2018 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Literary Geographies of Absence
| Project/Area Number |
17K02538
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| Research Institution | The University of Tokyo |
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Principal Investigator |
HONES Sheila 東京大学, 大学院総合文化研究科, 教授 (70206035)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
矢口 祐人 東京大学, 大学院総合文化研究科, 教授 (00271700)
カーターホワイト リチャード 東京大学, 教養学部, 特任准教授 (00726234)
THURGILL JAMES 東京大学, 教養学部, 特任准教授 (20783210)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2017-04-01 – 2019-03-31
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| Keywords | literary geography / space / absence / memories / empathy / engagement and distance |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The research project ‘Literary Geographies of Absence’ (2017-18) built on earlier funded research projects in the area of literary geography to open up a new theoretical and thematic line of work for interdisciplinary literary/geographical research grounded in recent geographical work on the concept of absence. Project members also continued its work on literary geography generally, maintaining the journal Literary Geographies and organising two international workshops on literary geography, both held at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In terms of original research, for this round of the ongoing project, participants first collectively established a theoretical framework for understanding the significance of absence to author-reader interaction, vicarious reader experience, engagement across distance, and empathy. Project members also discussed collectively the connections between geographies of absence and the selective institutional remembrance of the past. Research collaborations with colleagues at Swansea Uni. (UK), Macquarie Uni. (Australia) and the Uni. of Turin (Italy) were continued. Individually, project members produced a range of conference presentations and publications linked to the theme of absence in literary geography. This output focused on questions of presence and absence in relation to topics such as major disasters (e.g. the 2011 earthquake and tsunami), historical trauma and genocide (e.g. Nazi death camps and military attacks), haunting and ghostly presences (e.g. the ghost stories of M.R. James and their Nortolk settings), and war memory narratives.
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