2011: UCLA Japanese literature professor Michele Marra passed away. Funeral to be held on March 3, 9:30 AM in Culver City

Late Michele Marra

Late Prof. Michele Marra

UCLA Japanese literature professor Michael / Michele Marra passed away on February 23. He was born on September 3, 1956. He was 54-year-old. His funeral service will be held on Thursday, March 3, 9:30 am at Risen Christ Chapel, Holy Cross Mortuary, 5835 West Slauson Ave, Culver City, CA 90230, (310) 836-5500.

Visitation will take place on Wednesday, March 2, 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm, and on Thursday, March 3, 8:00 am to 9:00 am at Holy Cross Mortuary.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial donations be made in his name to the Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation at UCLA.

Michael/Michele F. Marra was Professor of Japanese literature, aesthetics and hermeneutics in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA.

He received his first doctorate in Japanese literature from the University of Turin (Italy) in 1979, with a dissertation on the role played by the Japanese classics in the fiction of the Nobel-prize winner Kawabata Yasunari (1889-1972).

After receiving his M.A. from Washington University in 1983 with a thesis on the thirteenth-century literary treatise Mumyōzōshi (The Nameless Book), Professor Marra pursued a second Ph.D. at Princeton University (1985-86) and UCLA (1986-88).

The dissertation appeared in print as The Aesthetics of Discontent: Politics and Reclusion in Medieval Japanese Literature (1991).

Professor Marra had served on the faculties of Osaka University of Foreign Studies, the University of Tokyo, the University of Kyoto, and the University of Southern California.

Among his major monographs are Representations of Power: The Literary Politics of Medieval Japan (1993), Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader (1999), A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics (2001), Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation (2002), Kuki Shūzō: A Philosopher’s Poetry and Poetics (2004), The Poetics of Motoori Norinaga: A Hermeneutical Journey (2007), Seasons and Landscapes in Japanese Poetry: An Introduction to Haiku and Waka (2008), Poetic Guide to an Ancient Capital: Aizu Yaichi and the City of Nara (2009), Japan’s Frames of Meaning: Hermeneutics Reader (2010), and Essays on Japan: Between Aesthetics and Literature (2010).

Further information is available at http://marra.bol.ucla.edu/