Katsuya Izumi started his graduate study in Tokyo University of Foreign Studies as an avid reader of Herman Melville. He has written articles and delivered conference papers and lectures on nineteenth-century American literature, Asian American literature, Japanese literature, and Japanese animation films. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation by studying the affinity of self-effacement between early-American Protestant sermons and nineteenth-century American authors such as Melville, Dickinson, and Thoreau at the University at Albany. Before cultivating his current interests in Japanese literature, Izumi had taught American literature and English writing at various institutions. When he teaches literature, whether it is American or Japanese, Izumi focuses the importance of close-reading by inviting his students to various “subtleties” of language. When he teaches the Japanese language, he introduces “peculiarities” of Japanese while explaining reflections of Japanese culture in the language. He is currently working on his monographs about Japanese American internment camp newspapers and on reflections of Japanese colonial endeavors in modern Japanese literary works. He is also editing a volume about links between Japanese popular culture and Japanese language courses.

Publications:       

• “The Transgendered Mothers and Ikai in Japanese Films.” In The Routledge Handbook of Motherhood on Screen. Ed. Susan Liddy and Deirdre Flynn, 108-119. London and New York: Routledge, 2025.
• “Reading Japanese Americans’ Traumas in the Censored Internment Camp Newspaper Manzanar Free Press.” A special issue focused on “Trauma and Multilingualism” in Polyphonie 14:2 (2023): 1-21.
  
• “Saviors of the World: Impersonality and Success in Shinkai Makoto’s Animated Films.” In Representations of Children andSuccess in Asia:Dream Chasers, edited by Shih-Wen Sue Chen and Sin Wen Lau, 200-211. New York: Routledge, 2022.

Presentations:  

• “Reading the Use of White Whales in Japanese Anime." Fourteenth International Melville Conference, Oceanic Melville, Groton and Mystic, CT, June 16-19, 2025.
• “Narrating Picture Brides' Diverseness: Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic." ALA Annual Conference, Boston, MA, May 25-27, 2023.
• “Creative Power of Cannibalism in Isayama Hajime’s Attack on Titan.” NeMLA Conference, Washington, DC, March 23, 2019.