Elizabeth Oyler currently serves as convenor for the New Directions in Noh Theatre Studies Working Group, which she has hosted since 2024. Her presentations at the workshop included draft chapters of her book in progress: “Shunkan: Exile and the Realm’s Edge” (2026), “Ohara gokō: Restoration, the Capital, and the Six Realms” (2025), and “Yuya: Leaving the Capital Behind” (2024). The valuable feedback she received on these draft chapters contributes to the book, “The Apparitional Capital in Noh: Staging Landscapes of the Genpei War,” under contract with the Harvard East Asian Monograph Series. The monograph considers how noh plays derived from Japan’s epic war tale, The Tale of the Heike, evoke the ghostly presence of a failed polity as they portray supernatural inhabitations of peripheral locales. She argues that a series of seven early noh plays derived from the tale suggest an unease about the history the tale tells while also bringing the Genpei War period into profitable dialogue with the early fifteenth century, when the plays were first performed.
Beyond her book project, New Directions has created opportunities for Oyler to collaborate with members on panels at larger organizations, including “Narrative Transformations: Wrinkles in Time and Space in Noh,” presented with Matthew Chudnow, Susan Klein, and Taro Yokoyama at the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting in Vancouver (2026) and “Performing Polychronic Timescapes in Nō Theatre,” with Akiko Takeuchi and Vyjayanthi Selinger at the European Association of Japanese Studies meeting in Poznań, Poland (2026). These thematically focused panels have proven to be rich opportunities to explore specific themes and to get feedback from other knowledgeable and intellectually invested scholars from around the world.
Recent publications:
In addition to Apparitional Capitals, Oyler is also author of Imagining Otherworlds in Japanese Noh Drama,forthcoming as part of the Cambridge Elements in the Global Middle Ages series (January, 2027), a project made possible by her ongoing conversations about noh with New Directions colleagues. She is particularly grateful for the collegiality of the group, where questions of any kind are encouraged and resources shared with great intellectual generosity.
In addition to Apparitional Capitals, Oyler is also author of Imagining Otherworlds in Japanese Noh Drama,forthcoming as part of the Cambridge Elements in the Global Middle Ages series (January, 2027), a project made possible by her ongoing conversations about noh with New Directions colleagues. She is particularly grateful for the collegiality of the group, where questions of any kind are encouraged and resources shared with great intellectual generosity.
“The Tale of the Heike (Heike monogatari) in the Japanese Cultural Tradition,” in Kit Brooks, Takeda Hideo’s Genpei: Defying Authority (Princeton University Press, 2026)
“Sang-il Lee’s Yurusarezarumono (Unforgiven, 2013): War, Memory, and History” in John Pendergast, ed. Arms, Letters, and the Humanities (West Point Press, 2026)
Other recent projects Oyler has been involved in include:
October, 2026: Oyler lectured at the Princeton University Art Museum on “Furukawa Hideo’s Post-3/11 Tale of the Heike” in conjunction with the stunning exhibit Takeda Hideo’s Genpei: Defying Authority, curated by Kit Brooks, PUAM’s Curator of Asian Art. Oyler also contributed an essay to Dr. Brooks’ Takeda Hideo’s Genpei: Defying Authority.
Fall, 2026: Oyler cofounded the Reading the Epic Past with Reading Group, a biweekly meeting of US armed service veterans who are reading the Iliad and Tale of the Heike together and thinking about how the works resonate with their experiences of contemporary combat and military service. Oyler co-leads the group with Josh Cannon (Frederick Honors College, University of Pittsburgh) and we are hosted by the Veterans Breakfast Club. The insights of the participants, including combat vets from each of the armed forces, provide valuable guidance for thinking about how and why we read the classics, and how individual experience can bring new understandings to well-known cultural works.
January-February, 2026: Oyler served as consultant for Pittsburgh Opera’s Curlew River, a performance of Benjamin Britten’s “Parable for Church Performance” based on the noh Sumidagawa. Oyler also gave two pre-show lectures about the noh and Britten’s choice of noh as the foundation for this haunting meditation on loss written in the shadow of WWII. Performed in the magnificent Calvary Episcopal Church, Shadyside, Curlew River was a moving exploration of a mother’s search for her missing son.
April, 2025: The University of Pittsburgh and Japan America Society of Pennsylvania welcomed back Tom Lee, creator of Akutagawa (March, 2023) to offer a lecture-demonstration on kuruma-ningyō (“cart puppetry”) for our students and the public.
March, 2025: Oyler collaborated with noh actors Uzawa Hisa and Uzawa Hikaru to curate events to accompany the University of Pittsburgh’s University Library System celebration of the gift by the late professors emeriti Richard and Mae Smethurst of extensive holdings of Tsukioka Kogyō’s noh woodblock prints, now part of the Kōgyo: the art of noh digital collections. In addition to participating in the celebration, the Uzawas also conducted a movement and chant workshop for University of Pittsburgh students and, along with Oyler, gave a well-attended lecture-demonstration based on the noh play Kiyotsune at the Kelly Strayhorn theater.
Archived events:
February, 2023: In cooperation with the Japan America Society of Pennsylvania, Oyler helped bring Tom Lee and Nishikawa Koryu V’s Akutagawa, a multi-media cart puppet (kuruma-ningyō) play based on the stories of Akutagawa Ryunosuke to Pittsburgh for two shows and a seriese of workshops.
September, 2019: With a grant from the Toshiba International Foundation, Oyler hosted the world premiere of Theatre Nohgaku’s Gettysburg and an accompanying symposium that brought together actors and scholars.
In the works:
Oyler is currently planning with colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh for a workshop on Kamo no Chōmei’s Hōjōki as a touchstone for contemporary crises and a series of events introducing the work of Furukawa Hideo to Pittsburgh audiences.
Great work my colleagues in Japan Studies at the University of Pittsburgh are doing:
Charles Exley directs our Japanese Documentary Film Award, which just presented its fifth award to Keizo Fujikawa for Yoshida-ryo Dormitory, which “explores this centuries-old communal living space where its inhabitants are slated for eviction.” Mr. Fujikawa came to Pittsburgh to receive the award and work with University of Pittsburgh students in September, 2026.
East Asian Languages and Literature’s Japanese Language Section runs a testing site for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test on our campus.
Our East Asian Library hosts the following two digital collections: Kogyo: The Art of Noh
https://exhibit.library.pitt.edu/kogyo/index.html; Barry Rosensteel Japanese Print Collection
https://exhibit.library.pitt.edu/rosensteel/