studies, the focus in Glitch Texts is on how the ¡°digital¡± was reconceptualized in experimental poetic works in Japan, especially in the realms of printed and electronic literature, internet history, girl culture, new media and Indigenous Ainu art, and video games. This project draws from his experiences as part of the Trope Tank at MIT, a lab dedicated to developing new understandings of computation and literary practice. He has performed and published widely in both English and Japanese as a multimedia poet and translator.
News about Andrew Campana's research:
Cornell Chronicle: "Japanese Poets Open New Ways of Thinking About Media"
Research Focus
- Modern and contemporary Japanese literature
- Japanese media
- Disability studies
- Poetry and poetics
- Digital media
- Game studies
- Feminism, gender and sexuality
Publications
BOOKS:
2024: . University of California Press. Available to read for free online in open access.
? Winner of the Modern Language Association's 2024 .
ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS:
Forthcoming: "Seeing Fireworks from the Side: Shifting Conceptions of 2.5 Dimensionality in Japanese Media." Journal of Cinema & Media Studies. (In press)
Forthcoming: ¡°Windows Shutting Down: The Glitch Poetics of Chika Sagawa,¡± in Poet Sagawa Chika: Late Gathering, edited by Sawako Nakayasu, part of the Mellon-funded Digital Publications Initiative.
2025: "The Poetics of the Internet Rabbit Hole: Ry¨ta Yamada's 'Contemporary Poetry Wikipedia Parade'," in , edited by Matthew Kilbane, Amherst College Press.
2023: "." Literature 3: 133¨C144.
2022: "." positions: asia critique 30, no. 4. 735¨C762.
2022: "Beyond Status Effects: Disability and Japanese Role-Playing Games." In , edited by Rachael Hutchinson and J¨¦r¨¦mie Pelletier-Gagnon. Lanham MD: Lexington Books. 157¨C172.
2019: "Gender and Poetry." In , edited by Jennifer Coates, Lucy Fraser, and Mark Pendleton. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.
2016: Yellen, Jeremy A., and Andrew Campana. The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 14, issue 24, no. 5. 1-17.
2015: Kinephanos. 77-111.
2014: Montfort, Nick, Erik Stayton, and Andrew Campana. "." Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies. 24-30.
2013: Montfort, Nick, Rafael Perez y Perez, D. Fox Harrell, and Andrew Campana. "." Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC-13). 168-175.
SELECTED GENERAL AUDIENCE PUBLICATIONS:
2023: Introduction to .
2017: ¡°Poetry on Every Platform in 2010s Japan.¡± Tokyo Poetry Journal 4.
¡°Nihongo de shi o kaku koto ni tsuite [On Writing Poetry in Japanese].¡± Gendaishi Tech¨ 60, no. 5
2016: "Poetry? In Postwar Japan: Literary Experiments Beyond the Page [Sengo nihon ni okeru 'shi' to wa?¡ªShimen o koeta jikken-teki-na shisaku katsud¨]." Wochi Kochi Magazine. .
Kill Screen.
2015: Harvard-Yenching Library Collections.
SELECTED TRANSLATIONS:
2024: "Four Modern Haiku Poets on Encounters with Creatures," with works by Iboshi Hokuto, Murakami Kij¨, Tomita Moppo, and Hashimoto Takako. .
2023: ¡°Eight Modern Haiku Poets on Music,¡± with works by Hashimoto Takako, Iida Dakotsu, Hekigot¨ Kawahigashi, Maeda Fura, Sugita Hisajo, Takahashi Awajijo, Takeshita Shizunojo, and Usuda Ar¨. .
2022: ¡°Four Modern Poets on Encounters with Nature,¡± with works by Iga Fude, ?zeki Matsusabur¨, Sat¨ S¨nosuke, and Takahashi Awajijo. .
2021: ¡°Five Modern Poets on Travel,¡± with works by Kanan Ken¡¯ichi, Okamoto Kanoko, Yumeno Ky¨±saku, Sugita Hisajo, and Iida Dakotsu. , 89¨C97.
2020:¡°Seven Modern Poets on Food,¡± with works by Yosano Akiko, Takeshita Shizunojo, Hisajo Sugita, Takahashi Awajijo, Iboshi Hokuto, ?te Takuji, and Nishigori Kurako. , 88¨C95.
2020: ¡°Memories¡± and ¡°Recollections¡± by Hara Tamiki, , pg 78.
2019: ¡°,¡± with works by Yumeno Ky¨±saku, Yamamura Boch¨, Yosano Akiko, Yonezawa Nobuko, Sat¨ S¨nosuke, Yanagihara Byakuren, Imai Kuniko, Iga Fude, and Iboshi Hokuto. Translators to Watch For feature, Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan.
2018: Japanese subtitles for ¡°,¡± exhibit of android-performed video-poems by, Hashimoto Gallery, Tokyo.
2017: English subtitles for . Experimental film-poem directed by Shichiri Kei, text by Shinsaku Minori. Tokyo: charm point, 2016.
Poems by Shimizu Fusanojo for ¡°,¡± opening exhibition of the Art Museum & Library, Ota. Included in [Kaikan kinenten, mirai e no noroshi]. Tokyo: Kokusho Kank¨kai, 2017.
English subtitles for ¡°Life,¡± ¡°What I Like,¡± and ¡°Hamster¡± by Nakauchi Komoru, Poetry Slam Japan 2017 Champion, projected during the in Paris.
¡°Fortune Teller¡± (K¨no Satoko), ¡°Railroad Crossing¡± and ¡°Round Trip¡± (Matsuoka Miya), ¡°Excerpts from Hy¨ka, Raigai: RPG Poetics¡± (Yada Kazuhiro), ¡°Selected Haiku from There Are Eyes in You¡ªWide-Open¡± (Sat¨ Ayaka), ¡°Contemporary Wikipedia Poetry Parade¡± (Yamada Ry¨ta), ¡°Record of Affidavit¡± (ni_ka). .
¡°Four Poems on Cinema,¡± by Kitahara Hakush¨±, Yosano Akiko, Matsumoto Junz¨, and Kawaji Ry¨±k¨. 7.
2016: Nick Montfort, Serge Bouchardon, Andrew Campana, Natalia Fedorova, Carlos Le¨®n, Aleksandra Ma?ecka, and Piotr Marecki. . Los Angeles: Les Figues Press, 2016. [Responsible for translation of original English Python poem/program into Japanese Python poem/program.]
2015: ¡°.¡± Monitor poem by ni_ka. CURA Magazine. November 30, 2015. [Translation of ¡°£×£Å£Â¤Ï¤ì¤ë¤ä¡¸¤¢£Ñª£¯¥¢©`¥Á¡± from the Japanese.] Republished in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3, 2016.
¡°,¡± generative poem by SHINONOME Nodoka. CURA Magazine. November 30, 2015. [Translation of ¡°¬F´úÊ·¥¸¥§¥Í¥ì©`¥¿©`¡± from the Japanese.] Republished in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3, 2016.
SELECTED MEDIA APPEARANCES:
2021: Curiosity Daily podcast, ""
2020: NPR (WAMC Northeast Public Radio), Academic Minute, ""
2019: Jackie Swift, ¡°,¡± Cornell Research
2019: Speaking of Language podcast, ¡°"
In the news
- Campana wins MLA¡¯s Scaglione Prize for book on Japanese poetry
- Poets in Japan experiment at the edge of media
- ¡®Silence¡¯ theme of Society for the Humanities Fall presentations
- Cornell crafts multifaceted game studies program
- Building and cataloging a world of games at Cornell
- Cornell alum to discuss future of video games
- Japanese poets open new ways of thinking about media
