Prof. Dr. Kristina IWATA-WEICKGENANNT
My name is Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt, and I teach Japanese modern literature in the Japan-in-Asia Cultural Studies Program at Nagoya University. My work has focused on geographies of marginality and marginalization in contemporary Japanese literature. Specifically, I have published on Zainichi Korean literature, literary representations of precarity, and cultural responses to the 3/11-“Fukushima” disaster in 2011. My research is informed by the frameworks of gender studies, post-colonial literature studies, and eco-critical approaches to literature. I have been a member of EAJS since the 2005 conference in Vienna—which memorably coincided with Hurricane Katrina—and have not missed a conference since. While I have also attended many other conferences, the EAJS remains a home base where I feel most connected. Since 2021, I have served on the EAJS Council with the aim of giving back after years of being a participant. I have found the experience to be a positive one marked by fruitful exchanges and good cooperation, and an enjoyable atmosphere. I look forward to continuing to contribute to the EAJS community in the future with the same level of enthusiasm.
Curriculum Vitae
2023 – present: Professor at Nagoya University, Graduate School of Humanities
2013 – 2023: Associate Professor at Nagoya University, Graduate School of Humanities
2013: Deputy Director at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) Tokyo
2008 – 2013: Senior Research Fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) Tokyo
2008: EAJS Book Prize (2nd place)
2003 – 2008: Research Associate/ Project Member, Lecturer, Dept. of Japanese Studies at University of Trier, Germany
2007: PhD, University of Trier, Germany
2000: Magistra Artium, Free University Berlin & Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
List of selected publications
2023. “Voice and Voicelessness: On the Use of Tōhoku Vernaculars in Post-3.11 Literature”, in Linda Flores, Barbara Geilhorn, eds, Literature after Fukushima. From Marginalized Voices to Nuclear Futurity. London: Routledge, 47-65.
2021. “Kusomamire no inochi—kyapitarosen hihan toshite Kimura Yūsuke no Cs Seichi o yomu”, in Kimura Saeko and Anne Bayard-Sakai, eds, Sekai bungaku toshite no ‘shinsaigo bungaku’. Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 289-310.
2020. “Broken Narratives, Multiple Truths: Writing ‘History’ in Yū Miri’s The End of August.” positions east asia cultures critique, Vol. 28 No.4, 815-840.
2020. “Shi ni kizamu kimuchi—‘zainichi’ shijin no egaku shoku, jendā, sabetsu”, in JunCture (Tokushū kokumin, kokka, shoku), Vol. 11. 58-71.
2019. “The Roads to Disaster, or Rewriting History from the Margins—Yū Miri’s JR Ueno Station Park Exit.” Contemporary Japan, Vol. 31, No. 2, 180-196, doi10.1080/18692729.2019.1578848.
