Prof. Dr. Judit Árokay

Deutsch

Biography

• 1990 M.A. in English and German linguistics and literature at Eötvös-Loránd-University, Budapest.
• 1994 M.A. in Japanese Studies and German Literature at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
• 1998 Doctors Degree with a thesis about the reception of classical Japanese women’s poetry in the Middle Ages at the University of Hamburg.
• 1998–2004 Assistant Professor at the Institute for Japanese Studies at the University of Hamburg.
• 2004–2007 Assistant Professor at the Institute for Japanese Studies at Free University Berlin.
• 2007 Habilitation with a thesis about the modernization of poetic expression in Japan during the late 18th and early 19th century.
• Since Oct. 2007 full professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Heidelberg.

Research Interests

Projects

• Digital Literary Map of Japan　　日本のデジタル文学地図

  The project aims at displaying geographical spots within Japan that convey literary associations and had a significant impact on the cultural landscape of Japan. Names of famous places – called utamakura in Japanese - came to be used in poetry from around the 8th century and had been in use since then, not only in poems but also in prose literature, in the Japanese theater and in pictorial images. Their importance lies in the poetic imagery they convey, as they function as an intertextual reference: mentioning a famous poetic spot by name evokes a series of seasonal, scenic and atmospheric associations. Without the knowledge of this imagery, it is hardly possible to understand premodern texts.

  This bilingual (Japanese-English) project aims at a web application with an online database that makes information on these spots easily accessible.

  The “Digital Literary Map of Japan (DLM)” started 2016 as a project in the framework of the Marsilius Kolleg in Heidelberg, and has been supported since then by the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the Faculty of Letters of Ōsaka University, and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (Kaken 2021-25). The collaboration is carried out with Prof. Iikura Yōichi and Prof. Nakao Kaoru from Ōsaka University.

  The application is hosted by the National Institute of Japanese Literature.

  Direct access: https://literarymaps.nijl.ac.jp.

• Bunron

  The journal Bunron ("Text and Theory") has been published since 2014 and specializes in literary studies-oriented contributions to text-related research on Japan. It publishes scholarly studies, translations, reviews, and reports on conferences and ongoing projects. The journal is multilingual and features articles in German, Japanese, English, and French.

  Co-editors: Prof. Dr. Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt and Dr. Barbara Geilhorn.
  www.bunron.org

Main Publications