Akiko Takeyama
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences - Anthropology, Women, Gender & Sexuality StudiesRoom 611
Akiko Takeyama is an associate professor of Anthropology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The University of Kansas. She is also currently a co-director of gender seminar at KU’s Hall Center for the Humanities. Her research and teaching interests lie in changing gender, sexuality, and class dynamics in the context of neoliberal globalization. Her first book project, Staged Seduction: Gender Politics and Class Struggles in a Tokyo Host Club, theorizes the commercialization of feelings, emotions, and intimate relationships among socially marginalized population —the youth and women— in contemporary Japan’s service-centered economy.
Her second major project, entitled “Affect Economy of Human Trafficking: Vulnerability, Hope, and Risky Endeavor in Japan and Neighboring Countries,” will explore the interrelation between politico-legal systems and the global economy. Specifically, she intends to bring human affect —hope, fear, and a sense of vulnerability— to the center of an analysis of 21st century capitalism, complicating such legal categories as human rights and individual consent especially when sexual and economic exploitation are carried out in the name of individual choice. Her research will shed light on the complex set of social, economic, and legal contexts wherein coercion undercuts the legal assumptions of individual consent in human trafficking.
Education
Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
M.A., Asian Studies, University of Oregon (UO)
B.A., International Studies and Asian Studies, University of Oregon (UO)
A.A., English, Kansai Gaidai Junior College
Teaching
Her teaching explores human experience through which cultural meanings are created and negotiated in everyday lives. She also often uses gender, among other factors, as an analytical lens to critically analyze social structure and lived experiences in various socio-historical contexts, (post)colonial geopolitics, and global capitalism.
Teaching Interests
- Gender
- Sexuality
- Class
- Subjectivity
- The body and affect
- Labor and commodity
- Popular Culture
- Neoliberal globalization
- Trafficking in persons
- Human rights
- Feminist epistemology
- Critical theory
- Japan
- East Asia
Research
Her research interests, as well as teaching interests, lie in changing gender, sexuality, and class dynamics in the context of neoliberal globalization. She employs interdisciplinary informed theories and methods in her research.
Research Interests
- Gender
- Sexuality
- Class
- Subjectivity
- The body and affect
- Labor and commodity
- Popular Culture
- Neoliberal globalization
- Trafficking in persons
- Human rights
- Feminist epistemology
- Critical theory
- Japan
- East Asia
Service
She values service for the university, the community, and the profession as important part of her career and personal development.
Selected Publications
Takeyama, A. (2016). Staged Seduction: Gender Politics and Class Struggle in a Tokyo Host Club (. & Eds.). Stanford University Press.
Selected Grants
Takeyama, Akiko, (Principal), Fellowship, Japan Foundation Research Fellowship, $53,700 ({ }), Submitted 09/01/2013 (12/22/2014 - 12/21/2015) . Not-for-Profit (not Foundation). Status: Funded.
