It's that time of year when students are preparing applications for college or graduate school. Perhaps it is a bit too late for people to get started on the process, but I thought I would help out by presenting an update of my old list of places to study Japanese film in North America. It is not complete by any means, and each university offers different programs. Some are specialized in East Asian cinema, some are just general film studies or Japan studies programs. Some offer doctoral degrees, some only masters, some only undergraduate degrees. Basically, the list is composed of those universities with a recognized Japanese film specialist. It can change as new people appear, and others move or fade away. In fact, there are a couple of places not on the list this time because of such faculty changes.
These are in alphabetical order, except that I put my program first.
Yale University (we have a separate PhD program in East Asian cinema)
Arizona State University (Sybil Thornton)
Carleton University (Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano)
Columbia University (Hikari Hori)
Concordia University (Catherine Russell, Marc Steinberg)
University of Florida (Maureen Turim, Scott Nygren, Joe Murphy)
University of Kansas (Michael Baskett)
McGill University (Tom LaMarre, Yuriko Furuhata)
University of Michigan (Mark Nornes)
University of Minnesota (Christine Marran)
University of Oregon (Daisuke Miyao)
University of Rochester (Joanne Bernardi)
University of Southern California (Akira Lippit, Anne McKnight)
University of Toronto (Eric Cazdyn)
There are a number of universities that are in flux or currently running searches that could result in a Japanese film scholar being added to the faculty. Places like Chicago, Irvine, and Berkeley may thus also be worth a look.
I've also written about places to study film in Japan.