Alumni Spotlight: Aragorn Quinn

“My graduate school years in EALC were truly magical. Having the resources to pursue my research wherever it might lead allowed me to ask questions and learn more than I ever thought possible before joining the department. Throughout my studies, the talent of the people around me inspired me to push myself beyond my comfort zone. But EALC stands out for its culture of cooperation and teamwork. Everyone in the department, from faculty to staff to students, is genuinely interested in the success of everyone else. My fellow grad students were not competing with each other—we were all pulling in the same direction. There are many other departments in well-funded institutions filled with talented individuals. What I found so uniquely special about EALC is how focused it is on building and maintaining that rare dynamic of the whole being greater than the sum of its individual parts.”

Aragorn Quinn, Ph.D. in Japanese ‘15
Associate Professor of Japanese and Japanese Program Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

 

Dissertation/thesis topic: My dissertation was on the intersection of performance, politics, and translation in the Meiji Period. Specifically, I investigated the way that the political concepts of liberty and revolution were introduced on stage in early translations of Shakespeare and the rowdy political theater of the youth known as "soshi". I then examined how the soshi were remembered in performance in the century following the Meiji Restoration.

Current Position: Associate Professor of Japanese and Japanese Program Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Some details about an ongoing project, recent publication, a notable accomplishment: I'm always uncomfortable about self-promotion 🙂. I think the biggest news recently was that my book came out in 2020. I have an article accepted about Meiji theater censorship, and one about a production of Kubo Sakae's play The Laughing Letter (Warau tegami). I'm currently working on a new project that looks at what I'm calling "disembodied performance" in modern Japanese theater. 

How did you end up pursuing your career? Do you have any advice for students contemplating similar career paths? My path to Japanese theater came through theater first and Japan much later. When I came to Japan after doing theater in many other contexts, I was hooked because of the way it broke fundamental rules I had learned. I guess my advice from this is that our paths are rarely pre-planned. Keep your eyes open and make use of the diverse resources at Stanford to push yourself beyond your comfort zone (and of course don't neglect your core skills of teaching and research!).