Professors Information

Email: mwthompson[at]sophia.ac.jp
Tel: 03-3238-4034
Office: 10-644

THOMPSON Mathew

Associate Professor
Premodern Japanese Literature

B.A., Yale University
M.A., Ph.D., Columbia University

Research and Teaching Interests:
My research focuses on the representation of samurai and warfare in Muromachi and Tokugawa period literature. Several topics, in particular, have captured my attention: the corpus of narratives contributing to the legend of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the narratology of performance-based genres such as ko-jôruri and kôwakamai librettos, and the transmission and (re)imagination of the medieval past in early modern society. Aside from working on several journal articles and the ‘translation’ of my dissertation into a monograph, I am also involved in the production of new game-based teaching materials for Japanese history and literature, as well as a symposium on the construction of samurai identity in the seventeenth century to take place in December of 2012 at Sophia University.

COURSES

Faculty of Liberal Arts

Course No.                              Title
LIT325 ASIAN TEXTS: LEGACY OF THE PAST
LIT331 SURVEY OF JAPANESE LITERATURE 1
LIT353 WRITING ABOUT LOVE: PAST AND PRESENT
LIT445 SAMURAI IN LITERATURE AND HISTORY

Graduate Program in Global Studies

Course No.                              Title
JS520Z PRE-MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE 1
JS523Z PRE-MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE 2
JS718Z ADVANCED STUDIES IN PRE-MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE 1
JS719Z ADVANCED STUDIES IN PRE-MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE 2

Sophia University

For Others, With Others