Robert Goree teaches courses on a wide variety of subjects related to Japan and East Asia, including beginning Japanese, advanced Japanese through translation, Japanese popular culture and film, early modern Japanese cultural history, premodern and early modern Japanese literature, and premodern Chinese, Korean, and Japanese literature in comparative perspective.

His research focuses on the intersection of print culture, cultural geography, and popular literature during the Tokugawa period, and has appeared in the journal Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, and in books such as Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps (Chicago University Press) and Publishing the Stage: Print and Performance in Early Modern Japan (University of Colorado Boulder). His first book, Printing Landmarks: Popular Geography and Meisho Zue in Late Tokugawa Japan (Harvard Asia Center, 2020), explores why illustrated books about landmarks designed to facilitate virtual travel enjoyed widespread and enduring popularity. "The Culture of Travel in Edo-Period Japan" (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, 2020), is a wide-ranging and detailed essay about travel in early modern Japan. 

His research has been funded by a Fulbrigh-Hays Doctoral Research Fellowship (2007-8), a New Faculty Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (2011-13), and a Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Grant (2017).

Before earning a Ph.D. in Japanese literature at Yale University, he earned an M.A. in English literature at Columbia University and attended the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama. He has worked at the Modern Language Association of America in New York City, McKinsey & Company in Tokyo, and at the Japan Society in New York City as Director of Education. Along the way, he has been active as a professional translator, with work appearing in the popular NHK television program and book series J-bungaku. Prior to Wellesley, he taught at Harvard University, Columbia University, and Boston University.

When not teaching or doing research, he spends his time reading, writing, traveling, hiking, cooking, practicing yoga, and doing Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.

Goree’s courses include:

JPN 101: Beginning Japanese I

ENG/JPN 207: Writing on the Job: Comparative Short-form Nonfiction and the Creative Professional



EALC 221: Gateways to East Asia


JPN 251/THST 251: Japanese Literature from Myth to Manga

JPN 259: Historical Imagination in Japanese Cinema


JPN 280: Japanese Popular Culture: From Haiku to Hello Kitty


JPN 290: Geisha, Samurai, and the Birth of Tokyo: History and Culture of Japan in the Edo Period 


JPN 308: Advanced Japanese Fiction and Essays


JPN 354: Becoming Modern: Japanese Literature from 1680 to 1920