The Daniel C. Morrissey ‘88 and Chanannait Paisansathan MD Distinguished Lecture in Asian Studies, Fall 2021

Prof. William W. Kelly

Professor of Anthropology and Sumitomo Professor emeritus of Japanese Studies, Yale University

A noted authority on the social and historical anthropology of Japan, Prof. Kelly focused much of his research for the past two decades on sport and body culture and their significance in modern Japan. From 1996 to 2003, he conducted field research in the Kansai area of Japan on the patterns of professional baseball in the cities of Osaka and Kobe. His research on sport then broadened to the growing influence of soccer and the Olympic Movement in reshaping notions of ethnicity, gender, and citizenship in Japan and East Asia. Select publications include Fanning the Flames: Fandoms and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan (SUNY Press, 2004), This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan (Yale Council on East Asian Studies Occasional Monograph Series, 2007), and The Olympics in East Asia:The Crucible of Localism, Nationalism, Regionalism, and Globalism (with Susan Brownell, Yale Council on East Asian Studies Occasional Monograph Series, 2010), and The New Geopolitics of Sport in East Asia (with J. A. Mangan, Routledge, 2014). He is presently writing a book on the history of Japan anthropology and its importance for Japan studies and for sociocultural anthropology.

Kelly has long been involved with US-Japan educational exchanges, serving for many years on the Governing Board of the Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies and on the Advisory Board of the Japan-US Student Conference. He has served on the Japan Committee of the Social Science Research Council and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies. He was a member of the American Advisory Committee of the Japan Foundation for eight years and was a longtime associate editor of the Journal of Japanese Studies. In 2009, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, by the Japanese government.