Yale University Department of Anthropology
William W. Kelly
Professor of Anthropology and
Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies
Ph.D. Brandeis University, 1980
Office address:
10 Sachem Street, Room 201
Tel: (203) 432-3688
Fax: (203) 432-3669
Professor Kelly is a noted authority on the social and historical anthropology of Japan. Kelly has focused much of his research in the last two decades on regional agrarian societies in Japan. Since 1996, however, Kelly has been conducting field research on the history and present patterns of professional baseball in the cities of Osaka and Kobe. Kelly is now finishing a historical ethnography of one of the Kansai baseball clubs, the Hanshin Tigers, titled The Hanshin Tigers and the Practices of Professional Baseball in Modern Japan. He is also co-editing This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan with Atsuo Sugimoto of Kyoto University of Education and Fanning the Flames: Fandoms and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan.
After earning a B.A. in Anthropology from Amherst College and a Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from Brandeis University, Kelly joined the faculty at Yale in 1980. He has served as Chair for the Department of Anthropology, Chair for the Council on East Asian Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies for East Asian Studies. Kelly is currently a member of the executive committees for the Council on East Asian Studies, Council on Southeast Asia Studies and Program on Agrarian Studies. He is also a member of the steering committee of Yale College and a faculty affiliate of the Peabody Museum of Natural History. His professional affiliations include membership in the American Anthropological Association, American Ethnological Society, Society for Cultural Anthropology, Association for Asian Studies and the editorial board of the Journal of Japanese Studies.
Yale University Council on East Asian Studies, 2011
This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan. CEAS Occasional Publications. Volume 1.
co-edited with Atsuo, S.
Yale University Council on East Asian Studies, 2007
Deference and Defiance in 19th-Century Japan
Princeton University Press, 1985
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Yale University
10 Sachem Street
New Haven, CT 06511