About

My name is Kathryn Hemmann, and I am a Lecturer of Japanese Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, where I teach classes about contemporary Japanese fiction, comics, and popular media.

I earned my BA from Emory University in 2006. My senior thesis, Demonic Women in Modern Japanese Literature, examined the connections between gender and horror in works ranging from the short literary fiction of Yumiko Kurahashi to Kōji Suzuki’s popular thriller Ring. Since then, I have continued to write and present papers on social and gender issues in Japanese fiction, film, animation, graphic novels, and video games.

I received a PhD in 2013 from the University of Pennsylvania, where my graduate research centered around Japanese fiction and graphic novels written during the 1990s and 2000s. My dissertation, The Female Gaze in Contemporary Japanese Literature, focuses on the work of the bestselling novelist Natsuo Kirino and a prolific four-woman artistic team called CLAMP. I investigate how these writers and artists negotiate highly gendered realms of narrative discourse in their stories. My ultimate goal is to argue for the application of a female gaze to narratives and tropes that have generally been understood as taking a male audience for granted. This study led to my book Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze, which is available from Palgrave.

My work on digital media and fan reception has inspired an interest in video games, and my current research involves a comparative analysis that examines the themes, narrative structures, and underlying ideologies expressed through in-game text, gameplay, and extratextual promotional materials. I’m especially interested in readings that focus on environmental issues, such as attitudes regarding the natural world, the politics of geography, and the ontological formation of the human, the inhuman, and the posthuman.

I post about Japanese fiction in translation on my book review blog, Contemporary Japanese Literature, and I share abbreviated versions of these posts on Instagram as @gingko_books.

I also write fiction and draw narrative comics. My creative work explores modern ruins and celebrates the gentle horrors of everyday life. In addition to my traditionally published work, I also make zines that collect my short stories and illustrations, and I host free digital copies on Itch.io.

The best way to contact me is via email, at khemmann@gmail.com, and I’m active on Bluesky as @kathrynthehuman.

( The portrait above is by Sara Goetter. )