Michiko Suzuki « Faculty
Assistant Professor, EALC
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Cultural 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
- J511, Research Methods in Japanese Studies
- J522, Readings in Modern Japanese Literature
Selected Awards and Distinctions
- 2009 IU-Bloomington Summer Faculty Fellowship
- 2009 CAHI Travel Grant
- 2008 EALC Trustees’ Teaching Award
- 2007 Association for Asian Studies Northeast Council Japan Studies Grant
- 2001-02 Japan Studies Fellowship, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
- 2001 Centennial Teaching Assistant Award (for Teaching Excellence), Stanford University
- 2001 Stanford University CEAS Fellowship for the Study of Women in Asia
Publication Highlights
- Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese Literature and Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, November, 2009.
- “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.
- "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.
- 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 holds an M. Phil and an M. A. in English Renaissance Literature 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.
In her current project, she looks at representations of the female body and the notions of chastity and virginity during the twentieth century in Japan. By focusing on ideas about purity and abstinence, especially in relation to nationhood, empire and war, she offers new ways of understanding national and gendered identities in Japanese popular media and fiction. Professor Suzuki teaches courses on Japanese language, literature, film, gender and popular culture.
