Waka et al symposium
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305
Okimoto Conference Room

This symposium examines classical Japanese poetry as a site of convergence for diverse genres, disciplines, media, and practices. Rather than tracing how poems are adapted into different contexts, we will explore how poetry itself can act as a unifying force—binding disparate elements to create new, richly layered cultural forms.
Waka et al Symposium
May 2-3, 2025
Friday, May 2
9.10-9.50
Marjorie Burge
Searching for the ‘People of Kara’: On the Category of ‘Toraijin’ Literature in Man’yōshū and Beyond
9.50-10.30
Danica Truscott
A Legacy Lasting Ten Thousand Years: Man’yōshū and the Textual Afterlives of the Ōtomo
10.40-11.20
Torquil Duthie
Empathy for the Dead: Hitomaro’s Poem on a Dead Man among the Rocks
11.20-12.00
Phuong Ngo
When Waka is Not in Dialogue: Empathy for the Dead: Hitomaro’s Poem on a Dead Man among the
1.30-2.10
Mary Gilstad
Kokinshū Structuralisms, c1950s to the present
2.10-2.40
Małgorzata Citko-DuPlantis
Almost Chokusenshū—Collections Compiled but Unrecognized as Imperial Anthologies of Japanese Court Poetry
2.55-3.35
Estée Crenshaw
Theorizing Japanese Rhetoric: Waka and the Epideictic Tradition
3.35-4.05
Eric Esteban
Onna no uta as Constitutive Form
Saturday, May 3
9.10-9.50
Unno Keisuke
Mountain Asceticism and Waka Poetry
9.50-10.30
Ariel Stilerman
The First Shokunin utaawase and the Future of Medieval Poetry
10.40-11.20
Steven Carter
Waka and Haikai: The Case of Chōshōshi and Bashō
11.20-12.00
Kanechiku Nobuyuki
The Last of the Shokunin utaawase
1.30-2.10
Pier Carlo Tommasi
Life Between the Lines: Poetic Prefaces, Postfaces, and the Paratextual Self
2.10-2.40
Gustav Heldt
Waka’s Origin Stories in the Kokinshū Prefaces
2.55-3.35
Joseph Sorensen
Waka, The Untitled Book, and “Scattered and Lost Tales”
3.35-4.05
Tom Hare
Matsukaze, Early Receipts