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

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
“John Keats and Lafcadio Hearn’s Translations of Japanese Insect Melody”

Laurence Williams

48th Japan Association of English Romanticism Conference, Matsuyama University, Oct 16, 2022
“Re-Evaluating Elizabeth Craven: A Pioneering Eighteenth-Century Traveller and Feminist Writer”

“What’s in a Name? Re-evaluating marginalized figures from the Early Modern Period in Britain”, King's College London (online presentation), Aug 25, 2022
“‘The real melancholy inspired by autumn’: Lafcadio Hearn’s Translations of Japanese Insect Melody”

Laurence Williams

Translating British Romanticism in East Asia, Ghent University (online presentation), Apr 22, 2022
“Romanticism in Asia” panel chair

Laurence Williams

Japan Association of English Romanticism 45th Annual Conference, Otsuma Women’s University, Oct 20, 2019
“First Impressions of Yokohama and Tokyo for Nineteenth-Century Western Travellers”

Simul Academy, Ginza, Tokyo, Aug, 2019 Invited
“Steamship Tourism and the ‘Arrival Scene’ in Japan in Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives”

Aesthetics of Oceans (Seikei University, Tokyo), Jul, 2019
“A Problematic Period? Teaching the Long Eighteenth Century” (presenter and session chair)

10th Annual Liberlit Conference (Seikei University, Tokyo), Jun, 2019
Working at a Japanese University - advice for international students

Tokyo International Exchange Centre Career Forum, Feb, 2019
Introductory lecture on “Frankenstein at 200” and final roundtable

“Humanity and the Post-Human in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: A 200th Anniversary Symposium (1818–2018)”, Oct, 2018
“The “Sacred Mountain”: Visual and Religious Sublimity in Western Representations of Mount Fuji, 1880 – 1900”

American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Apr, 2018
“An Aesthetic Gateway to Japan: Mount Fuji in Victorian Travel Accounts, 1880–1900”

Pacific Gateways, Nov, 2017
“Swift and the Anti-Cosmopolitan Vision: Rethinking the Japan Episode in Gulliver’s Travels”

Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (CSECS), Oct, 2017
“Demystifying the Discipline of Literary Studies”

8th Annual Liberlit Conference, Feb, 2017
“‘The Japanese have grown weary of standing apart’: J.G. Zimmermann, Romantic Solitude, and the ‘Opening’ of Japan, 1790–1860”

Romantic Legacies, Nov, 2016
“Gulliver and the Wall of Japan: Fumi-e in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels”

The Challenge of Japan, Sep, 2016
“Beyond Gulliver: Japan in English Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century”

University of Tokyo English Society, Mar, 2016
Session on postgraduate career development

7th Annual Liberlit Conference, Feb, 2016
“Like the Ladies of Europe: Victorian Women Writers on the Lives of Japanese Women, 1840–80”

Isabella Bird and the Poetics of Female Travel Writing, Jun, 2015
“Chained Islands: Japan in English Political Thought of the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century”

“Japan in the Eyes of Others: Visions of Japanese Culture and Society Abroad”, May, 2015
“Why Study English Literature? An Introduction to Liberal Arts Research” (talk to Japanese high school students)

JSPS Science Dialogue Program, Aug, 2014
“Japan in the English Imagination, 1600-1800”

Kwansei Gakuin University (invited lecture), Nov, 2013 Invited
“Transplanting the ‘Chinese Garden’ from Canton to England: William Chambers’s Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (1772)”

Japan Association for English Romanticism Annual Conference, Oct, 2013
“Chinese Influence in Eighteenth-Century English Gardens”

Tottori University, Japan (invited lecture), Oct, 2013
“Defining English Identity in Japan: East India Company Accounts of the Japan Trade in Kyushu, 1600–1674”

University of Hong Kong, Department of English (invited lecture), Mar, 2013 Invited
“James Burney and Omai”

Colloquium on “The Burney Family and the British Empire”, Oct, 2012 Invited
“Japanese Sakoku in Early Eighteenth-Century British Literature: Psalmanazar, Defoe, and Swift”

Tohoku Association for Romantic Studies conference, Feb, 2012
“Radical Perspectives on China: British Working-Class Travel Writing and the Macartney Embassy of 1793”

Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oct, 2011
“Mediating the ‘Oriental City’ through the Arabian Nights: Eighteenth-Century English Travelers in Constantinople"

International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies seminar for junior scholars (Queen's University, Belfast), Aug, 2010
“‘That place where the capital of the world ought to be placed’: Elizabeth Craven’s Constantinople”

British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford University, Jan, 2009

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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