Hello

Thank you for visiting my site! I am a Japanese language teacher and researcher at Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana USA). My first language is English and, like many of my students, I started learning Japanese as a college student. I went to Japan for the first time after completing my BA in Japanese. I was an ALT with the JET Program for three years and after that I held various English instructor positions and did freelance J-E translation and interpretation. While living in Japan, I continued to study Japanese and passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test level 1, and passed levels 5 through pre-2 of KanKen, tests of kanji designed for first-language speakers of Japanese. In all, I lived in Ehime, Japan for 12 years (during which time I also met my spouse). We returned to the US so I could go to graduate school. After completing an MA and a PhD in Japanese linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we moved to SC so I could start a position at Clemson University. At Clemson I taught courses in Japanese language, business Japanese, Japanese culture and Japanese sociolinguistics, and general linguistics. In 2020, I took on the role of program director for the Language and International Business (LAIB) program. I was awarded tenure at Clemson in May 2023. Starting in fall semester 2023, I will be joining the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University as Associate Professor of Japanese.

My research is situated at the intersection of sociolinguistics and second language acquisition and I use qualitative research methods, including ethnographic interviewing, on-site observations, and recordings of naturally-occurring conversation, to examine L2 speakers’ beliefs and perceptions about Japanese speech styles such as regional dialects and honorifics (keigo). I have ongoing projects focusing on L2 speaker legitimacy and native speaker bias. You can learn more about my research projects and publications on this site.

Feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions about my work! Otherwise, I hope you'll look around my website and engage with the publication and teaching links available.