Ms. Valentine received a B.A. from Florida State University and an A.M. from Harvard University in Regional Studies-East Asia. She graduated from the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies and completed advanced graduate study at Keio University, Japan. She is pursuing a Ph.D. at Harvard in East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Ms. Valentine has been at Clark since 2006.

Ms. Valentine teaches courses in Japanese language and culture. Her over-arching goal in that regard is to develop in her students an awareness of the cultural context of language. She’s particularly interested in the ways Japanese cultural production — literature, film, visual art, music — shapes and is shaped by a sense of national identity. While her research interests range from language pedagogy to classical Japanese poetry to Japanese nationalism, she considers herself a comparatist at heart. She believes that the rigorous and creative interpretation of texts is a cornerstone of the Humanities, and plays a fundamental role in our understanding of ourselves and our shared humanity.