https://www.bowdoin.edu/profiles/faculty/vselinge/index.html  

Vyjayanthi Selinger is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Bowdoin College. She received her M.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her research on medieval Japanese literature has moved through several inter-connected stages, starting with conflict on the battlefield during the Genpei War (1180-1185) in her first book to confrontation in the courtroom in her in-progress second book. In her third book, she will move to the barrack halls of the American West, where Japanese-American internees chanted medieval Japanese plays.

She has attended the “New Directions in Noh Workshop” three times, presenting on her book in progress. Her three presentations were “Sound and Detention: Mad Aurality in Carceral Noh Plays” (2026), “The Temporality of Legal Waiting in Noh” (2025), “Fables of Audition in Judicial Noh” (2024). Each time, she received valuable feedback from the extremely knowledgeable community, propelling her work to completion. 

 As a result, she is nearly done with her book, Sensing the Law in Medieval Japanese Drama, which analyzes legal predicaments portrayed in medieval Japanese Noh drama. Drama, she argues, uses the five senses (as well as a sixth, time perception) to communicate how law “feels,” thus making a case for the sensory richness of dramatic immersion. This book, thanks to group feedback, will be submitted to press in 2027. In addition to the book on law and Noh, she has one article under review in the edited volume Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature. It is titled “Time in Law, Time in Theater: Traveling Concepts about Felt Time in Genzai nō (Present time nō).” That article came directly out of peer feedback from the group in 2025. 

The workshops have also created ripples outward, helping her reach bigger audiences with her work on Noh. Three such events include (1) a 2026 Medieval Circle lecture at Brown University entitled “Towards the Sensori-legal in Medieval Japanese Drama”  (2) serving as organizer of a 2025 symposium at UCLA entitled Humanistic Approaches to the Study of Premodern Japanese Law (2) and 2024 lecture at University of Pennsylvania entitled “The Trial as Theater in Medieval Japan.”

Lastly, she has begun work on a book on Noh chanting during Japanese internment tentatively entitled Legal Immobility and Dance Drama. This project, too, has benefited immensely from conversations at the workshop.

Workshop-related publications:

Article Under Review
“Time in Law, Time in Theater: Traveling Concepts about Felt Time in Genzai nō (Present time nō),” in Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature (De Gruyter, Etudes Asiatiques Series)

Workshop-related conference presentations: