In her newest book, Japanese Culture Through Videogames, Dr. Hutchinson explores videogames as a window into the Japanese worldview.  Dr. Hutchinson’s talk will focus on the cultural content of globally popular games such as SoulCalibur, Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear Solid.  Delving into character design, background setting and environment, aesthetic style, thematic content, and game dynamics and goals, Dr. Hutchinson will point to ways that Japanese role-playing games serve as popular entertainment narratives that tackle big issues like social anxiety, absentee parents, nuclear power, and war memory. 

Dr. Rachael Hutchinson is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Delaware, where she teaches Japanese language, literature, film, and videogames.  In addition to her book on Japanese culture and videogames (published in 2019), Dr. Hutchinson, who holds a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, is the author of Nagai Kafu’s Occidentalism: Defining the Japanese Self (2011) and editor of Negotiating Censorship in Modern Japan (2013).  She has also published numerous journal articles and book chapters on Japanese videogames as well as on representation and identity in Japanese literature, film, and manga.