Faculty Travel

Michael Sakamoto
Michael Sakamoto is an assistant professor in dance whose scholar-artist works have been performed and exhibited in fourteen countries worldwide and published in national and international academic journals. His interdisciplinary research integrates dance, theatre, photography, cinema, performance studies, and cultural studies through the philosophical lens of the “body in crisis” concept central to butoh dance. Michael’s current performances include the dance theater works, “Soil,” and “Flash,” both touring nationally. His photo projects include “My Kamaitachi,” a postmodern examination of the classic butoh dance photo essay, “Kamaitachi,” and “Martha/Jesse,” a collaboration with dancer Jesse Factor tracing legendary choreographer Martha Graham’s corporeal-visual style in an early 21st century queer male body. Michael is also working on the book project, “An Empty Room: Butoh Performance and the Social Body in Crisis,” for Wesleyan University Press. Read about his fieldwork in Japan last winter.

Graduate Student Travel

The Japan Foundation Institutional Project Support (IPS) Grant supports graduate students to conduct research in Japan, with additional support from the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS).

Laurel Taylor

Laurel Taylor is a second-year student in the UI's M.F.A. in Translation program who conducted research on the culture of translation in Tokyo in the summer of 2016. At Iowa, she is translating short stories and a novel by the contemporary Japanese novelist Shibasaki Tomoka, a participant in the International Writing Program for 2016. Read about her travel experience here.

Paul Capobianco

In 2017, Paul Capobianco will begin a lecturer position at the Kyushu Sangyo University Language Education and Research Center in Fukuoka, Japan. He intends to defend his dissertation at the University of Iowa sometime in 2017 or early 2018. Data collected from his research has appeared in language studies journals and is presently being revised for resubmission in anthropology, communications studies, and Japan studies journals. Read about his travel experience.