Franz Prichard studies the literature, visual media and critical thought of contemporary Japan. He is interested in the provocative forms of exchange across works of criticism, fiction, film and photography that offer vivid new perspectives on the worldwide experience of urban becoming.
Franz Prichard studies the literature, visual media and critical thought of contemporary Japan. He is interested in the provocative forms of exchange across works of criticism, fiction, film and photography that offer vivid new perspectives on the worldwide experience of urban becoming.
He is currently completing a book manuscript on the rapid transformation of the urban and media environments of Japanese cultural practice in the 1960s and 70s. The book reconsiders Japan’s Cold War urbanization through works that reshaped their practices to interrogate the implications of emergent forms of urban sociality, intermodal networks of transportation and the accelerated circulation of image media. Prichard's work explores how writers, filmmakers and photographers questioned the Cold War remaking of Japan to reveal the novel politics and prospects for cultural practice at the heart of these urban developments.