Michael Dylan Foster is a professor of Folklore and the current Chair of the East Asian Languages and Cultures department at the University of California, Davis. His work has focused on Japanese literature and culture. He has published several short stories, articles, and novels.

Career

Foster joined the University of California Davis in 2016. Foster previously worked in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, and in the Department of Comparative Literature & Foreign Languages at the University of California Riverside. Much of his work on Japanese folklore has centered on tales of the supernatural, which was the subject of his first book, Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yôkai. The book received the Chicago Folklore Prize in 2009.

Education

Foster studied for a bachelor's degree in English at Wesleyan University, and graduated with Honors. He studied for a master's degree in Japanese Literature and Folklore at University of California, Berkeley. He completed an intensive language study in Yokohama, Japan and studied History and Folklore at Kanagawa University. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University, in the department of Asian Languages: Japanese.

Published works

Research interests

Michael Foster's interests include Japanese folklore, history, festival, literature, supernatural, and popular culture. He has been is working on a book entitled Visiting Strangers: Tourists, Ethnographers, and Gods, which will look at tourism, festivals, and ethnographers in Japan.