
Hanna S. McGaughey
Assistant Professor of Japanese Language and Asian Studies
Associations
Asian Studies
Roger Williams Hall, Room 208
Japanese
About
Hanna McGaughey (she/they) joined Bates in 2023 for her expertise in premodern Japanese culture and literature. She teaches Japanese language and cultural studies courses. Her research interests include gender history, intellectual history, performing arts, and digital humanities.
Growing up in Oregon, she was dissatisfied with what she considered a Euro-centric high school curriculum and decided to study Japanese language and literature at Smith College. Since then, she has lived in Japan on and off for more than a decade, including working as first an English teacher and then a translator and completing a Master’s degree at the University of Tokyo. With a grounding in the close reading of historical texts she gained there, Professor McGaughey returned to her maternal home in Germany and the Universities of Tübingen and Trier. At the latter, she finished her Doctorate in Japanology about the onstage construction of gender in noh theater as described by noh performer, playwright, director, and critic Zeami (ca. 1363 – ca. 1443) in his theoretical writings. She came to Bates from a position as a postdoctoral researcher at Hosei University in Tokyo, where she digitized manuscripts from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries constituting a part of Zeami’s textual heritage.
She is happy to have found a place at Bates where she can put all the books she has collected on her travels around the world and into the past and talk about them with whoever will listen. She came to Maine with her family and enjoys gardening and discovering Maine ingredients for Japanese cuisine with them.
Expertise
Current Courses
Fall Semester 2025
A Cultural History of Japan
This course starts with two questions: What is cultural history? Has there been just one culture in the history of the Japanese isles? The course considers cultural features of the prehistoric Japanese isles and then explores the development of aristocratic, warrior, and mercantile cultures in premo…
Senior Thesis
An extended research project on a topic relevant to East Asian society and culture that adopts one or more of the disciplinary approaches represented in the Asian studies curriculum. Students register for 457 in the fall semester or for 458 in the winter semester unless the Asian studies program com…
Topics in Advanced Japanese
Through the discussion and study of literary and non-literary texts on topics of student interest, faculty expertise, and current event, the course seeks to utilize, develop, and integrate skills acquired in the earlier stages of language learning. Through class presentations and discussion students…
Senior Thesis
An extended research project on a topic in Japanese literature, culture, or language utilizing some source materials in Japanese. Qualified students may, with approval of the Committee on Asian Studies, choose to write the thesis in Japanese. Students register for 457 in the fall semester or for 458…