Faculty

English and American Literature
Middle English Literature (Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Religious Prose in English and Latin)

The main focus of my research is on religious literature written in fourteenth- to fifteenth-century England. I'm particularly interested in how Latin devotional treatises were translated into the vernacular language, i.e. English, as well as what kind of theological discussion might have been received by vernacular readers and audiences.

English and American Literature
Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, Linguistics Communicator

Specializes in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and sociopragmatics, with a primary focus on English and Japanese. Research explores the globalization and localization of English, particularly in the translation and adaptation of Japanese language products (e.g., anime, news, business documents). Publications in these fields propose the Ecology of Communication perspective, which emphasizes the social, economic, and technological dimensions of language use. In the digital era, English serves as a mediating language for relay translation across business, entertainment, and news discourses. In addition to academic research, actively engages as a linguistics communicator, raising awareness about language-related issues and fostering dialogue on the role of language in society. This includes exploring how linguistic practices are shaped by globalization, digitalization, AI and cross-cultural interaction.

English and American Literature
American Literature, Women's Literature, Gender Studies

My main research interests is in works by 19th-century female authors in American literature. Additionally, I am interested in works that depict issues related to gender and sexuality, as well as the struggles faced by people on the social margins. I am also interested in the influence of American culture and literature on Japanese shojo culture from the Meiji period through the 1970s.

English and American Literature
History, American Studies, History of Children and Childhood, Legal History, Law and the Humanities

Yukako Otori is a writer with research specialties in the historical development of ideas and practices concerning childhood. She is currently Associate Professor of English and the Humanities at Keio University. Previously she earned her doctorate in history at Harvard University and taught at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Her current book project, tentatively titled Future Citizens? Childhood and Citizenship at the US Border, illuminates the intersection of child protection and border control during the Progressive Era.

English and American Literature
American Literature, Canadian Literature

I am hopefully trying to grasp the historically complicated cross-hybridity of American literature and Canadian literature. This primary interest has developed into another direction: cultural transactions across the Pacific. I am especially interested in cultural exchanges between the U.S., Canada and Japan. I also have to confess my fascination with kappa, or a Japanese water sprite.

English and American Literature
Intercultural Communication, Acculturation Psychology

My research interests are in intercultural communication, acculturation psychology, and intercultural education. I aim to facilitate positive intercultural contact both in Japan and abroad and to advance theoretical research by developing new ways of conceptualizing the acculturation process and its outcomes.

English and American Literature
Modern and Contemporary English Literature

My current research interests focus primarily on the Gothic fiction from the 18th to the early 20th century.

English and American Literature
American Literature

My research interests range from the Colonial era to the American Renaissance. I have published articles on the Puritans in America, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry David Thoreau as well as a book on Thoreau's Walden.

English and American Literature
English Literature between the 18th and 20th Centuries; Modern Fantasy Literature

I am interested in English poetry and prosody, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, British medievalism, and modern fantasy literature as its development.

English and American Literature
Modern English Literature

My research focuses on the relationship between literature and music. I am particularly interested in how English literature has influenced/has been influenced by music, for instance the image of sound and music in the Romantic poetry, the operatic treatment of Shakespeare’s plays, and the critical activity of G. B. Shaw. This interest extends to translating into Japanese of the publications on various aspects of music and culture, such as Shaw’s commentary on Wagner’s opera The Ring of the Nibelung, the study of Nazi exploitation of the works and the image of Mozart, and the biographies of the conductor Bruno Walter and the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

English and American Literature
20th Century American Literature

My research has focused on 20th century American literature and culture. I am particularly interested in Ernest Hemingway, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin.

English and American Literature
Medieval English Literature, History of the Book, Bibliography

My research interests include book production and literary culture in late medieval England.

English and American Literature
Modern and Contemporary English Literature; Poetry and Poetics

My main research interests are in nineteenth-century British poetry, and particularly the works of Alfred Tennyson. I have an interest in poetics, allusion, translation, and nonsense writing, but Iʼm particularly interested in repetition, and the specific focus of my doctoral research was the use of repetition in Tennysonʼs poetry.

English and American Literature
English Literature (Early Modern and Modern), Comparative Literature, Cultural History of Book and Publication, English Literary Education

My major research subject is early modern and modern English literature; in particular, I am interested in English novels from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first century. My researches also include some related areas: comparative studies in Western literary movements, translation and adaptation of English literature in Japan, the relationship between the development of the English novel and the history of book production, and English literary education from the historical point of view.

English and American Literature
Modern Japanese Literature, Comparative Literature, Supernatural Fiction, Gothic Studies

My current research project considers why and how rural space came to be depicted as a haunted site of horror through the combination of ethnographic and modern literary practices in the works of such authors as Izumi Kyōka, M. R. James, and H. P. Lovecraft. I am also interested in Hinatsu Kōnosuke and the history of the Gothic as a particular kind of translation strategy in modern Japan.

English and American Literature
Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture

I have mainly studied Mark Twain (1835–1910), one of the greatest American realist writers. My current research project focuses on sensationalism and expansionism in the works of Antebellum writers, especially George Lippard (1822–1854).

English and American Literature
History of English and Historical Linguistics

My main areas of research are the history of English and the mechanism of language change with special attention to the questions of how and why language changes. Questions have never ceased to arise since I first addressed the matter of the nominal plural -s in English several years ago. My recent research questions include the history of English spelling and the historical development of "diatonic" stress alternation (such as REcord for noun and reCORD for verb).

English and American Literature
Philosophy and Literature in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Global Intellectual History, Hume Studies

Yusuke Wakazawa is an intellectual historian of eighteenth-century Britain, chiefly of the Scottish Enlightenment, trained in Philosophy and English. He is particularly interested in David Hume as a distinctive man of letters, and discusses him along with representative figures of eighteenth-century literature including James Boswell and Tobias Smollett. He has studied and researched in three countries: the UK (Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of York), the US (New York University), and Japan (Keio University and the University of Tokyo). In 2019, he completed his JASSO-funded doctorate in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. His current project aims to trace the intellectual genealogy of the Addisonian model of philosophy and conversation in the long eighteenth century. Prior to this job appointment at Keio University, he was a J. D. Fleeman Fellow at the University of St Andrews (2020) and an EAA Project Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo (2020-21).