Curriculum Vitaes

WILLIAMS LAURENCE

(LAURENCE WILLIAMS)

Profile Information

Affiliation: Professor, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Department of English Studies, Sophia University

Degree: Ph.D.(Oxford University)
Ph.D.(オックスフォード大学)
Master of Studies(Oxford University)
Master of Studies(オックスフォード大学)
Bachelor of Arts(Oxford University)
Bachelor of Arts(オックスフォード大学)

Contact information: laurence-williamssophia.ac.jp
Other name(s) (e.g. nickname): ウィリアムズ・ローレンス
Researcher number: 50750486
J-GLOBAL ID: 201801010652131232
researchmap Member ID: 7000023341

External link: https://www.laurencewilliams.net

My research explores the interactions between travel writing and British literature in the long eighteenth century, focusing on narratives of China, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire. More recently, I have been working on nineteenth-century "globe-trotter" travel writing, particularly narratives written in the decades after the opening of Japan in the 1850s.

I'm currently co-editing a volume on Pacific travel writing, "Pacific Gateways", with Tomoe Kumojima. I co-edited (with Alex Watson) a collection of essays on "British Romanticism in Asia" (Palgrave, 2019), and (with Steve Clark) a Studies in Travel Writing special issue on "Isabella Bird, Victorian Women's Travel Writing, and Japan" (2017).

Research Interests

4

Research Areas

1

Humanities & social sciences / Literature - British/English-language /

Awards

5

Papers

8

“‘Like the Ladies of Europe’? Female Emancipation and the ‘Scale of Civilization’ in Victorian Women’s Writing on Japan, 1840–80”

Studies in Travel Writing, 21(1) 17-32, 2017
“Isabella Bird, Victorian Globalism, and Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880)”

Laurence Williams, Steve Clark

Studies in Travel Writing, 21(1) 1-16, 2017
Jonathan Swift and Kaempfer's history of Japan: The origins of the Court and Empire of Japan (1727/28)

Laurence Williams

Notes and Queries, 63(1) 79-82, 2016
“Anglo-Chinese Caresses: Civility, Friendship, and Trade in English Representations of China, 1760–1800”

Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 38(2) 277-296, 2015
“The Edo Period in English Literature? Japanese Isolationism in the Work of John Locke and Jonathan Swift”

Tohoku Romantic Studies, 1(1) 1-18, 2014

Misc.

6

“Two Boys with a Bladder”, Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97)

Laurence Williams

私の一枚 series (Tohoku Association for Romantic Studies website)., Sep, 2021 Invited
“Working at a Japanese University: An Attractive Option for International Humanities PhDs?”

Tokyo Humanities Insights (web publication), 1 1-15, 2019
(book review) Peter Kitson’s Forging Romantic China

Studies of Romanticism, 40 191-195, 2015
“Reframing the Oriental Tale”

Cambridge Quarterly, 38(2) 183-187, 2009
“City vices and rural virtues in Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer”

The English Review, 18(4) 38-41, 2008

Books and Other Publications

14

European Minor Literatures and Transnational Romanticism

Laurence Williams, Brecht de Groote, others (Role: Joint author)

2026
The Bloomsbury Handbook of British Romanticism and Asia, essay on “Hermit Kingdoms: British Ideas of Japan and Tibet, 1760–1860”

2025
Pacific Gateways: Trans-Oceanic Narratives and English Literature, 1780–1914

Williams, Laurence, Kumojima, Tomoe

Nov, 2024
Romantic Environmental Sensibility: Nature, Class and Empire, essay entitled “Orientalising the British Class System: Exploring the ‘Chinese’ Landscapes of Sir William Chambers, 1740–1775”, 34-59

Ve-Yin Tee, Laurence Williams (Role: Joint author)

Edinburgh University Press, 2022 (ISBN: 9781474456470)
Pacific Insularity: Imaginary Geography of Insular Spaces in the Pacific, essay titled “Satire Across a ‘Sea of Islands’: Japan and the Pacific in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels” (41-56)

Michael Heitkemper-Yates, Thomas Schwarz, Laurence Williams (Role: Joint author)

Rikkyo University Press, Apr, 2021
Robinson Crusoe in Asia, essay entitled “Religious Conversion and the Far East in the Crusoe Trilogy”, 109–135

Steve Clark, Yukari Yoshihara, Laurence Williams (Role: Joint author)

2021
Handbook of British Travel Writing, essay on “Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Tour Thro’ The Whole Island of Great Britain” (161-180)

Laurence Williams (Role: Joint author)

2020
(essay in edited volume) Literary Guide to Mount Fuji, essay on “Western Representations of Mount Fuji in the Nineteenth Century” (23-26)

WILLIAMS LAURENCE

2020
(volume co-editor) British Romanticism in Asia: The Reception, Translation, and Transformation of Romantic Literature in India and East Asia

WILLIAMS LAURENCE (Role: Joint editor)

Palgrave, 2019
(essay in edited volume) Eastern Resonances in Early Modern England (essay on “The Manchu Invasion of Britain: Nomadic Resonances in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Chinoiserie Aesthetics, and Material Culture”)

WILLIAMS LAURENCE

Palgrave, 2019
(co-editor of journal special issue) Isabella Bird, Victorian Women’s Travel Writing, and Japan

WILLIAMS LAURENCE (Role: Joint editor)

Special journal issue of Studies in Travel Writing, 21.1, 2017
(essay in edited volume) New Directions in Travel Writing Studies, chapter on “Revising the Contact Zone: William Adams, Reception History, and the Opening of Japan, 1600 – 1860”

WILLIAMS LAURENCE

Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
(essay in edited volume) Eighteenth-Century Cultural Intermediaries, essay on “Navigating the Paths of Eastern Romance: The Arabian Nights in Eighteenth-Century English Descriptions of Constantinople”

WILLIAMS LAURENCE

Honoré Champion, 2015
(encyclopedia entry) The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of British Literature: 1660–1789, contributor of essay on “The Oriental Tale”

WILLIAMS LAURENCE

Wiley-Blackwell, 2014

Presentations

34

Japan as Utopia in 19th Century British Travel Writing

Laurence Williams

Language and Cultures Online Lecture Series, Ignatianum University, Poland, Dec 3, 2025
Chair: Panel on "Frankenstein Across Medias and Cultures"

Symposium: "Frankenstein in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Adaptation, Intermediality, Translation" (Meiji University), Oct 18, 2025
“Nineteenth-Century British Writing on Japan and Isabella Bird’s ‘Unbeaten Tracks’”

Laurence Williams

College of Humanities and Sciences, Nihon University (Invited lecture), Nov 13, 2023
Chair: “Sexual Politics of Empire” panel, Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies World Congress

Jun 20, 2023
Co-organizer: “English Literature and the Pacific” symposium, Meiji University, Tokyo

Jan 21, 2023

Professional Memberships

3

Research Projects

6

Chained Islands: Cross-Cultural Interactions Between Britain and Japan, 1660 - 1853

Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Apr, 2015 - Mar, 2019

Williams Laurence
The formation of modern civil society and the transition of spiritual culture in the representation of "time" in 18th century Russian literature

Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Apr, 2015 - Mar, 2019

KANAZAWA Michiko
“Chained Islands: Cultural Interactions Between Japan and Britain, 1630–1850”

JSPS Kaken grant (15K16696), 2015 - 2019
The formation of modern civil society and the transition of spiritual culture in the representation of "time" in 18th century Russian literature (co-researcher)

JSPS (15K02406), 2015 - 2018
“Positioning Tokyo as Global City: Anglo-American Narratives of the New Japanese Capital, 1868–1922”

JSPS Kaken grant (18K12316), 2018

Academic Activities

4

Reviewer for "Studies in Travel Writing"

Peer review

Aug, 2023
Series Editor, Palgrave "Asia-Pacific and Literature in English" series

Planning, Management, etc.

2018 - 2023
Reviewer for University of South Carolina Press

Peer review

Dec, 2021
Editorial consultant for PIE International edition of Kakuzo Okakura, "The Book of Tea" (2020)

Supervision (editorial)

2020 - 2020

Social Activities

4

Advisory board, Routledge "Asia, Europe, and Global Connections" series

Others

2020
Editorial committee, Palgrave "Asia Pacific and Literature in English" series

Others

2019
Founding editor, "Tokyo Humanities", and co-organizer of Tokyo Humanities Cafe

Others

2016
Editorial Committee, "Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture"

Others

2015

Other

1

（免許・資格）Associate Fellow UK Higher Education Academy

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