Ann Sherif

  • Professor of Japanese

Areas of Study

Education

  • PhD, Japanese Literature, University of Michigan

Biography

Ann Sherif has a PhD in Japanese Literature from the University of Michigan. Her publications include Japan’s Cold War: Literature, Media, and the Law (Columbia University Press). Sherif’s current book project focuses on independent and regional publishers and literature in Japan, 1917-1990, with a particular focus on the print and visual cultures of Hiroshima. 

At Oberlin, Sherif teaches a First-Year Seminar on Nature & Environment in East Asia. She is a member of the college’s Environmental Studies Program Committee and the Book Studies Concentration Committee. She also coordinates the Green Legacy Hiroshima Initiative at Oberlin.

Research Interests
Modern Japanese literature

Teaching Interests
Japanese language and literature, modern Japanese literature, Japanese cinema, gender

Fall 2024

Intermediate Japanese I — JAPN 201
The Art of the Japanese Book: Material Culture, Libraries, Museums — EAST 220
Japanese for Professional Purposes — JAPN 457
Capstone Project — EAST 500
Capstone Project — JAPN 500

Spring 2025

Japanese Language Across the Curriculum (LxC) — JAPN 002
Japan's Film and Modern Literature — EAST 210
Capstone Project — EAST 500
Capstone Project — JAPN 500

Notes

Ann Sherif Organizes Digital Exhibit

August 5, 2020

Professor of Japanese Ann Sherif organized the digital exhibit “Popular Protest in Postwar Japan: The Antiwar Art of Shikoku Gorō” in collaboration with Maxwell Mitchell ’20 and Oberlin College Libraries staff Megan Mitchell and Cecilia Robinson.  The exhibit situates the art of Hiroshima native Shikoku Gorō in the context of antiwar, antinuclear, and social justice movements from 1945 to 2020. Structured around three books (Atom Bomb Poems, The Angry Jizo, and Hiroshima Sketches), the site guides visitors through the diverse art that Shikoku, in collaboration with grassroots networks of artists and writers, created to promote social justice. It includes guerilla art protesting the Korean War, poems against the nuclear arms race, a children’s book about war, cityscapes critiquing Hiroshima’s wartime past, and recent performing arts that trace this activist history. “Popular Protest” was supported by a Mellon Foundation Digital Humanities grant. It is suitable for general audiences and for courses in history, Asian studies, art, politics, and peace studies.

News

Examining East Asian Book Technologies and Formats

May 9, 2018

Designed by library staff members Ed Vermue and Runxiao Zhu and curated by students in the course East Asian Book Cultures, an exhibit about East Asian book technologies and formats was recently showcased in the main library.