Ben Whaley is associate professor of Japanese. His research engages discourses of ethno-racial identity and national trauma in modern Japanese literature and popular culture, with a focus on manga (print comics) and videogames.
Ben's forthcoming book Toward a Gameic World: New Rules of Engagement from Japanese Video Games (U of Michigan P) asks how games might bring about profound positive changes in who we are as people. It examines the ways in which Japanese video games simulate social issues and national traumas while prompting players’ emotional engagement, critical self-reflection, and development of real-world skills.
Other research interests include his SSHRC and Japan Foundation funded project on the representation of Jewish identity and narratives of the Holocaust in postwar manga, the corpus of Japan's "God of Manga" Tezuka Osamu, and modern Japanese literature of trauma by minority writers.
*On research leave for the 2022-2023 academic year.