معرفی
Vyjayanthi Ratnam Selinger is the Stanley F. Druckenmiller Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Bowdoin College, specializing in Japanese literature and culture. Born and raised in India, she moved to the United States for doctoral studies and has established herself as a leading scholar of medieval Japanese literature with a focus on representations of conflict, war, and legal frameworks in historical texts. Her work bridges American and Japanese academic traditions, as she publishes and presents in both languages.
Dr. Selinger earned her BA from Jawaharlal Nehru University (1994), MA from Harvard University (1998, where she received the Joseph Fletcher Memorial Award), and PhD from Cornell University (2007). Her educational journey included significant research time in Japan supported by the Japanese Government Scholarship (1994-1995) and multiple Japan Foundation Fellowships.
Her research examines literary representations of conflict in medieval Japan as a lens to explore war memory, legal constraints, Buddhist mythmaking, and women's roles. She is particularly known for her work on the Heike monogatari (Tale of the Heike), analyzing blood symbolism, horse imagery, and legal disputes. As a scholar of Indian origin, she maintains a distinctive focus on cross-cultural flows between India and Japan, notably examining the transmission of the Ramayana to Japanese contexts through figures like Minakata Kumagusu. At Bowdoin College, her teaching spans from medieval to modern topics including Japanese animation, samurai culture, monster culture, and WWII memory.
Dr. Selinger's scholarly output reveals a consistent trajectory from analyzing foundational narratives of warrior authority toward increasingly nuanced examinations of legal frameworks and ritual practices in medieval Japanese society. Her work demonstrates how literary texts engage with courtroom drama, famine representation, and symbolic fluids to construct narratives of power and justice, with growing attention to gender dimensions and cross-cultural connections.
- Bonnier Wheeler Fellowship (for Women Medievalists), 2024
- Fulbright Core Scholar Award, August 2017-April 2018
- Japan Foundation Research Fellowship, Spring-Summer 2010
- Japan Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Jun. 2002—Feb. 2003
- Joseph Fletcher Memorial Award for Excellence in writing of the M.A thesis, Harvard University, June 1998
- The Japan Foundation Study Tour Award, 1994
- Japanese Government (Mombusho) Scholarship, 1994-1995
While specific advisees aren't listed in the provided materials, Dr. Selinger actively mentors students through diverse pedagogical initiatives including leading student trips to Japan to study environmental crises and curating museum exhibitions on postwar Hiroshima and supernatural themes in Japanese prints. Her research has been substantially supported by prestigious grants including the Fulbright Core Scholar Award and multiple Japan Foundation Fellowships, enabling extensive archival research and scholarly exchange in Japan.
Dr. Selinger maintains an active international scholarly presence with recent invited talks at University of Pennsylvania (2024), Wesleyan University (2023), and University of Chicago (2019), demonstrating ongoing engagement with cutting-edge research questions in Japanese studies. She collaborates with institutions like the Bowdoin College Museum of Art on exhibitions connecting Japanese cultural history with contemporary concerns.
