Jennifer Robertson is Professor Emerita (as of January 2020), Departments of Anthropology and the History of Art, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, and Robotics Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is also Affiliate Professor, Tokyo College, University of Tokyo Institutes for Advance Study (UTIAS), Bunkyō-ku, Tokyo; and Affiliate Professor, Departments of Anthropology and Japan Studies, University of Washington, Seattle.
Robertson earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University in 1985 (M.A. 1983), where she earned a B.A. in the History of Art in 1975. She also earned an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, in 1977, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Tōyō Bunka Kenkyūjo (Research Institute for Oriental Cultures), Gakushūin University, Tokyo, 1978-1981. The recipient of many fellowships and awards, she was an Invited Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, 1996-1997) and a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2011-2012). American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Social Science Research Council (SSRC), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Advanced Research in the Social Sciences on Japan, Abé Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, and Monbusho (Japan Ministry of Education, now Monbukagakusho) are among her other scholarships and fellowships. As detailed in her CV, Robertson has been a visiting professor at universities in Egypt, Israel, Japan, Spain, and the United States.
Robertson is the originator and General Editor of COLONIALISMS, a (now closed) book series from the University of California Press. Books in the series explore the historical realities, current significance, and future ramifications of imperialist practices with origins and boundaries outside of “the West.” Formerly Japan Editor of Critical Asian Studies, she now serves on the Editorial Board (http://criticalasianstudies.org). Robertson regularly contributes to the news and non-academic media in the form of interviews, podcasts, and essays.
A historical and visual anthropologist/anthropological historian and art historian, her seven books and over ninety articles and chapters address a wide spectrum of interdisciplinary subjects ranging from the 17th century to the present. Although her primary area specialty is Japan, where she has lived for over two decades, Robertson has also worked in Sri Lanka (1982-1992) and since 1997 has been working in Israel as well. Her topics of research include nativist and social rectification movements, agrarianism, sex and gender systems and ideologies, mass and popular culture, nostalgia and internationalization, urbanism, the place of Japan in Anthropology, sexuality and suicide, theater and performance, votive and folk art, imperialism and colonialism, eugenics and bioethics, and technology and robotics. Robertson’s publications have been translated into Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on anthropological history, theories, and methods; non-western colonialisms; art, identity, and anthropology; bio-art; genes and genealogies; human-robot interactions; image-based ethnography and visual literacy; mass and popular cultures; ethnic diversity in Japan; sex, gender and sexuality; and Japanese culture and society, among other subjects.
Robertson resides in Seattle and is currently researching, writing, and editing articles on: the cultural history of Japanese eugenics; art, science, and technology; sex-gender systems; demystifying “artificial intelligence” and “autonomy”; and the various dimensions of human-robot interaction in Japan and elsewhere. An extension of her fieldwork and archival research on robotics includes a critical exploration of affective AI and embodied intimacy along with an investigation of the problems of algorithmic abstraction and the associated lack of nuance and intersectionality in AI applications. In addition, a new Japan-based project explores technologies of childbirth from the 1920s to 2020s. Robertson’s most recent book is Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family and the Japanese Nation (University of California Press, 2018); a Korean edition (Nulmin Books Publishers, Seoul) with a new preface is forthcoming in 2023 and an updated Japanese edition is in progress. In addition to her academic work, she makes collages, watercolors, serigraphs, ceramics, and oil paintings (www.biwahamistudio.com).
(I acknowledge and respect the Coast Salish, Duwamish, Muckleshoot, Stillaguamish, and Suquamish peoples on whose traditional territory the community of West Seattle now stands, and whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.)
Contact information:
e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]