Peter Bernard

Assistant Professor, Keio University Faculty of Letters

Born in 1989 (Massachusetts, U.S.A.). Ph.D., East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Assistant Professor, Keio University Faculty of Letters. Specializes in modern Japanese literature, supernatural fiction, and Gothic studies. His current research project considers why and how rural space came to be depicted as a haunted site of horror through the combination of ethnographic and modern literary practices in the works of such authors as Izumi Kyōka, M. R. James, and H. P. Lovecraft. He is also interested in Hinatsu Kōnosuke and the history of the Gothic as a particular kind of translation strategy in modern Japan. Publications include the translation A Bird of a Different Feather: A Picture Book (Kokushokankokai, 2017; original story by Izumi Kyōka, with illustrations by Nakagawa Gaku) and “Yakumo on the Gulf: Some Notes on Reading Hearn’s Chita as a Gothic Text” (Geibun kenkyū 119.1 (2020)).