Joanne Bernardi’s research and teaching focus on Japanese cinema and culture; moving image and media history and historiography; visual and material culture; and the different ways people receive and interpret cultural texts. She is currently working on a book project on Japan’s presence as a foreign destination in the visual and material culture of tourism and education. This project includes a complementary digital archive for investigating Japan’s present as it is informed by its past through the re-articulation and repurposing of objects and images. Other work in progress includes projects on nuclear history, culture and the visual image; small gauge amateur film and other forms of non-feature film; and screenwriting history. Bernardi’s work is informed by her knowledge of early and silent film, a background in photography, film and video production, and an interest in moving image archiving and preservation. Her first book, Writing in Light (Wayne State, 2001), was the first book-length study of Japanese cinema of the 1910s to focus on its intersection with changing international attitudes toward screenwriting, film production and consumption.

• Writing in Light: the Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement, Wayne State University Press, 2001
• “Does Film Theory Exist in Japan?” translation of “Nihon ni eiga riron wa atta ka,” by Sato Tadao (1977) in “Decentering Theory: Reconsidering the History of Japanese Film Theory,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society, 2011
• “Dare vita alla pagina: la collaborazione con Yoda Yoshikata,” in Bellezza e Tristezza: Il cinema di Mizoguchi Kenji, 2009
• "Teaching Godzilla," In Godzilla's Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, 2006
• “Osaka Elegy: Revisiting 1930s Mizoguchi,” Film Analysis: A Norton Reader, 2005
• "Researching Japanese Silent Cinema/Japanese Cinema as an Academic Adventure,” Asian Cinema–Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Korean Film Archive, 2002 (Proceedings, FIAF 58th Congress, Seoul)
• “Chaplin Among the Ashes: A Collector’s Beginnings,” In Praise of Film Studies: Essays in Honor of Makino Mamoru, 2001

• “Destination Japan: The Personal Collection as Alternative Archive,” Columbia University, The Makino Collection: The Present and the Future of an Archive (2011)
• “Eiga hozon to eiga kenkyu no tame no daigaku, aakaibu” aida kyoryoku,” (Creating a University/Museum Alliance: Selznick School of Film Preservation at the University of Rochester M.A. Program, UR/George Eastman House), 6th Kyoto Film Preservation Workshop at The Museum of Kyoto (2011)
• “Tourist Japan,” Teaching Japan: Pedagogical Possibilities in US Higher Education, DePaul University (2010); Asian Arts and Material Culture Colloquium, Beloit College (2009)
• “Bringing Life to the Page: The Yoda-Mizoguchi Collaboration,” Lo Sguardo dei Maestri, Centro di Espressioni Cinematografiche di Udine (2008)

Japanese culture; film history, theory, and visual analysis; nuclear history, culture and the visual image; animation; history of US-Japan relations; material culture studies; tourism studies; moving image archiving and preservation

• Atomic Creatures: Godzilla
• Tourist Japan
• Film as Object
• Akira Kurosawa
• Hayazaki Miyao and Planet Ghibli (Japanese Animation)
• History of Japanese Cinema
• Anime: Japanese Animation
• MLC Seminar

• Japan Foundation Short Term Research Grant for research in Japan
• NEH Summer Institute Fellow, “Modernity, Early Modernity, Postmodernity in Japan” (University of Southern California)
• Japan Foundation Publication Grant (Writing in Light)
• Theatre Librarian Association Award finalist (Writing in Light)
• Susan B. Anthony Research Institute for Women’s Studies Research and travel grant
• Association of Asian Studies Northeast Area Council Research and travel grant
• American Council of Learned Societies International conference travel grant, International Symposium on Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Università di Venezia Ca’ Foscari
• Harvard University, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
• Fulbright and Social Science Research Council Doctoral Research Fellowships
• Advisory Editor, Camera Obscura, 2006-present
• Selznick Graduate Program in Film and Media Preservation (UR-George Eastman House collaborative M.A. program): Admissions Committee (2004-present); MA Academic Program Advisor (2008-2010)
• Faculty Committee, Film and Media Studies Program, University of Rochester
• Director, Film and Media Studies Program, University of Rochester, 2004-2007; Interim Director, 2001-2002
• Associate, Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Rochester
• AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) Educational Committee, 2005-present
• Conference and Book reviewer for Film Quarterly, JAS, JATJ, JJS, IRIS, Cinema Journal, Monumenta Nipponica