2019 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Aesthetic Perspectives of Travel-Essays in German Speaking Literature
| Project/Area Number |
19K00501
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| Research Institution | Tokyo Metropolitan University |
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Principal Investigator |
シュレンドルフ レオポルト 首都大学東京, 人文科学研究科, 准教授 (20773188)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
山本 浩司 早稲田大学, 文学学術院, 教授 (80267442)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | Essayism / Travel / Globalization / Subjectivity / Gender / Travel |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
During the first semester of the project I reached out both for Japanese and international researchers in order to establish a platform for collaboration and exchange. This allowed me to broaden the horizon of my research and to plan a joint public presentation at a conference of the Japanese Society of German Studies. At 2019th Asian Germanist Society Conference (August 2019, Sapporo) I presented some of our key ideas. In contemporary literary discourse essayistic writing is no longer primarily understood as a literary genre, but rather as a way of thinking and writing that is experimentally generated from the subjective experience of the writer. For this particular reason, we focus on the subjectivity of the author and the cognitive functions of his/her journey.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
It turned out that there is a diverse and rapidly growing research landscape in the field of traveling in literature as well as essay writing, while the intersection of both, the travel essay, is still underrepresented in German contemporary literary discourse. To fill this research gap, I decided to collaborate with international researchers from Germany and China. The discussion appeared to be fruitful, so we plan to present our findings in one of the next Japanese Germanist' Society Congresses and to continue publishing our research results. In the Austrian national library archives, I discovered some unpublished documents of early 1900th travel author Alice Schalek concerning her journeys to China and Japan which gave us new insights in the production of travel essays.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, some conferences both in Japan and internationally were cancelled or postponed. Nevertheless, we hope to be able to present our research results in the near future to a broader audience. In the meantime, we concentrate on publications rather than public presentations. In addition, journeys to international research institutions appear to be rather difficult, as most countries currently maintain tight border restrictions. For this reason, we will intensify our co-operation by web-meetings and digital conferences. While journeys to international libraries appear to be difficult, many research institutions nowadays open up their digital resources to the Scientific community. We will try to use these opportunities for our project.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Covid-19 outbreak caused the cancellation of a journey
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