I am a Professor of film and media in the Department of East Asian Studies. I am also an associate member of the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, a core faculty member of the World Cinemas Program, and a former William Dawson Scholar of Cinema and Media History (2015-2025) at McGill University in Tiohtiá:ke, now known as Montréal, situated on the unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation.
My first book, Cinema of Actuality: Japanese Avant-garde Filmmaking in the Season of Image Politics (Duke University Press, 2013), analyzes political avant-garde filmmaking and its appropriation of journalism and media events in 1960s Japan. The book received the 2014 Best First Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
My second book, Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control (Duke University Press, 2022), traces the technological, institutional, and geopolitical connections between Japan and the United States that led to the historical development of artificial fog, weather control, networked computing, cybernetic environments, and Metabolist architecture in the 20th century. The book received an honorable mention for the 2022 Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) CHOICE Award in the category of interdisciplinary monograph
My third book, Archives of the Anthropocene: Visual Grammars of Deep Time (Duke University Press, 2026), explores the visualization of "deep time" and its underlying epistemic and political assumptions through geological maps, scientific photographs, films, and classifications of fossils, clouds, snow crystals, and coral reefs in relation to the territorial ambitions of Japan and the United States as archipelagic empires.
I am also working on another project, Enchanted Consultation, which examines the cultural techniques and technological media of prediction and divination through histories of astronomical observation and computing and what has been termed "pseudoscience," such as astrology and geomancy.
My work has also appeared in a wide range of journals and venues, including Public Culture, Representations, Grey Room, Media+Environment, Screen, Animation, and e-flux.
I am also a member of an international D4 research collective for Research for Ethical Speculative Design, Environmental Media Lab, The Platform Lab, Global Emergent Media Lab, and Grierson Research Group.
I have also delivered public lectures at Onassis, Centre Never Apart and MUTEK, among others.
