Researcher Profile and Settings

researchmap

https://researchmap.jp/akira.suwa

Research Interests

• Adaptation Studies
• Queer Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Neo-Victorianism

Research Areas

• Humanities & social sciences / Literature - British/English-languag

Research Experience

• Doshisha University, Faculty of Global Communications, 助教, 2022/04 - Today
• Ritsumeikan University, Center for Language Education and Research, 嘱託講師, 2020/04 - 2022/03
• Kokushikan University, Faculty of Political Science and Economics, 非常勤講師, 2019/04 - 2020/03

Education

• Cardiff University, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, 2014/10 - 2019/04
• University of York, Department of English and Related Literature, 2011/10 - 2013/01
• Sophia University, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Department of English Language and Studies, 2007/04 - 2011/03

Degree

• Ph.D. (English Literature), Cardiff University, Apr. 2019
• MA (Film and Literature), University of York, Jan. 2013
• Mar. 2011

Association Memberships

• ディケンズ・ファロウシップ日本支部
• 日本ヴィクトリア朝文化研究学会
• British Association for Victorian Studies
• 日本英文学会

Published Papers

• “[T]hey’re As Excited by London As I Am”: Queer/ing Streetwalking in the Novels of Sarah Waters
  Akira Suwa
  Contemporary Women's Writing, 19 1 - 18, Jun. 2025, Scientific journal
  

  DOI URL
• Metatextual Space and the Potential for Utopia in Affinity
  諏訪暁
  コミュニカーレ, (12) 21 - 40, Mar. 2023, Research institution
• Heterotopic and Neo-Victorian Affinities: Introducing the Special Issue on Neo-Victorian Heterotopias
  Marie-Luise Kohlke; Elizabeth Ho; Akira Suwa
  Humanities, MDPI AG, 11(8) 1 - 10, Jan. 2022, Scientific journal
  

  URLURL of the attached fileDOI URL
• Heterotopic Potential of Darkness: Exploration and Experimentation of Queer Space in Sarah Waters’s Neo-Victorian Trilogy
  Akira Suwa
  Humanities, MDPI AG, 11(5) 1 - 11, Dec. 2021, Scientific journal
  

  URLURL of the attached fileDOI URL
• Imagining Monstrosity: Water and the Gothic in Don’t Look Now
  諏訪暁
  外国語外国文化研究, 30 22 - 32, Mar. 2020, Research institution
• What Makes It Neo-Victorian?: The Handmaiden and the Double Internalisation of Cultural Colonisation
  Akira Suwa
  Victoriographies: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing, 1790-1914, Edinburgh University Press, 9(3) 280 - 297, Nov. 2019, Scientific journal
  

  URLDOI URL
• “Staying in the Mess”: Gender, Sexuality and Queer Heterotopic Space in Sarah Waters’s Neo-Historical Narratives
  Akira Suwa
  Aug. 2018, Doctoral thesis
• Consuming Gender: Identity Construction under Global Capitalism
  Megen de Bruin-Molé; Daný van Dam; Akira Suwa
  Assuming Gender, 6(1) 1 - 10, Dec. 2017, Scientific journal
  

  URL of the attached file
• Dolls to Slide in Grooves: Performance in Paradoxical Space in Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith
  Akira Suwa
  Postgraduate English: A Journal and Forum for Postgraduates in English, 31, Oct. 2015, Scientific journal
  

  URL of the attached file

MISC

• Scandal and Survival in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: The Life of Jane Cumming (Review)
  Akira Suwa
  British Association of Victorian Studies Newsletter, 21(2) 3 , Jul. 2021, Book review
• Sarah Waters: Gender and Sexual Politics (Review)
  Akira Suwa
  Contemporary Women's Writing, Oxford University Press (OUP), 12(3) 387 - 389, Dec. 2018, Book review
  

  URLDOI URL
• Sex, Time and Place: Queer Histories of London, c. 1850 to the Present (Review)
  Akira Suwa
  British Association of Victorian Studies Newsletter, 17(3) 31 - 32, Dec. 2017, Book review

Presentations

• ネオ・ヴィクトリアニズムとシャーロック・ホームズ（ラウンドテーブル：表象される／されないヴィクトリア朝：ポップカルチャーとアダプテーション）
  諏訪暁
  日本ヴィクトリア朝文化研究学会 第 24 回 全国大会, 23 Nov. 2024
• Holmes in 'Victorian Kyoto': Metafictionality and 'Fauxstalgic' Longing in Tomihiko Morimi's The Triumphant Return of Sherlock Holmes (2024)
  Akira Suwa
  Cardiff BAVS 2024, 10 Sep. 2024
• Subverting the Heteropatriarchal Voice in Lyndsay Turner’s Tipping the Velvet (2015)
  Akira Suwa
  Women Staging and Re-staging the Nineteenth Century (II), 20 Oct. 2023, 18 Oct. 2023, 20 Oct. 2023, Oral presentation
• Liminal Identities and Heterotopic Spaces in Sarah Moss’s Signs for Lost Children
  Akira Suwa
  British Association for Victorian Studies Annual Conference, 02 Sep. 2023, 31 Aug. 2023, 02 Sep. 2023, Oral presentation
• “We are always strangers in a strange land”: Neo-Victorian Liminality in Sarah Moss's Signs for Lost Children
  諏訪暁
  日本ヴィクトリア朝文化研究学会第22回全国大会, 19 Nov. 2022, Oral presentation
• Romanticising the Victorian Past for the Japanese Reader in Moriarty the Patriot
  Akira Suwa
  British Association for Victorian Studies Annual Conference, 01 Sep. 2022, Oral presentation
• Traces of Victorian Britain in Northeast Asia: Cross-Cultural Neo-Victorianism in Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden
  Akira Suwa
  (Neo-)Victorian ‘Orientations’ in the Twenty-First Century, 15 May 2019, 15 May 2019, 17 May 2019, Oral presentation
• What Makes It Neo-Victorian?: The Haunting Presence of Victorian Britain in The Handmaiden
  Akira Suwa
  British Association of Victorian Studies Annual Conference, 30 Aug. 2018, Oral presentation
• “There’s a part of me that always belongs here”: Queering Biological Kinship in Tipping the Velvet
  Akira Suwa
  Association of Adaptation Studies Conference, 19 Sep. 2017, Oral presentation
• Unbinding Lesbian Desire: Metatextual Space and Utopia in Sarah Waters’s Affinity
  Akira Suwa
  British Association of Victorian Studies Annual Conference, 23 Aug. 2017, Oral presentation
• Searching for Lesbian Utopian Space in Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet
  Akira Suwa
  International Conference of the Utopian Society Europe, 06 Jul. 2016, Oral presentation
• Playing with Genres: Women, Class and Domesticity in Sarah Waters’s The Paying Guests
  Akira Suwa
  Reading the Present through the Past: Forms and Trajectories of Neo-Historical Fiction, 04 Mar. 2016, Public symposium
• In Search for Traces of Utopia: Books and Journals in Sarah Waters’s Affinity and Fingersmith
  Akira Suwa
  Material Traces of the Past in Contemporary Literature, 08 May 2015, Oral presentation

Research Projects

• Gender, Sexuality, and Heterotopia in Neo-Victorian Literature
  Akira SUWA
  令和3年度は、フーコーが提唱する「ヘテロトピア」に関する文献調査を中心に研究を行なった。ヘテロトピアの特徴はひとつの空間の中にさまざまな（ときには相反する）価値観を並置することを可能にし、その空間内で新たなネットワークが形成される点である。また、ヘテロトピアの例としてフーコーが挙げている博物館のように、ヘテロトピアは過去と現在が混在する空間であることから、ヘテロトピアは直線的・一方向的ではない新たな時間軸・空間軸を提示するものである。また、ネオ・ヴィクトリアン文学は、ヴィクトリア朝時代を舞台としながらも現代的な視点から過去を再解釈・再考察しようとする行為を伴うものであり、ヘテロトピアとの親和性が認められる。 また、学術雑誌Humanitiesの特別号（タイトル：Neo-Victorian Heterotopias）の編集をMarie-Luise Kohlke（スウォンジー大学）、Elizabeth Ho（香港大学）と共同で務め、2022年1月にオンラインで出版した。特別号は9名のネオ・ヴィクトリアニズム研究者による論文（編集者3名の論文を含む）と編集者による序論で構成されている。序論では、先ほど述べたネオ・ヴィクトリアン文学とヘテロトピアの親和性について説明し、両者の相関関係に着目することで、両者に共通するユートピア性と他者性について明らかにすることができると論じた。同じく特別号に掲載された論文において、現代イギリスの女性作家サラ・ウォーターズのネオ・ヴィクトリアン文学作品における暗闇に着目し、登場人物が反家父長的、反異性愛規範的な欲望を追求する過程で暗闇が重要な役割を果たしていると論じた。, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists, 2021/04 -2025/03, Principal investigator, Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists, Ritsumeikan University