Lisa Nakamura

Associate Professor

Education: Ph.D., City University of New York Graduate Center

Research Interests: visual culture, new media studies, race and ethnicity studies, gender studies

Current Research: Professor Nakamura's has been researching and publishing on the topic of race, gender, and ethnic identity performance and representation in virtual communities and text-based new media communication technologies. In this earlier work she coined the term “identity tourism” to describe cross-racial role playing in online social spaces. She has since turned her attention to the graphical aspects of identity in digital communicative spaces. She is revising a book manuscript Visual Cultures of the Internet, forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press 's Electronic Mediations series.

Representative Recent Publications:

Nakamura, Lisa (2002). Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. New York , Routledge.

Nakamura, Lisa, coedited with Gil Rodman and Beth Kolko (2000). Race in Cyberspace. New York : Routledge.

Nakamura, Lisa (forthcoming). “Pregnant Sims: Avatars and the Visual Culture of Motherhood on the Web” in Electronic Elsewheres: Media, Technology, and Social Space , edited by Lynn Spigel, Kim Soyoung, and Chris Berry, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.

Nakamura, Lisa (2006) “The Multiplication of Difference in Post-Millennial Cyberpunk Film: The Visual Culture of Race in the Matrix Trilogy.” In The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded, edited by Stacy Gillis, 126-137. London : Wallflower Press.

Nakamura, Lisa (2002). “Alllooksame? Mediating Visual Cultures of Race on the Web,” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, pp. 73-84.