Emy Takada

Emy Takada is a Brazilian of Japanese heritage who has lived in the US since 2006. She holds a PhD in Hispanic Languages & Literatures from the University of Pittsburgh, an MFA in Motion Picture Production from the University of Miami, and BAs in Plastic Arts and Art Education from Unicamp/Brazil. As a Japanese heritage speaker who also speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently, she taught a variety of courses in Latin American languages and cultures during her nine years at the University of Pittsburgh, including a Brazilian cinema course for advanced Portuguese speakers.

Professor Takada is passionate about examining human thought, feeling, and creativity, especially in films. Her genetic criticism analysis of the screenplay “Capitú” by Lygia Fagundes Telles and Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes is available at Manuscrítica, and an example of her creative interpretation of a film “genre” can be read in Coevality. She also investigates transpacific relations, East Asian diasporic narratives, Latin American subaltern literatures, and marginalized epistemologies. She has presented her work at a variety of conferences, including the Latin American Studies Association Congress (LASA) and Jornadas Andinas de Literatura Latinoamericana Congress (JALLA).

Outside of her teaching and research, she has considerable experience in a variety of fields. As a Spanish-English-Portuguese-Japanese translator, editor, and proofreader, she has been a volunteer translator for the Historical Museum of Japanese Immigration to Brazil since 2010, and has proofread academic titles for the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, such as Byron Oswaldo Vélez Escallón’s manuscript Do tamanho do mundo. O Páramo de Guimarães Rosa—com um Yavaratê (IILI, 2018). As a digital media producer, she oversaw post-production of Jon Reiss’s Bomb It 2 (2013) and distribution of Bomb It (2010) as well as post-production of Latin American cable TV productions, such as the Spanish spoken teen series Grachi (Nickelodeon, 2011).