J. Keith Vincent
Chair, Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature; Associate Professor of Japanese & Comparative Literature, College of Arts & Sciences
J. Keith Vincent is the Chair of the Dept. of Modern Languages & Comparative Literature at Boston University. J. Keith Vincent’s research focuses on modern Japanese literature, queer theory, translation, and the novel. He is the author of Two-Timing Modernity: Homosocial Narrative in Modern Japanese Fiction (Harvard Asia Center, 2012). Recent edited volumes include Sōseki Great and Small (Tai-shō no Sōseki), a “mini” special issue of the Japanese journal Bungaku (Nov-Dec, 2014), co-edited with Alan Tansman, and Honoring Eve, a Spring 2010 issue of Criticism co-edited with Erin Murphy, on the work of queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
His translation of Okamoto Kanoko’s A Riot of Goldfish (Hesperus Press, 2010) won the 2011 U.S. Japan Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, and his translation of Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s novella Devils in Daylight is forthcoming from New Directions. He is currently working on a book on techniques of description in the Japanese novel, with a focus on Natsume Sōseki’s early work.