R. John Williams

Biography

My academic work so far has focused on international histories of technological/media innovation and the perceived difference of racial and cultural otherness. My book, The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and The Meeting of East and West (Yale University Press, 2014), examines the role of technological discourse in representations of Asian/American aesthetics in late-nineteenth and twentieth century film and literature. The book won the 2015 Harry Levin Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association. I also just published a new essay in Critical Inquiry titled “World Futures” which forms part 1 of a manuscript I am working on titled The Oracles of World Time.

Education

Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine, 2008
M.A. Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine, 2002
M.A. English Literature, Utah State University, 2001
B.A. Brigham Young University, 1997