Overview
We have MA and Ph.D. programs in Japanese Language Pedagogy and an MA program in Japanese Literature. Students wishing to pursue a Ph.D. with a focus on Japanese Literature may apply to the Comparative Literature program, and, if accepted, will work with literature faculty in Japanese as well as other languages.
Financial support
Currently, all graduate students in the department majoring in Japanese are supported by departmental assistantships. The number of teaching assistantships varies from year to year. They include full tuition remission and an annual salary of approximately $22,000 (2023 figure). The standard teaching load is 3 courses a year (1 in Fall, 2 in Spring, or 2 in Fall, 1 in Spring).
Our graduates
All Ph.D. graduates that the Japanese faculty-mentored have full-time jobs so far, many of them tenured and tenure-track.
- Ayaka Matsuo, Assistant Professor, Middle Tennessee State University
- Masaki Minobe, Assistant Professor, Utah State University
- Tatsushi Fukunaga, Associate Professor, Shizuoka University of Art and Culture
- Katsuhiro Ito, Assistant Professor, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
- Yumi Takamiya, Assistant Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham
- Shih Lieh-Ting, Associate Professor, Kainan University
- Kazuaki Nakazawa, Associate Professor, Yuan Ze University
- Kazumi Matsumoto Cantrell, Associate Professor, Ball State University
- Shogo Sakurai, Associate Professor, Nagoya University of Foreign Studies
- Maki Hirotani, Professor, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
- Kaori Schau, Assistant Professor, Calvin College
- Yasufumi Iwasaki, Associate Teaching Professor of Japanese, Carnegie-Mellon University
- Masumi Tajima, Professor, Chuo Gakuin University
- Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase, Associate Professor, Vassar College
- Noriko Asato, Associate Professor, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Graduate Faculty
Atsushi Fukada
Atsushi Fukada received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1987. After teaching at Nagoya University for 7 years, he joined the Purdue faculty in 1994. He has directed the Center for Technology-Enhanced Language Learning since 1997. His research interests include Japanese linguistics, pragmatics, corpus and computational linguistics, language pedagogy, and learning systems development. An example of his corpus & computational work is Meidai Conversation Corpus and Chakoshi corpus search system (linked here). In the learning systems development area, he developed an online oral practice/assessment platform Speak Everywhere (linked here). His latest major project is the development of an online textbook series titled Learn Japanese Online, of which he and Dr. Mariko Wei (see below) are Managing Authors. It's published now and available for general use. (linked here) In the graduate program, he teaches JPNS 56000 (Survey of Japanese Linguistics) regularly.
Mariko Wei
Mariko Wei received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University in 1998, the same year she joined the Purdue faculty. While Mariko’s research interests include second language acquisition and language pedagogy, her current research focuses on bilingualism and heritage language maintenance for children with autism spectrum disorder and the development of online Japanese textbooks.
She has previously taught at Columbia University, Georgetown University, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Princeton in the Ishikawa Program. She is a faculty coordinator of the Japanese Language Program and has developed and taught a variety of courses on the Japanese language, Japanese language instruction, Japanese studies, and applied linguistics at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Her passion for teaching and mentoring has previously been recognized with the Kenneth T. Kofmehl Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2012, the Charles B. Murphy Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching in 2013, and the College of Liberal Arts Award of Outstanding Graduate Teacher in 2016.
Pedro Bassoe
Pedro Bassoe received his Ph.D. in Japanese from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018 and joined the faculty at Purdue University in 2019. His areas of research include literature of the fantastic in Japan (gensō bungaku), print culture, visual culture, text and image studies, the work of author Izumi Kyōka, and literary accounts of immigration and travel between Japan and Brazil. He has completed a book titled Supernatural Japan: Izumi Kyōka and the Global Fantastic, which is currently scheduled for publication with University of Michigan Press. The book describes the meeting of global influences in Kyōka’s fiction, from premodern Japanese picture books to modern French literature of the fantastic. He has published articles on topics including book design, graphic design, photography and literature, and women writers and travel narratives, including in journals such as the Review of Japanese Culture and Society and the Journal of Japanese Studies. He is continuing research on Japanese literature of the fantastic, with a current focus on author Okamoto Kanoko, as well as research on narratives of immigration from Japan produced in various cultural contexts.
Dr. Bassoe teaches classes on Japanese literature from the classical to contemporary eras, in both the original Japanese versions and English translations, as well as classes on Japanese film, visual culture, literary pedagogy, and popular media (manga and anime) in the School of Languages and Cultures. He is also affiliated with the program in Comparative Literature in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies.
Useful Links
School of Languages and Cultures Graduate Program Page:
https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/slc/graduate/
Graduate Application Instructions:
https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/slc/graduate/documents/ApplicationInstructions_UPDATED_October2018.pdf
Graduate School English Proficiency Requirements:
https://www.purdue.edu/gradschool/admissions/how-to-apply/apply-toefl.html
Inquiries
All inquiries about the Japanese graduate programs should be directed to Prof. Atsushi Fukada.
MA in Japanese Pedagogy
Students must be rated at ACTFL advanced high or higher in Japanese proficiency.
Required courses: (12 credit hours)
JPNS 521 Teaching Japanese
JPNS 594 Teaching Japanese Literature
JPNS 560 Japanese Linguistics
JPNS 679 Second Language Acquisition
Elective courses: (15 credit hours with thesis/18 credit hours without thesis)
Japanese Literature & Culture
JPNS 543 Modern Japanese Popular Literature & Culture
JPNS 596 Postwar Japanese Cinema
Research Design and Measurement
LC/ENG 618 Research Design in Language and Linguistics
STAT 501 Experimental Statistics I
Second Language Acquisition
ENGL 618 Qualitative Research
ENGL 629 Second Language Acquisition
ENGL 630 Seminar in Second Language Writing
LC/JPNS 679 Bilingualism & Lang Acquisition
LC/JPNS 679 Research Design Study L2 Reading
LC/JPNS 679 Vocabulary and Reading in SLA
LC/JPNS 679 Classroom SLA
LC/JPNS 679 Corpus Linguistics SLA
LC/JPNS 679 Pragmatics
Language Testing
ENGL 674 Seminar in Language Testing
Language Curriculum
ENGL 516 Teaching ESL: Theoretical Foundations
ENGL 518 Teaching ESL: Principles and Practices
Computer-Assisted Language Learning/Information Technology
LC 596 Technological Literacy for FL teachers
LC 596 Introduction to Multi-Media Programming for FL Teaching
Linguistics
LC 596/LING 598 Introduction to Pragmatics
LC 596 Politeness in Language
LC/ENGL 565 Sociolinguistics
PSYC 526 Psycholinguistics
LING 511 Phonology I: Descriptive Analysis
LING 521 Syntax I: Syntactic Analysis
COM 612 Language & Gender
COM 682 Discourse Analysis
Thesis Course (3 credit hours)
JPNS 698 Thesis in Japanese
MA in Japanese Literature
Students must be rated at ACTFL advanced high or higher in Japanese proficiency.
Required courses: (12 credit hours)
JPNS 521 Teaching Japanese
JPNS 679 Second Language AcquisitionJPNS 594 Teaching Japanese Literature
JPNS 542 Pre-Modern and Early Modern Japanese Literature
JPNS 543 Modern Japanese Popular Literature and Culture
JPNS 594 Special Topics in Japanese Literature
JPNS 659 Seminar in Japanese LiteratureCMPL 650 Ekphrasis and Visual Theory