Aaron Gerow is associate professor in Japanese cinema at Yale University, where he teaches in the Film Studies Program and the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. He received a MFA in film studies from Columbia University in 1987, a MA in Asian Civilizations from the University of Iowa in 1992, and a PhD in Communication Studies from Iowa in 1996. He spent nearly 12 years in Japan working for the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and teaching at Yokohama National University and Meiji Gakuin University. He has published numerous articles in English, Japanese and other languages on such topics as Japanese early cinema, contemporary directors, film genre, censorship, Japanese manga, nationalism, cinema and war, and cinematic representations of minorities. His book on Kitano Takeshi was published by the BFI in 2007 and his monograph on A Page of Madness came out from the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan in 2008. The Center also published his Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies (co-authored with Abe Mark Nornes) in 2009. His book on early Japanese film culture and discourse will be published by the University of California Press, the Japanese version of which will be coming out from the University of Tokyo Press. He is currently working on books on the history of Japanese film theory and on 1990s Japanese cinema.

He is co-owner of the KineJapan discussion list and maintains his own Japanese cinema site/blog: Tangemania.