Matthew Mewhinney

Matthew Mewhinney earned both a B.A. in Japanese Studies and Chinese Studies (2006) and a M.A. in Asian Studies from University of California, Santa Barbara (2009), and a Ph.D. in Japanese Language from University of California, Berkeley (2018). He teaches Japanese language as well as courses on Japanese literature, culture, and film. His research interests include lyric poetry and theory, narrative, subjectivity, and translation.

His first book, Form and Feeling in Japanese Literati Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), examines how four writers transformed the Japanese literati (bunjin) tradition by creating new poetic forms of irony and lyricism. He was interviewed about the book on the New Books Network podcast.

He currently has two ongoing projects. One explores the aesthetic experience of reading in Japanese literature. The other examines the poetry of Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916).

Research Interests

Japanese literature and culture

Lyric poetry and theory

Romanticism

Imagination

Subjectivity

Translation

Courses Taught

East Asian Humanities

Conceptualizations of the Imagination in East Asia and Beyond

War and Representation

Touched by Japanese Cinema

Prewar Japanese Literature

Postwar Japanese Literature

Premodern Japanese Literature in Translation

Modern Japanese Literature in Translation 

Contemporary Japanese Literature in Translation

Life-Writing in Japan

Translating Japanese

Selected Publications

• “The Reader is Hooked: Ema Saikō’s Poems on The Tale of Genji.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 17, no. 2 (Spring 2023): 243-273. 
• “The Rhythm of Breath in Natsume Sōseki’s Recollecting and Such.” Literature 3, no. 1 (2023): 94-111.
• “The Pheasant’s Call and the Sound of Sympathy.” Japanese Language and Literature 56, no. 1 (April 2022): 1-41.
• “Translating ‘Jamesian Precisions’ in Natsume Sōseki’s Light and Dark.” The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture 15, no. 1 (December 2021): 77-113.