At Shirayuri, it is my goal to help students grow as individuals and develop their critical thinking skills so that they can be better prepared to engage confidently, productively, and responsibly with the world around them. I am dedicated to helping students improve their abilities and achieve their goals.
My research interests cover media, gender, and culture on a broad scale, but I specialize in the contemporary Japanese context. Recently, in order to develop and improve my classes for students at Shirayuri, I have also begun to conduct collaborative research in the field of EMI teaching strategies. Through my classes, I aim to introduce students to how they can think more deeply about the world around them, and how developing critical thinking skills more broadly can help them throughout their lives.
The main goal of all my classes is (1) to help students understand the importance of thinking critically about the things they encounter in their everyday lives, and (2) to help them develop the skills necessary to do so.
One main focus of my classes is analyzing various forms of media to help students understand the world we live in. The images, ideas, and stories we see in the media and popular culture can tell us a lot about our broader culture and society. Therefore, in my classes, we examine various examples taken from our contemporary culture, from the Internet to advertisements to our favorite music, and use them to help us think more critically about our world.
Many of my classes also focus on gender. Even if we don’t realize it, ideas about gender (or our expectations about men and women because they are men and women) affect our everyday lives in deep, profound ways. It is important to think critically about our preconceived notions of gender, or the things that we think are “natural” and “matter of course” about women and men. While we may think many of the traditional ideas about proper gender roles such as “women should stay at home” and “men should focus on work” are outdated, these ideas and others like them still influence our lives every day. In fact, with Japan ranking 118th in the 2024 Gender Gap Index, it seems clear that we still have a long way to go before learning about gender is unimportant! If we want to achieve equality for all and improve the world for future generations everywhere, understanding society’s ideas about gender and how they affect our lives is an important first step.
Through all of my classes, I aim to help students develop a variety of tools and skills that they can use throughout their lives, and help them grow into independent, confident, and responsible members of society.