Michiko Suzuki « Faculty
Associate Professor, EALC
Adjunct Associate Professor, Cultural Studies
Adjunct Associate Professor, Gender Studies
micsuzuk 
indiana.edu
Goodbody Hall 327
(812) 856-7002
Education
- PhD, Japanese, Stanford University
Research Interests
- Fiction
- Literary genre and criticism
- Cultural and gender studies
- Identity construction
- Film
Courses Recently Taught
- E200, Introduction to East Asian Studies
- E322, Modern Japanese Literature
- E372/505, Topic: Japanese Popular Culture
- E372/505, Topic: Modern Japanese Women Writers
- E300/505, Topic: The "Other" in Japanese Literature and Film
- E300/505, Topic: Introduction to Japanese Film
- J491/505, Topic: Reading Modern and Contemporary Japanese Fiction
- J511, Research Methods in Japanese Studies
- J522, Readings in Modern Japanese Literature
Selected Recent Awards and Distinctions
- 2012 New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Exploratory Travel Fellowship
- 2012 Overseas Conference Grant
- 2011 College Arts and Humanities Institute Travel Grant
- 2011 Association for Asian Studies Northeast Council Japan Studies Grant
- 2009 IU-Bloomington Summer Faculty Fellowship
- 2009 College Arts and Humanities Institute Travel Grant
- 2008 Trustees’ Teaching Award
- 2007 Association for Asian Studies Northeast Council Japan Studies Grant
Publication Highlights
Book:
- Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese Literature and Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. [2010 Choice Outstanding Academic Title]
Articles:
- “The Husband’s Chastity: Progress, Equality and Difference in 1930s Japan.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 38, no. 2 (Winter 2013): 327-52.
- "Shinju fujin, Newspapers and Celebrity in Taisho Japan." Japan Review, no. 24 (2012): 105-25.
- “Writing Same-Sex Love: Sexology and Literary Representation in Yoshiya Nobuko’s Early Fiction.” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 65, no. 3. August 2006: 575-99.
- “Consumption and Leisure: An Intratextual Reading of Hisao Jūran’s Kyarako san.” Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies, vol. 7 (2006): 78-84.
- "Progress and Love Marriage: Rereading Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's Chijin no ai." The Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 31, no. 2. Summer 2005: 357-84.
- "Becoming a Virgin: Female Growth and Sexuality in Yoshiya Nobuko's Yaneura no nishojo." Across Time and Genre: Reading and Writing Japanese Women's Texts. Eds. Janice Brown and Sonja Arntzen. Edmonton: University of Alberta, 2002: 52-56.
- "Kindaiteki shutai tankyu: Josei jiko keisei shosetsu to shite no Yaneura no nishojo" (Searching for the Modern Subject: Two Virgins in the Attic as Female Bildungsroman). Kotaba to sozoryoku (Words and Imagination). Eds Kaneko Yuji and Onishi Naoki. Tokyo: Kaibunsha, 2001: 198-214.
Translation:
- The Unordered World.” Translation of Okamoto Kanoko’s “Konton Mibun.” Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, vol. 8. Summer 1996: 158-71.
Michiko Suzuki received her Ph.D. in Japanese with a minor in Comparative Literature from Stanford University. She also studied English Renaissance literature and received an M.Phil and an M.A. respectively from Cambridge University and the University of Tokyo. Her research focuses on the dynamic intersection of literature, history and culture, particularly as manifest in women's writing, popular literature, magazines and newspapers.
Her first book, Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese Literature and Culture, examines fiction by women writers in conjunction with a range of sociohistorical and cultural discourses about love. Focusing on same-sex love, love marriage and maternal love—terms newly created in Japan during the early twentieth century—this book explores how modern female identity was imagined and constructed during the 1910s-30s.
Currently she is working on several projects. The first explores material culture and issues of gender and representation in postwar literature and film. The second looks at early twentieth-century ideas of male-female difference, from specific topics such as chastity to broad notions of difference, expressed in various discourses including sexology. The third project examines 1980s films. Professor Suzuki teaches courses on Japanese language, literature, film, gender and popular culture.
