Professor Mari Yoshihara is a bilingual and bicultural scholar and writer. Born in New York City, she was raised in Tokyo and California. She earned her BA from the University of Tokyo with a concentration in American Studies and her PhD in American Civilization from Brown University. She has been on the faculty at the University of Hawai‘i since 1997.

Professor Yoshihara works in the fields of U.S. cultural history, U.S.-Asian relations, Asian American studies, literary and cultural studies, and gender studies. Her first book, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (Oxford University Press, 2003), is an interdisciplinary study that examines a wide range of white women who were attracted to Japan and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The book shows how, through their engagement with Asia, these women found new forms of expression, power, and freedom that were often denied them in other realms of their lives in America. (http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryAmerican/Women/)

Whereas Embracing the East focuses on American ideologies and discourses about Asia, Professor Yoshihara’s new book, Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music (Temple University Press, 2007), looks at the other direction of cultural flows between Asia and the United States, i.e. East Asians’ enthusiasm for, and remarkable success in, Western classical music. Once a serious student of piano who had considered pursuing a musical career, Professor Yoshihara characterizes the book as having emerged out of a “productive tension between [her] musical past and [her] scholarly present.” Using historical research, social and cultural analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork, Musicians from a Different Shore explores how Asians and Asian Americans came to form such a presence in the field of classical music and what social and cultural significance one might draw from this phenomenon. Through interviews with approximately 100 musicians—including conductor Kent Nagano, violinist Cho-Liang Lin, pianist Margaret Leng Tan, and numerous other instrumentalists, singers, and composers—she probes Asian and Asian American musicians’ experiences and ideas about culture, identity, and music-making. As such, the book analyzes various facets of classical music which has become much more than a specifically Western art form.
(http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1776_reg.html)

In addition to these books, Professor Yoshihara has published articles in such venues as American Quarterly, American Studies, and Journal of Women’s History.

In addition to these English-language works, Professor Yoshihara writes extensively in Japanese, both for academic and general audiences. Her Japanese-language publications include America no Daigakuin de Seiko suru Hoho [How to Succeed in Graduate School in America] (Chuko-shinsho, 2004), a practical guidebook that gives an overview of the American university system and the academic profession and provides hands-on guidance for Japanese students considering going to graduate school in the U.S. With Yujin Yaguchi at the University of Tokyo, she has also co-edited Gendai America no Kiiwaado [Keywords of Contemporary America] (Chuko-shinsho, 2006). This book is a collection of 81 essays discussing keywords of contemporary American society and culture, especially after 9/11. The keywords range in topic from “Abu Ghraib scandal” and “Guantanamo” to “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” “Sex and the City,” and “SUVs.” The book gives Japanese readers a deepened understanding of the diversity and complexity of American culture from a variety of perspectives. The contributors to the collection include a number of UH faculty and graduate students as well as scholars from the continental United States and Japan. Professor Yoshihara’s most recent Japanese publication is Dotto Komu Ravaazu—Netto de Deau Amerika no Onna to Otoko [Dot Com Lovers: Online Encounters of American Women and Men] (Chuko-shinsho, 2008). Part memoir, part ethnography, part social and cultural analysis, this engaging book uses the stories of the author’s own experiences of online dating in New York and Hawai‘i to depict many facets of contemporary American culture. Japanese-language readers can read more about her work on http://mariyoshihara.blogspot.com.

Professor Yoshihara is also a dedicated teacher, and she is particularly committed to mentoring graduate students. In addition to having served as Graduate Chair of American Studies, from 2005-2008 she was also the Director of the EWC-UH International Cultural Studies Graduate Certificate Program. (http://www2.hawaii.edu/~culture/) In 2007 the UH Graduate Division awarded her the Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award in recognition of her achievements in providing guidance to graduate students and helping them in their professionalization process. (http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Jun/20/br/br5960187423.html)