Name: Rajyashree Pandey

Position/Professional Category: Affiliation Professor of Japanese Studies (Department of Politics and International Relations, Goldsmiths, University of London)

Thematic area(s): Medieval Japanese Buddhist and literary texts; Body in medieval Japan; Gender; Monogatari and Setsuwa conceptions of agency and desire

Research at IHA: The symbolic significance attached to bodily discharges such as blood, excrement and urine in the medieval Japanese tradition

Position(s) within IHA: RG Member [Pre-Modern Visual and Material Cultures] as Visiting Scholar

Contact: r.pandey@gold.ac.uk

Institutional link: https://www.gold.ac.uk/politics-and-international-relations/staff/pandey/

Biography

Rajyashree Pandey did her undergraduate degree at Oxford University in Japanese Studies. She received her Masters at Washington University and her PhD from Australian National University. She has taught in many universities across the world including Washington University (St Louis), University of Hawaii, and La Trobe University in Melbourne. She took up her current post in 2007.

Rajyashree has published widely in the areas of medieval Japanese literature, Buddhism and gender. She is particularly interested in examining the applicability of categories such as woman, body and gender, all of which emerged in the West, for understandind non-Western pasts and presents.

She also does research in postcolonial studies and popular culture, particularly on manga and anime, to consider how political concerns and ideologies are reflected in these contemporary artistic forms. Rajyashree has given several keynote addresses in these areas of her research in Estonia, Finland, Japan, UK and Germany, and some of her major publications have been translated into Japanese.

(data supplied by the researcher)

Abbreviations:
RG – Research Group