She researches how the urban experience has shaped human subjectivity, cultural production, and gender roles. Her major publications include Tokyo in Transit: Japanese Culture on the Rails and Road (Stanford University Press, 2010), an annotated translation of Kawabata Yasunari's The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (University of California Press, 2005), and her co-edited Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2012). Alisa has published articles on Japanese modernism, youth culture, humor as critique, nerd culture, and the intersections of literature and digital media. Her current projects include a book manuscript on changing images of working women on Japanese television, a study of Japanese appropriations of global children's culture, and literary translations.